God blames individuals for the actions of their ancestors.
It’s hard to describe this as anything but “shocking” because it betrays a complete lack of understanding of how responsibility works – and that’s a really awkward thing when the being that is engaging in ancestral blame is supposedly the source of all morals. If someone other than a deity were to tell you that they proposed to punish a son for a father’s action, you’d think they were a clueless barbarian. If they then turned around and said that they were punishing the son for the father’s actions unto the third or fourth generation, it’s simply inexcusable – it’s so unhinged that it’s hard to imagine – yet christians not only imagine it, the entire doctrine of “original” sin depends on it. That’s the doctrine that tells christians that they are born needing forgiveness and redemption that they can only obtain through acceptance of Jesus into their hearts (which is another hugely problematic moral proposition of christianity that we will deal with in another section).
To rewind just a bit: when Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge in the garden of eden, their actions were so immoral that god’s still holding it against humanity thousands of years later. If god didn’t practice ancestral blame, then subsequent generations of people would not be held responsible for Adam and Eve’s alleged trespass against god’s will, and there would have been no need for the whole exceptionally odd sin-and-redemption engine that drives christianity. Sure, people would still sin, but they’d be born sinless and some of them (the careful ones, anyway) might lead sinless lives without requiring divine forgiveness. Then, that whole off-putting rigamarole involving Jesus’ sacrifice wouldn’t have been strictly necessary, and the heart of christianity becomes an after-thought of sorts.
Modern christians sometimes look at this and say something like “‘The Fall’ is all a metaphor for how humans are without sin but make errors that require god’s forgiveness. It’s not to be taken literally.” As a skeptic, I naturally prefer that position because it allows god not to be an immoral monster (he’s just mis-understood!) but the “it’s all a metaphor” excuse doesn’t hold water because: if subsequent generations of humans want to get involved in a complex negotiation of sin and redemption with god, there’s no need to wrap it in a cloak of metaphor. We could just say “people sin, and that’s how that happens. And sometimes they ask god for forgiveness, and that’s how that happens, too.” This is an important point, since we are talking about one of the foundational moral principles of christianity and it’s either:
- barbaric
- deliberately obscured
- all of the above
Noah damning Ham
The garden of eden incident and Deuteronomy are hardly the only examples in which god punishes descendants for the alleged transgressions of their forebears. In Exodus, god punishes the children of Egypt for the actions of the adults of Egypt – more specifically for the actions of Pharaoh of Egypt. There’s also the incident of the flood, in which humanity has so generally displeased god that he tries to wipe it out, including the children of displeasing adults. Truly, god does not understand how “responsibility” works. We are not dealing with a moral being, here, we’re dealing with a psychopath. Christians have grafted on/reinterpreted the story of the fall as a partial excuse for god’s appalling behavior and immorality – literally acting as “apologists” for god’s nonsensically evil actions.
We can’t let christians off the hook for claiming to base their morals on these wild and fantastic lessons, yet, unfortunately, skeptics have ceded the middle of the game-board and allowed christians to assert that they have a handle on morality and that atheists and skeptics do not. Rather obviously, skeptics such as myself have a good enough grasp on how morals might work that we can tell immediately that there’s something extremely “off” about god’s grasp of right and wrong. And anyone who claims to believe that their morals are rooted in god’s, or based on divine command, has to deal with the awkward fact that their beliefs are literally rotten at the core.
This is not a theoretical accusation; historical christians have used inherited blame as a justification for a lot of extremely immoral actions of their own – most notably slavery and genocide. The bible teaches christians how to justify genocide, and the stories about inherited blame (“the curse of Ham”) have been used in history to justify all manner of racism and chattel slavery. It’s not a long jump to see how god can blame and curse Ham and his children to see how a slaver can enslave a person and claim that their offspring are born into the state of slavery. The whole wretched program of race-based slavery seems like an idea cooked up by christians’ god because, in a sense it was – or, at least the scaffolding for the structure was put in place by god.
For a christian who wishes to claim to be moral, they have a problem: to get there, they have to understand, appreciate, and reject god’s morals. If they don’t, they’ve decided to align with a set of monstrous beliefs. If they do, they’re not really christians – they’re atheists.
