That's basically the difference between being raised as a biblical rules lawyer and being raised with a moral compass. I've noticed empathy seems to be the opposite of rules.

Its not unique to Christianity or even religion, but you would think people who claim to study the New Testament would see their relation to some of the people mentioned as having conflicts with Jesus. I mean, its not like it doesn't hit you over the head with "don't be like that". They also slip into the "any means to an end" side of the spectrum which I find the true one phrase definition of evil.

Indeed, you would expect more from Christians than from Jews, given that big parts of New Testament are about replacing the rule-based thinking of Old Testament with empathy and conscience-based principles.

I personally don't think I would expect any difference, but that is one of the major differences between all the branches of Christianity: "how much of the Old Testament has been rewritten by the New".

The people in the article are Jewish, not Christian, so I'm not why a critique of Christianity is relevant here. What is your opinion on Judaism?

I have more experience with Christians doing the biblical rules lawyering than Jews, but its not an unknown way to learn codes in any religion. I'm pretty sure empathy is a shared trait from the common books from the Old Testament for both Christians and Jews[1].

1) On a side note, Catholics and Protestants have different Old Testaments.

[edit: folks JesperRavn has a legitimate question - be nice]

'Different' Old Testaments is a somewhat misleading thing to say. The vast majority of the Old Testament is the same - Catholics include the Deuterocanonical books that most (but not all) Protestant churches do not[1].

There's a lot of interesting history behind this, but my understanding is that Catholics don't necessarily put these books on the same level as the broadly accepted Old Testament, but include them in printings nonetheless. I've heard that they were dropped from Protestant Bibles to save money on printing, but I have no idea if this story is true.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterocanonical_books

> 'Different' Old Testaments is a somewhat misleading thing to say.

The Catholic Old Testament has 46 books and the Protestant Bible has 39 books.

46 and 39 are different numbers and it is not misleading to say that they are different. A red car is different from the same model in blue.

It's not incorrect, but it is misleading. It's not so much that Catholics have a different Old Testament; it's more like they have extra Old Testament. Similarly, if you have a copy of the first edition of a book and I buy a second edition of a book with an added epilogue, it would be misleading to say that we have different books. The book are completely the same, but one has some extra content.

Again, it's not technically wrong, just misleading to someone unfamiliar with the topic at hand. In terms of relevance to the conversation, the reason it's misleading is that the moral codes and content present in the Protestant OT is all present in the Catholic OT as well; the Catholic OT has a little more, but by and large, they are pulling from the same moral background. Saying that they have different OTs in this context seems to suggest that this is not the case, and that Catholics and Protestants have a different set of sources for, e.g., moral guidance and teaching.

If the only reason something is bad is because a big guy will send you to hades, then once you stop believing in that then nothing is evil and everything is permitted. It's not really a moral code at all, since there is no understanding of morality. It's just "don't do X or God will whack you."

Two of the least moral people I've ever meet were raised fundamentalist. A part of their atheist conversion was to realize there is no morality and that humans are "just animals" (in the words of one). It's a perfectly rational conclusion if force wielded by God is the only basis for moral action.

One could argue that some the worst things happen precisely when you think you have god on your side. In the paraphrased words of Christopher Hitchens, "The suicide bombing communities and the child genital mutilation communities are almost entirely faith-based."

This is false, see http://cpost.uchicago.edu About half of all suicide bombings are secular. (I don't know about child genital mutilation)

Yes, but it's taboo (this will get downvoted hard) to point out that neither the Christian nor Jewish communities are involved in such activities.

(Not that Christians and Jews as a group are sinless, of course.)

Christians and Jews are pretty heavily involved in child genital mutilation.

Yes, but circumcision doesn't seem to have any long-term effects on genital function. Yes, there are arguments back and forth in the medical community, but it's not an obvious mutilation.

I have found in life that when people say obvious, they really mean unexamined. If you have the courage to honestly know the damage done, you will see mutilation.

You are wrong sorry. Plenty of Christian mutilation of female genitalia is permanently disfiguring and removes their ability to have pleasure during sex. Any mutilation is horrible just because it isn't so bad does not excuse it at all.

