Problem two in my opinion is that so far evolution can CLAIM, at most, to account for ALTRUISTIC morals. There are many others. And I might add as a side note the “bad girl of capitalism” Ayn Rand, was for her part not impressed with this. Neither was Fredrich Neitzche. Some have tried to pin ideas about sexual morals to old Hebraic and other Near East faiths to the idea of a type of common law extant in those times before DNA evidence was in the lab. You assured others your daughter was a virgin until her marriage night for the simple expedient beyond all other concerns that this was a LEGAL issue mandating that genes flowed properly for concerns of inheretence and property. JP Holdings TEKTON site and others acknowledge this tradition as having some pragmatic input, for example.

But the main problem here is that certainly even in elements were little chance of reproduction was seen (like homosexuality and sex among relatives past their prime) the laws were still very stern. I remember the other quip by one commentator to the effect that after all is said and done, when pushed on the topic, Dawkins as well as the obnoxous HItchens and others have been forced (as many “reformers” of the old school atheism like HL Mencken and Aldous Huxley) to admit that they have little problem with the notions of Christian origins for civilization and science (brilliantly laid out by Nancy Pearcy and Charles Thaxton and Rodney Stark) but rather their rebellion against Christianity is actually a REVERSION to a more pagan time in sexual mores they wish to see return. Pinker’s morals show hints of this as his lambasts Christianity for prohibitive sex mores on infanticide (common in the ancient world outside the Jews), pederastry, and homosexuality. In other words, the atheist rebellion can be shown deficient on the science and history of things. That’s OK, because the rebellion is actually…….pelvic, in origen.

Furthermore, the rabbis themselves stated that you obeyed God because God and His commands were good, not because you expected a reward. In the Authorised Daily Prayer Book there’s the passage ‘Antigonos of Socho received the tradition from Simon the Just. he used to say, Be not like servants who minister to their master upon the condition of receiving a reward; but be like servants who minister to their master without the condition of receiving a reward; and the the fear of Heaven be upon you.’ (Whitefield Foy, ed., The Religious Quest (London, Routledge 1978), p. 370.

The same attitude was taken over into Christianity and in Islam. Yes, Christ warns of the dangers of hell and states that the righteous will be rewarded by God, but Christian morality goes beyond this. You are righteous and moral because as a Christian, you wish to participate in God’s righteousness and morality. Their good for their own sake, not just because following a code of morality is supposed to get you into heaven.

What do you make of this oft repeated claim from some atheist sectors to the effect that Christianity and other forms of faith have a set of rules that seem overly strict and threaten hell and damnation (or at least separation and loneliness from God) as the prime motivator of moral consciousness. In other words, a threat of “don’t make me hurt you”—while by contrast the atheists claim their morals are superior since they do this from free will. Thus being good for being good is superior to making ‘bad doggies’ into “good doggies” by threat of force, etc. Of course I know this is overly simplistic, and maybe part of the answer is that ALL persons have to subscribe to a set of rules be that secular (local and national authorities) or other or a combination of both. So this simplistic statement must take into account that it is not only deities in history, but humans also (since the code of Hammarabi) that have laid down rules that govern moral and even personal behavior. Understood. And I read on the Beast Rabban’s site, and agree, that while many atheists are good and decent people in their everyday walk, it is true that one cannot get an absolute claim from them about a consistent moral stance if everything depends on such goodness lasting or on free will of all atheist participants in society. Also, many atheists don’t believe in any such thing as free will, especially those from the biological sciences who think we are but mere “gene machines” that have no forethought of life purpose. As Stephen Pinker has said (and Daniel Dennett would agree) there is no soul, no free will, and no purpose to “truth” other than replication of DNA. All else is what we make as side dressing.

Now of course I know for this to even begin to work we must leave out the allowed horrors of atheism that they will deny (see Sam Harris, for example, and Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, who claim that Hitler’s, Stalin’s and Mao’s purges and pogroms against Jews and other minorities and malcontents were ABERRATIONS of POLITICS, and not atheism per se.) Hitchens and Harris blame Medieval Europe’s Catholic tradition for anti-Jew sentiment in Germany, bad Eastern Orthodox upbringing for Stalin’s, and just misunderstood politics for Mao’s. Dinesh D’Sousa has a funny quip about this in answering Harris in that “are we now to accuse Christianity of what atheist philosophers and leaders have done by their OWN hands?”