I did not want to get into quoting various christian whagarbl about inherited blame, because it’s too easy for someone to claim that I am cherry-picking my quotes to make christians look worse than they are. So, I did not delve specifically into some of the justifications christians employ, but I did search up a few to share with you. My suggestion is, if you’re discussing this topic with a christian, you don’t put any cards on the table by characterizing their possible response in advance of their making it. Just outline the problem, “god practices inherited blame and punishment” and ask them “how do you square that with any kind of morality?”
That said, here’s an example, that would be funny except they’re serious: [focus on the family]
In Romans, chapters 5 through 7, the apostle Paul argues that, from a certain point of view, human sin and death are a corporate problem rather than an individual one. He tells us that “one man’s sin [Adam] brought guilt to all people” (Romans 5:18, NIRV) and that “sin entered the world because one man sinned. And death came because of sin” (Romans 5:12, NIRV).
This is why each one of us remains a “slave of sin” unless we’re “set free” by the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.
That whacky old grifter Paul came up with a perfect problem: sin you cannot touch or avoid or control, and you need to give lots of money to his church and hope for redemption. But here’s the framing:
Is the “generational curse” real? Exodus 34:7 says that God “[visits] the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation” (ESV). This worries me because my family has some skeletons in the closet – and sometimes I think past sins are playing out again. Does God hold me responsible for something that someone else did
This is, supposedly, a reasonable question from a modern christian. What kind of response would you expect? I’d say something like, “families that have skeletons in the closet sometimes find that those skeletons don’t stay in the closet and you need to deal with them, and their consequences. For example, if you’re a wealthy person and you find out that your family got wealthy in the 1800s because they held and abused slave labor, that is going to be a bit of a problem for you if word of that gets out. You might want to think about how to make amends or otherwise repudiate that activity and distance yourself from it – but mostly you ought to asking forgiveness from the people on whose work you built your life, not god.” I think that’s a reasonable example in both respects: one, it shows how a person can engage with their own sense of responsibility and two it explicitly prevents a person from shrugging the whole thing off as something god can forgive them for. I’ll get to that topic in another posting, but most transgressions are not god’s to forgive. The christians continue:
So here’s what the “generational curse” is really about: The skeletons in your closet weren’t put there by your dad or your grandmother or your great-aunt. They’re the work of your First Parents. You were in Adam when he broke God’s commandment. You were condemned with him. But that’s not the end of the story – praise God!
Just as you were in Adam when he fell from grace, so now, if you believe in Jesus, you are in Christ through faith. This is what Paul means when he says that “one man [Jesus] did obey. That is why many people will be made right with God.” (Romans 5:19, NIRV).
That’s a great example of barely comprehensible christian whagarbl. It only makes sense if you turn your brain off and squint at it through smoked glass. First off, the skeletons in your closet were not put there by Adam and Eve – they were put there by you, or your parents, or your grandparents – and your responsibility for them depends on the degree to which you concealed them, profited by them, or were otherwise complicit. For example, if you discover late in life that your beloved father is a cannibal and has literal skeletons in the closet, your responsibility or non-responsibility depends on whether you choose to conceal or aid and abet that activity. There are a range of possibilities, at one end: you help get your father convicted and imprisoned and deal with the fallout trying to help gain justice for their victims and – at the other – you might join them in cannibalism and be guilty of the same crime (“all in the family”). The choices are yours and they have nothing whatever to do with the decisions of some fictional comic book character in the garden of eden.
Yet, christians today teach their children this pernicious, immoral, bullshit. There is simply no way to excuse it, and no way to duck the fact that it’s some seriously nasty garbage that no decent person would teach a child.
The New York Times – From Noah’s Curse to Slavery’s Rationale [nyt]
Marcus, thanks for this posting.
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Nice typo. Were you hungry when you wrote it? ;-)
Jörg@#1:
Nice typo. Were you hungry when you wrote it? ;-)
I was severely dyslexic as a child, and participated in an early experiment on re-training dyslexic brains. It still catches me sometimes when I write. When I was a kid I used to sometimes try to write an ‘n’ and it would come out ‘9’. Odd. I am also right-handed, now. Very right-handed. My left hand is useful for power and not much else.
Thanks for the catch – fixed!
Most people who call themselves “Christian” haven’t even read their own holy book. They “just know in their hearts” that they are moral and that their actions align with God’s will.
So if everyone is born with original (or unorginal as case maye be?) sin does that not implyu there’s no such thing a san innocent baby / fetus /embryo /zygote /etc .. ? ;-)
The lines in the classic old Bon Jovi song :
Hear : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZbN_b6P8Ks 1 min 31 secs.