I'm sorry, but I've never heard in all my decades of life about female mutilation among Christians. Can you point to some credible evidence?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3507121/ By all means

>Practice of FGM has no relationship with religion. Muslims and Christians practice it, but it is more widely spread in Christian predominated parts of Nigeria.[2]

Any sort of theistically-based morality can degenerate into that, of course, but it's hardly the mainstream way that adherents of any of the major monotheistic faiths think or talk about God and His commands. On the contrary, the typical (and orthodox) way that God is understood to be connected to morality is to say that just as God is the ground and source of Being, so God is the ground and source of the Good. God requires righteousness from His creation because He (as the Good) is the goal or τελος of that creation, and you simply can't be what you were intended to be without that goodness. Of course, failing to be what you were intended to be comes with problems, but the failures are organically connected with the problems, just as the rewards are intrinsically a part of the success.

That's one theological approach to some of the more difficult problems in religion (especially modern Christianity). Is it really widely held though?

It's a natural interpretation for anyone familiar with the Euthyphro, but most people have not read Plato.

I haven't generally seen strong evidence that adherents have actually adopted the beliefs professed by apologists. Surveys routinely find adherents generally fall closer to literalists.

Gallup found that 70% of Americans believed in the Devil, similar numbers for hell.[0]

It might be tempting to wash this and say, "no, all those people just meant a metaphorical devil." But if you step back, it strains credulity a bit to argue that people, when asked if something existed, would respond "yes" to mean "not really, only in an allegorical sense."

Mostly though, of all the rationalizations offered for odd religious views, I just haven't yet seen any good evidence that most adherents have actually adopted these more nuanced views.

[0] http://www.gallup.com/poll/27877/Americans-More-Likely-Belie...

As a fairly traditional religious type, I'm not too worried that, say, the folks in my Bible study can't explain the theological basis for natural law, any more than I'm worried than the folks who use my software can't explain how a compiler works. You can gain value from something without being able to explain the details - though it's also true you can do yourself quite a few favors by trying to understand at least a couple of levels down, whether as a Christian or a computer user. (And by the way, reasonably nuanced philosophical perspectives are by no means incompatible with belief in supernatural evil: just ask Thomas Aquinas, or, for that matter, I suppose, me. :-)

I completely agree that people don't need to know all the nuances of something to get some value out of it, in the general case. I read your response to api as suggesting people held a more nuanced view than I think they actually do. My mistake.

More importantly:

> reasonably nuanced philosophical perspectives are by no means incompatible with belief in supernatural evil...

There are a lot of ways to take this, so just to be clear, are you saying that you believe an all-loving and omnipotent god created a willful being of pure evil?

Sorry for the delay, just now saw this.

My clarification to your last question is to fall back on the traditional understanding of evil, going back to at least Plotinus: evil is real, but it's a derivative reality, parasitic on good. So you can't have a being of pure evil: it's sort of ruled out (in this understanding) by definition. What you can have is a being that, through the good of free will, chooses lesser goods - in this case, itself - and in the process corrupts itself and effectively revolts against its Creator. Evil, yes, but not pure evil, and not originally created as such.

It's not as if this line of defense doesn't have its holes, but it's plausible enough that I don't think it can be dismissed out of hand. And it also explains enough that, given my other philosophical and theological predispositions, I tend to think it (or something like it) quite probable.

Well there are different ways to raise children, and while the theological arguments are fine, I was really wondering about the parents. I suspect, but can't prove, that every child at some time or another lies, cheats, steals, and generally tries to circumvent what is perceived to be "ridiculous" constraints on their behavior. And while a church might provide "rules" for behavior, I firmly believe it is up to the family to provide "why" for behavior. I spent many hours explaining the why of rules to my kids. And yes, some of that why came from teachings like "love thy neighbor as thyself" but most of it was common sense about making everyone's lives as enjoyable as possible rather than one person's life that enjoyable.

I'm sad these guys didn't learn that.

Depending on what there books looked like they might have gotten similar returns winding down the company, it's not like there going to spend 20 million this year.