I know that easy-does-it fast soundbite quips don’t always tell the whole story, but still.

Yeah, I’ve noticed the increasingly dark, nihilistic tendency of much of contemporary atheism. I think some of it possibly comes from the way some of the darker aspects of Existentialism have been picked up and entered popular culture. I think there always has been an element of cynicism and weltschmerz in scepticism. Voltaire once said something to the effect that if it weren’t for hope, the whole world would live in permanent despair.

Usually, no matter how world-weary and cynical people are though, they don’t shoot people like the Finnish psychopath or the other mass murderers last year saw. There the general grace which Abraham Kuyper, one of the founders of Presuppositionalism saw as granted to everyone, including unbelievers, to carry on their lives rationally despite the alienation caused by sin, seems to have been disastrously absent.

As for Christ’s attitude towards prostitutes, I don’t think He did look down on them. Theologically you’re supposed to make a distinction between the sinner and the sin: God hates sin, but loves the sinner. But at the same time, you’re expected to repent and make the effort to lead a more moral life. Hence the actions by the saints in the early Church to save women from prostitution and win those who had fallen back to a righteous life.

I also completely agree with you about the forced prostitution that’s re-appearing in Europe and Britain. It’s very much like the situation in the late 19th and early 20th century. There were a series of international conferences by politicians and senior police officers from across Europe and the world in the early 20th century discussing ways to combat the international trade in women. A lot of the girls then who ended up being shipped through Europe to end up in prostitution in South America were from central and eastern Europe. It’s very, very similar to today, where poor women from the former Soviet bloc have been lured over here by criminal gangs under false pretences, only to find themselves working as sex slaves.

And you’re absolutely right about the way that contemporary atheists have become so militant that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope are now criticising atheism.

Yeah, there’s a lot of porn and very loose sexual morality in Japan. I got the impression it’s quite a chauvinist society – women are expected to be chaste and virginal, but also available for the men. I was reading a book on Japan by a former correspondent for either the Times or the Telegraph , and he was very critical of the Japanese attitude towards women. He noted that the Japanese really didn’t have much idea of sexual harrassment. When one female employee sued her boss for it, it was treated as a joke. There was even a nightclub called ‘Seku Haru’, which I understand is the Japanese term for it.

As for the other Asian societies where they sell their children into prostitution, I got the impression that this was partly due to grinding poverty destroying morality. But you’re right: it is very grim. Some of the most disturbing stuff I’ve come across about the sex trade is in the book Disposable People . The book’s really about the persistence of slavery around the world. It’s by a secular author, but it is very, very good indeed. It includes as modern slaves not just debt slaves and labourers kept in effective bondage through the legal fiction of extremely long-term contracts, but also the forced prostitution in the logging and mining towns in Brazil and south-east Asia. It’s horrendous stuff that really does turn your stomach, and I have the utmost respect for the international aid workers and Christian missionaries who do work out there trying to combat it in such appalling conditions. Unfortunately, the same kind of sex trade is making a re-emergence in Britain and the West.

As for Europe, yeah, European attitudes to sex are still very, very different from British and American attitudes. Having said that, they have fewer under age pregnancies than Britain: we have the highest in Europe. There are people arguing in Britain that this is due to Britain having poorer sex education than these countries, but I’ve also got the impression that some of them are actually more conservative sexually than they appear. The British TV presenter, Jeremy Clarkson, did a programme on the Netherlands in his series Meet the Neighbours in which he went round Europe talking about the bizarre aspects of their culture. The impression he gave of the Netherlands was that outside of Amsterdam, it’s actually very conservative and still very conventionally religious.

As for Muslims being more fertile than secular Europeans – that’s true, though I don’t think that Europe is heading for extinction in 50 years time. I’ve had a look at some of the statistics touted to support this, and they’re actually not terribly trustworthy. Nevertheless, Prospect magazine concluded that atheism would peak through sheer demographics in 50 years time, and then decline through sheer demographic factors: atheists don’t have as many children as religious people.

