Bob Clasen observes:

People seem to take for granted that all religions are "equal” and worthy of equal respect no matter how different they might be. But is this really true? What if the deity being worshipped is no better than a human being, as with many of the Greek Gods. What if the being worshipped is literally demonic as with Satan worshippers? What if the "God” advocates killing non believers, "holy war”, slavery, stoning, and such like? I think that simply calling your version of morality a religion does not excuse you if your conduct is not ethical or legal.

Tim adds: This is the prime argument made by most atheists; all religions are equally bad because, well, they are RELIGIONS and hence fundamentally no different.

Most of the atheists I've debated over the years work on this assumption and it's demonstrably false. They take outliers and apply them as general principles. For example, they will point to child molestation by Catholic priests and say "AHA!" but ignore the fact that more children are molested by secular teachers in public schools in the U.S. than have been by priests (and that is adjusted for the differences in numbers). https://www.academia.edu/21997616/A_Forgotten_Study_Abuse_in_School_100_Times_Worse_than_by_Priests

They don't understand (or choose not to) that in any large group of people you will have bad actors. It's inevitable. But they claim that religious folks should be better. Well, by and large they are, but that certainly isn't what Christianity teaches, which is we are all sinners. Christianity says sinners are forgiven, and need that forgiveness. Not better.

And who can compare Christianity or Judaism with, say, the religion of the Aztecs which demanded human sacrifice? Who can even compare the former two with Islam, which calls for death to infidels and the like? Christianity certainly never has called for anything remotely like that. Does that mean Christiandom has always lived up to it's moral code? Of course not, for the same reason that public school teachers don't (it's illegal and unethical for public school teachers to have even consensual sex with students). But it is a far cry from Islam, which calls for the abuse and enslavement of people. That is not a violation of Islam; it's in the Koran and practiced based on the Koran.

Religions are not all equal. Some are clearly better than others.

I would add that most of what we see as decent and good these days came out of the Judeo-Christian religious traditions and precisely because the bad things could not be justified based on those same religions. Slavery is the prime example. Slavery was ubiquitous; every culture and nation practiced it in the old days. But Israel was commanded to do it differently; they had a jubilee year every seven years where slaves were all released. That is why Israel had so many non-Jews living among them in the old times; it was a far more religiously tolerant place and those who would not be accepted elsewhere fled there.

Yes, slavery was exported to America b y the colonial powers, but that was largely a violation of the Bible, not in accordance with it. And the natives in America all kept slaves themselves, so they didn't see it as a big deal. Then religious folks began pushing for abolition, and Wilberforce pushed until Britain finally ended the abhorrent practice. The U.S. then fought a Civil War to that end, and much of what animated the war - at least among the intellectuals in the North - was a desire to end slavery based on religion. BTW we ended slavery before most of the res of the Americas, and even before half of the Europeans.

Now we see slavery as a great evil. But that is a coefficient of a better religion asserting itself.

Sex slavery, torture, despotism, blood feuds, etc. were all ended because of the triumph of Judeo-Christian culture. And almost all of the great leftist triumphs of the last couple hundred years piggybacked on the morality of Christianity. All "woke" culture today has at it's core the concept of human rights and a desire to give dignity and kindness to marginalized groups. That all comes out of the Judeo-Christian traditions.
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Had Islam triumphed, had Charles Martel lost at Tours (we just celebrated his victory) things would have been very different. Women would be chattel, girls who were not Muslim made sex slaves, people would be beheaded for converting from Islam, we would have the very worst of what we see by the Taliban or ISIS or the Mullahs of Iran only worldwide. Islam is not a forgiving religion. It is in no way comparable to Christianity or Judaism.

Had any other religion triumphed things would be very different. Hinduism is by and large a benign religion but look what it is like in India; India is poor and people suffer, especially if you are in the lower castes. Why? Because it is interfering with anothers' karma to render any real help. So untouchables died in the streets because nobody wanted to tamper with their karma and thus perhaps condemn them to another life as an untouchable. (Mother Theresa of Calcutta so tampered with it, which is where she gained her fame.)

So all religions are NOT the same and some are indeed better than others. Or does anyone think devil worship is on a par with Christianity?

Religions have evolved over the centuries too, and in that way God is speaking still. Catholicism today, for instance, is not the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages, and doctrine has evolved to an extent. (Islam doesn't evolve because they have no controlling legal authority to interpret it and the Koran is believed to be the dictated word of God so is immutable, unlike Christianity which is the inspired word, hence interpreted.) If we believe - as do Christians - that there is a plan of salvation we must accept that God is working and that there is no final "settled theology" in some regards. This is quite easily seen in the Old Testament where the faith of Abraham was quite a bit different from the faith of the Israelites returning to Canaan from Egypt, and that was quite a bit different from the Judaism of the returning exiles under Cyrus the Great. Judaism evolved. And in that way it evolves towards what God intends. That doesn't mean it always involves AS God intends, and certainly much modern Christianity is apostate and just wrong. Anything that rejects the core of the Bible, for example a branch of Christianity that favors gay marriage, is wrong and will in due course die. But there is an overall purpose to history and religions evolve with that.

They are NOT the same; almost all of them have taken the wrong path. We may debate which one is correct or not, but in the end we can judge them by their fruits, and by our sense of what a Holy and Omnipotent God could and should desire and be.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:02 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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