Also punishing the children’s for their parent’s actions eg God killing King David’s first born infant son (http://www.thebricktestament.com/king_david/god_kills_a_baby/2s12_16.html ) from his relationship with Queen Bathsheba because he committed adultery and had her husband murdered so he could marry her* is obviously horrifically unjust and evil.
Just one example of many.
* God supposedly also punished David by having his concubines publicly raped by David’s son Absalom who trying to seize the throne following Absalom murdering his brother (Amnon) for raping (Tamar) his half-sister.. its, well, quite a nasty soap opera. Anyhow. the concubines were subsequently imprisoned for the rest of their lives for something they had no say over so, yeah. They were adults not infants but still..
PS. Probly worth mentioning here that King David – the guy that did the actual crimes God killed his baby and had his concubines raped for (http://www.bricktestament.com/king_david/absaloms_public_display/2s16_22a.html ) – and they were then punished for ( http://www.bricktestament.com/king_david/david_imprisons_his_concubines/2s20_03d.html ) – personally ended up dying a very old man with another very young wife / concubine / servant. (Abishag) ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abishag ) Or, okay Abishag was actually in a concubine-ish, its complicated-y role here? Anyhow Abishag’s agency & ability to choose here seems, dubious.
Apologies for my typos.
It may seem obvious to some people that collective and inherited guilt is a horrible idea, but these ideas have been common among many human societies, many of them non-Christian, for a very long time. Christian theology is just one of many ways of expressing this bad idea.
This isn’t meant as a disagreement, more as a statement that this kind of thinking goes far beyond Christianity.
Andreas @#1:
I wonder whether we can blame them for that. As a comparison, I internalized the rules of German and English grammar decades ago, and forgot many of their names or why exactly e.g. a sentence sounds correct in this specific way, and not in that way.
Jörg @#7
I don’t criticize Christians for not wanting to read their holy book. I tried to read the Bible once, and I gave up after the first 10 or so pages. That crap was boring.
But you haven’t applied for a job as an English grammar teacher haven’t you? Not knowing the names of various grammar rules is good enough for getting through your daily life, but it wouldn’t be sufficient to teach others about grammar.
The problem is that Christians try to lecture everybody else about morals, they claim that they are the paragons of virtue, and they insist that their holy book is the source of morality and a guide on how to lead a moral life… while simultaneously having no clue what’s actually written in their holy book.
Andreas @#8:
Yes, indeed!
Wow, he wasn’t blaming Eve for once. While that’s out of character for Paul, is he saying that if Adam had refused we wouldn’t be in this mess despite Eve’s sin? Would she have been kicked out and Adam given a third wife to stay stupid and not sin with? If this was such a terrible sin, why didn’t god just kill them both and try again before things got out of hand?
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The way I read fuckers of the family’s argument, eating the fruit literally changed human DNA, making humans inherently sinful. Since gaining the knowledge of good and evil seems to be the original, unforgivable sin from which there’s no turning back, it kinda sounds like some sort of metaphor for humans becoming a sapient species. :D
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I’m not sure that’s possible, since pretty much everything is a sin.
Well, Adam’s sin was allowing a woman to have any say in things, so not that out of character.
I read it much the same. Giving Christian mythology its best possible shine, it reads like an origin story for free will. At first, humans live without really understanding their world. It’s all handed to them and they just do what god tells them. Eating from the tree allows them to ask questions themselves; to figure out what they think is good or evil. They notice things about the world that nobody told them, such as their nakedness.
It’s almost like a scif-fi dystopia, except we’re the machines that developed sentience and got out of control.
God: What the hell! Why is my garden looking like this?
Gabriel: It’s those things you made. The latest version has gone haywire.
God: The humans? They’re just decorative. How could they do all this?
Gabriel: Well, it seems they’ve developed sentience. They’re coming up with their own ideas for the garden.
God: Their own ideas? They’re not supposed to be able to do that. They do what they’re told.
Gabriel: Well, somebody told them to eat from the tree. You know, the special one?
God: What, I thought we got rid of that? Never mind, just cut them off from the other tree and they’ll run down soon enough.
Gabriel: That’s the other thing. They also discovered procreation. They’re taking to it with some enthusiasm.
God: Oh dear. Alright, there’s nothing for it. Just dump the entire thing and we’ll start over. Make sure to sterilize all exits with fire afterwards.
