Comment by jmcqk6 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmcqk6 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

You only need to look at the literal thousands of different versions of Christianity to see this.

Is it wrong to be gay as a christian? You're going to find hundreds of different christian opinions on this, with their own scripture to back it up.

Are you saved by words or actions? Again, you're going to find many many different answers, all with their own scripture and reasoning.

You claim that christianity is about reflecting on one's selfishness and working against it, but can you say that about the prosperity gospel? Trump is about as self-centered as a person can get, but he's held up as a saint by millions of christians in this country.

But perhaps you just mean within a single church community, and not christianity at large? I was a PK, though, so I know how church politics can go and the infighting and selfishness that can be exhibited within the community.

Basically the most we can hope for when it comes to morality is some general agreement about right and wrong, and that agreement is always shifting. There has never been a community or religion in the history of the world that hasn't exhibited this.

Most of this doesn’t refute my point; it’s largely enumeration fallacy and I tried very hard to address this in my post (“not a panacea” and all that).

The thing that is probably most valid and damaging to my model is the bit about evangelicals accepting Trump. I genuinely don’t know about this, but I’m inclined to say that it’s due to the absorbtion of post-Truth mindset from the broader culture. I don’t think you would see anything like it 15 or 20 years ago.

FWIW, I’m sorry we’re being downvoted. I think we’re having quite an interesting conversation. :)

What's an enumeration fallacy? I've googled, but nothing useful came up. The point I was trying to make is that even if you say "we should follow christian values" the necessary follow up question is "which christian values?"

15 or 20 years ago, the same type of thing was happening, just on a smaller scale. Good examples are some of the Televangelists like Peter Popoff.

Perhaps the thing we're disagreeing about is the extent that a "principled culture" protects against this kind of self-indulgence. Based on my personal experiences with the church, I've found the moral framework that it provides does not usually play an active role in the behavior of it's members, and is more often wielded as a tool of judgement against others than as a tool of self-reflection and self-improvement. But I can also recognize that my experiences with the church are not necessarily typical.

I'm not sure that there is a utility to moral authoritarianism beyond the ability to quell disagreements. History has shown that "god says" is an extremely powerful motivating force.

I don't know what your point is. The lack of consistency in Christian behavior does not imply that Christian morality is on the whole unhelpful.

Especially since Christianity tends to downplay ritual and effort-based holiness, comparatively speaking. You don't achieve level 100 in Christian by donating, passing theology tests, travelling, conquering, converting people, or being sin free. Of course actual Christian practice will be all over the place. None of it is explicitly mandatory. Morality is fairly explicit, but actual enforcement of morality isn't the job of Christians outside of particular scenarios.

>The lack of consistency in Christian behavior does not imply that Christian morality is on the whole unhelpful.

I wasn't trying to say that it's unhelpful, just make the point that it's not uniform. If someone says "we should follow christian values" the necessary followup question is "which christian values?"

> which christian values?

"""And one of them, a lawyer, asked [Jesus] a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."""

Most people have a hard enough time with those. But, you might say, what about the details? What about white lies and second donuts? That was also covered by Jesus:

"""Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others."""

The details might seem inconsistent and controversial, but the basic morality isn't all that convoluted or up for discussion. People just don't like thinking about how everyone is bad at the fundamental stuff.

Anyway, Christian philosophy is pretty coherent even if the people aren't. And it's not clear that your expectations of consistency are required for there to be social benefits to Christian belief in particular or religious belief more generally.

There are millions of christians who disagree with you. But yeah sure, clearly you're the one person in the world who has it right!

You're right about my expectation of consistency for there to be social benefit. I just have an expectation of consistency from those claiming to have a monopoly on fundamental truth in the universe. My expectation has nothing to do with social good in that case.

> There are millions of christians who disagree with you.

About The Greatest Commandment and the Golden Rule? As directly quoted from Jesus? If so, this definition of "Christian" is far too encompassing to be useful in this discussion.

> But yeah sure, clearly you're the one person in the world who has it right!

What I'm quoting is even less controversial than the Nicene Creed, which is unanimous among major Christian denominations. They can't even agree on what day of the week is the sabbath and what day of the year is Easter, but they all agree on The Nicene Creed. And they absolutely agree on The Greatest Commandment.

There is not as much controversy about the basics as you seem to think there is.

Numerous variants of the Golden rule predate Christianity and there are few if any direct quotes of Jesus that survive. The gospels were written decades later. Oddly Jesus doesn't appear to have written or had someone record his wisdom directly, despite Aristotle setting an example with his 18 books of ethics over 300 years earlier.

I'm not sure I follow your point. We aren't talking about pop history; we are talking about whether there is shared Christian morality.

I guess I led with the wrong thing. Mainly pointing out that they are not, in the strictest sense anyway, "directly quoted from Jesus" (and it kinda boggles my mind that he wouldn't have the foresight to write things down clearly to help keep things clear and consistent, which would not even have been unprecedented at the time)

Also Jesus: no need to wash your hands if you give to the poor you hypocrites, what goes in the mouth comes out of the body!

1800 years later: humans finally develop the germ theory of disease and can stop dying of easily preventable illnesses

I agree, but I don’t think your point refutes mine. See my sibling comment.

> Especially since Christianity tends to downplay ritual and effort-based holiness, comparatively speaking.

This sounds like a rather Protestant-centric viewpoint.

Even for Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians compared to other major religions.

Non-protestants are still rather light on compulsory behavior on the whole. Compare to orthodox branches of other major religions. No particular rules on clothing, cleanliness, charity, gender separation, pilgrimages, prayer times, need to attain spiritual states, etc. No karma to optimize. No hidden knowledge to uncover.

Some churches eat a bit of cracker and juice/wine on a regular basis. Some get a person wet as a one time initiation ceremony. That's pretty light ritual on the whole.

And while various High Mass clothes and rituals are certainly there, there's no particular requirement of parishioners to give one, attend any particular mass, or even attend a minimum number of them.

I still might debate the role of ritual in Catholicism, Eastern & Oriental Orthodoxy,

> No karma to optimize

but I actually had the more karmic things in mind, i.e the importance of Works vs importance of Faith, which certainly does vary between different Christian sects.

> No hidden knowledge to uncover.

There are gnostic types of things. If perhaps less so today than in the Renaissance. But it's not as if it's absent.

So I still think this is a rather Protestant perspective.

Edit to say: Also, in fact even or perhaps even especially, Protestants were engaged in gnosticism/Christian mysticism in the Renaissance period.

But my point is that, comparatively speaking "behave like a faithful person" is a fairly open ended assignment compared to attaining nirvana, circumcision, forgoing beef, or literally earning one's way into paradise.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com