It Must Be Christmas-time Again

Tim Shah and Tom Farr, in the NYT:

…”religion-specific values” have driven the most consequential American political debates for over 200 years. Some make claims about objective moral truths: for example, in the Declaration of Independence (“all men are created equal,” “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”), abolitionism, women’s suffrage, civil rights laws and discussions of the nature and value of marriage. Others make more particular claims: for example, calling for temperance, withdrawal from Vietnam or a higher minimum wage. In the American system, all religious claims are free to contend. Without them, America would be a very different place…

There seems little argument with that summation factually. Yet it predictably also appears some commenters cannot be bothered to read. One example:

My wife and I are sick of religion being shoved down our children’s throats. the biggest threat to our country is from religious zealots taking over our Government.

If you want to believe in an invisible man in the sky go ahead but keep it to yourself.

We will never move forward until we stop believing in fairy tales. I think we’ve proved we’re too immature to possess the technologies we have. We could do so much but we make war instead.

Every time our Pastor in chief speaks about faith I feel excluded. Just another reason to be a card carrying member of Americans United. Thank Dog for them.

None of that actually addresses the issue; but such posturing reductionism is symptomatic. It is unsurprising in its sloppiness and conceit. Despite coming out swinging, he does not see fit even to let on as to from where he has derived the no doubt “non-fairy tales” he passes on to his own earthly offspring.

Similarly this from an Australian comic (and evidently little-known historian and theologian) named Tim Michin, quoted in the Telegraph:

“The appropriate reaction to people who think Jesus is a supernatural being is mild embarrassment, sighing tolerance and patient education.”

Presumably Mr Michin is happy to point out to aborginials that Uluru is also just a rock. And he, and that NYT commenter, may choose similarly also to dismiss the New Testament’s claims of Jesus’s divinity. However discovering they have their children devouring, say, Plato, Rousseau’s Confessions, or Quotations from Chairman Mao, might not exactly endear him to others “educationally” either.

There is the crux. It is always positioned as about the supernatural, when it is actually about ideas. Leaving aside the issue of how anyone knows for sure Jesus was not supernatural, supernaturality is actually not the point. More important is what Jesus had to say.

After all, he did live. The likes of Mr Minchin and that NYT commenter, no doubt accept the absolute historical existence of, and therefore reality, of, for instance, Pericles of Athens (c. 495 BC – 429 BC) and his Funeral Orations? There is essentially similar historical evidence of a Jesus of Nazareth (7–2 BC to AD 30–36), his “Sermon on the Mount” and other teachings.

Meaning one can read the Gospels as assuredly as Thucydides and Plutarch. Afterwards, one is then free to believe what one wants, or not. It is entirely your call.

Or one would think it should be anyway. Because one gleans moral groundings more from the Gospels, embelished perhaps by Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions, rather than from Rousseau’s, does not mean one forfeits the right to engage in public debate. Just as neither does an aboriginal Australian who resents tourists trampling on a site where he believes spirits dwell.

From where anyone derives his philosophical worldview is his own personal business, not any politician’s or any judge’s. Nor, for that matter, some NYT commenter’s. Nor those who consider themselves comedians.

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