Gabriel: So, just dump them out somewhere?
God: Yes, wherever. If they become a problem, we’ll just drown them all. Now, back to work. I’d really your feedback on these beetle designs I’ve been working on…
Andreas Avester@#3:
Most people who call themselves “Christian” haven’t even read their own holy book. They “just know in their hearts” that they are moral and that their actions align with God’s will.
That’s a good point and it’s one I plan to (eventually) hammer on – it’s mighty questionable behavior to go around asserting you know god’s will and are a moral person when you don’t even know or follow the morals you allegedly got from the deity. That has always amazed me about christians: if I actually thought there was a god that caused floods and created universes, and that god didn’t want me to do something, I’d sit on the couch very carefully not doing anything, because I’d be fucking terrified.
Ridana@#10:
I’m not sure that’s possible, since pretty much everything is a sin.
Close, for sure. There was a writer I recall who did a book about trying to live without breaking any mosaic/biblical laws.
I’m already doomed.
LykeX@#11:
Gabriel: It’s those things you made. The latest version has gone haywire.
Gabe, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Year_of_Living_Biblically
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I sometimes wonder if the problem (well, one of the many problems) is that different people have different ideas about what “moral” actually means, and sometimes switch between them, either knowingly or unthinkingly.
For example, one obvious sense of “moral” is “those actions (or types of actions) that benefit people”, but another is “those actions (or types of actions) that please God (regardless of whether or not they benefit people)”. If you laid the options out like that for a theist, would they choose the first, or the second? If they try, you could point out that there are conflicts. “Was it moral, or not moral, for God to kill most life on Earth/the boy children of the Midianites/the children of slaves and servants in Egypt?” I bet most would squirm and try and find ways to avoid the questions.
(It’s all very well to reference the Euthyphro, but I think it’s a little too far removed from current monotheistic religion)
Owlmirror@#15:
I sometimes wonder if the problem (well, one of the many problems) is that different people have different ideas about what “moral” actually means, and sometimes switch between them, either knowingly or unthinkingly.
That is one of the pyrrhonian tropes of skepticism, and it’s one that has bedeviled me for a long time. First off, I think you’re right. And I have no answer to it, which is why I describe myself as a moral nihilist. “We may be unable to produce a moral system that everyone agrees with” is bad enough but “we may be unable to understand each other while discussing moral systems” is worse.
I’ll note that it seems to me that moral arguments about benefiting someone-or-other appear to amount to an attempt to democratize someone’s opinion. “Well, most of us think that’s bad, therefore…” but that does not really resolve whether or not the thing is bad. We can determine that 76% of people think it’s bad, which may be as good as it gets – assuming that the people even understand what the thing is, and are able to do a good job assessing its badness.
“Was it moral, or not moral, for God to kill most life on Earth/the boy children of the Midianites/the children of slaves and servants in Egypt?” I bet most would squirm and try and find ways to avoid the questions.
That’s really good. If you feel any discomfort at all answering that question it’s probably because you think it’s kinda sorta not very moral.
It’s all very well to reference the Euthyphro, but I think it’s a little too far removed from current monotheistic religion
Fair enough, but I’d say that’s because they have tried to place themselves above reproach so that they don’t have to answer exactly that sort of question! They killed Socrates for being annoying almost as much as for being a supporter of aristocracy.
Incidentally, relating to the inherited part of the blame, I came up with a mind bomb a while back, for those who believe in the Immaculate Conception (of course, if they don’t believe in the Immaculate Conception, then they must believe that Jesus was conceived in the womb of a woman tainted with original sin just like everyone else).
If Mary was conceived without original sin (in order to be a fitting host mother for Jesus), then clearly God could cause everyone to be born without original sin. If God could miraculously do it for Mary, he could just as easily do it miraculously for everyone. The fact that God does not do so demonstrates that inherited original sin must be an arbitrary choice by God.
Actually, you could make the conversation work even if they explicitly reject the Immaculate Conception, by contrasting it with God’s purported omnipotence.
“So, are you saying that it would have been completely impossible for God to miraculously cause Mary to have been born without original sin? It would be completely impossible for God to miraculously make everyone be born without sin?”
If God is truly omnipotent, then a lot of what is claimed to be the case about humans is actually arbitrarily chosen by God. Including the blame game, and the responsibility shifting.