This tendency towards nihilism is one of the main reason Im glad atheism is in decline. There were several examples of mass murder by atheists in 2007. In Finland a student posted his nihilist / atheist views on YouTube weeks before shooting eight people dead. The vast majority of atheist would never take their nihilism to that extreme, but even they surely suffer at best needless depression.

I agree with Kelly that she shouldn’t feel ashamed about enjoying her job – Christ didn’t appear to look down even on prostitutes. But there is some evidence that Porn has a negative effect on men and women even on secular criteria – over exposure to it reduces mens desire for real sex and leaves their partners getting less attention.

There’s mixed evidence with porn but with prostitution there is no doubt that excessive demand is causing tens of thousands of women to be trafficked into GB and Western Europe every year. Modern day slavery which many atheists indirectly support. Just because the commercialization of sex is perceived as being contrary to Christian beliefs, atheist polemicists seem willing to turn a blind eye to the appalling real world consequences of supporting the sex industry.

In the past Christians have tended to turn the other cheek in the face of offensive propaganda from atheists. But recently atheists have become so militant its been necessary to fight fire with fire. Im glad high profile leaders like the Pope and the Archbishop of Wales have started highlighting the evils of atheism. And very glad there are excellent blogs and sites like atheism sucks!

I don’t have much time or patience with “bad girls” like Kelly, but for brevity it seems that our entire culture is trending towards something more akin to modern Europe and Japan in hedonism. Japan in particular is a quandry. ON the outside veneer there is a protocal to life and culture expectations. But on the inside of this hard core veneer of tradition is a very Western (not in a good way) way that copies not only technology almost to the anal retentive level but duplicates our nasty and seedier sides also. One could also find this is ALMOST (but not quite) going to the level of the sex trade in parts of Southeast Asia where puritan ethics never hit the shores and fathers and even mothers sell their little girls into prostitution to make money not available on the farming trades.
I had earlier posted the disturbing trends of Europe, which, while not as far gone as Europe in the monetary aspect of this (though to be sure Euro prostitution and porn exists) but that very young European children and immersed in sexual mores and culture that even secular Americans might find odious or to be delayed until adolescence. Though that is changing. I noted also that this secularization and hedonism actually endangers the Old Continent (Brits are still a little more careful than, say, the French, in getting relaxed about little Jenny getting busy at too young an age). Islamists are not like this, and say what we will about their apparent lack of female rights, they are NOT impressed with boys kissing and public nudity in the Netherlands and other items. Yet the Islamists, unlike the childless sexual activity of Europeans (Italy is now trying to BRIBE women to have kids) are having little ones. They are reproducing.

So much for the Darwinian ethic of sumptious living and technology preserving society. Europe as we know her will be extinct in 50 years if current childless and hedonistic trend continue. OH well….

Yet another indicator that sex is for marriage and for having kids in addition to being fun, and has to be banked and controlled by society to fulfill its purpose.

Lastly, I posted an updated question about Noah’s flood, etc.

Thanks. And happy New Year.

That’s interesting about the moral advances made by Roman Catholic philosophers a couple of centuries before Locke. The Jesuit philosopher Suarez certainly caused an uproar amongst the European monarchs when he argued in one of his books that people had the right to depose an unjust monarch. His book was burned in France by the parlement of Paris.

As for the rejection of slavery and conquest, I don’t know much about this beyond the efforts of the great defender of the rights of the South American Indians, Bartolome de las Casas. His efforts on their behalf truly were heroic, but its depressing and disgusting that even such a great and humane man as de las Casas accepted and defended the use of Black slaves. He did so on the grounds that they were criminals and weren’t citizens of the Spanish Crown, unlike the Indian subjects of the Spanish Empire, thus accepting the theoretical basis for Black slavery in the New World. However, despite this slaves in the Spanish Empire did possess rights, and when the British in the 1820s created the position of ‘Protector of Slaves’ as part of a campaign to outlaw the abuse of slaves in their colonies, they copied the institution and much of the legislation from the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean.

It’s interesting that Locke was in many ways continuing an older natural law tradition, but was actually less advanced than Catholic philosophers one or two centuries earlier in that they explicitly rejected slavery and were leaning towards rejecting even ‘benevolent’ conquest.