I return to intervene as an old philosophy graduate, mostly because - after more than a month since it was published - I still haven't understood what the ultimate aim of this thread is (except to slander a faith that has now been reduced to its lowest terms). , and secondly because certain judgments on Christianity seem to me even more dogmatic than what the faithful of this belief have expressed in the past.
Let me start by saying that I am a Christian by baptism and family tradition, but not practicing and with very little or no faith. I have no particular sympathy for the Church, especially for its political interference (I'm from Romagna and anyone who chews a bit of medieval and modern history knows what I'm talking about), and I hate what it has done with regards to fine minds like Giordano Bruno and Galileo.
But be very careful not to throw the baby away with the bathwater.
In the meantime, we should understand what is most annoying about Christianity here: whether it is its precepts/morals or the fact that some Christians "believe" in the scriptures, calling them fools compared to those who follow science.
On morality, it seems to me that the issue is now a non-problem. For a long time now, the West has no longer followed any Christian/biblical morality, and has instead constantly demonstrated amorality - not to say depravity - at all levels. The 10 commandments seem to mirror the current daily behavior of the average Westerner. (Also in this regard, I don't intend to teach anyone anything: I consider myself a textbook sinner in all respects).
Regarding the fact that some persist in reading the Bible and/or believing in it, I would say that among them today almost no one of average education - with the exception of some minority, fanatical or hyper-conservative groups on which constant cherry-picking is applied - does so by approaching it with an absolutely literal interpretation.
Even if memes and the media want us to believe otherwise, I would like to hope that the very secular and casual West will be able to understand once and for all that a text like this (like all religious texts) must be contextualized historically, and read through a tight allegorical exegesis (I point out that it is the Christians themselves who equip themselves with these tools, given that the debate had already arisen in the first centuries of the common era; while in our times it is almost easier to find among the critics of Christianity those who claim to use the Bible in the literal sense). If anyone is interested in these issues, relating to a reasoned biblical interpretation, find some studies by Pierre Grelot.
I believe that very few in the Western world today uncritically adopt the Bible as a scientific text, to recover scientific theories or data. This was a note that could have been addressed to the faithful (and not even all) of a few centuries ago; now it seems to me to arrive gratuitously and quite out of time, with the intention of somewhat artfully creating a fence between faith and science, making the former seem completely obstructive compared to the latter. Be careful about calling Christians idiots or giving poor IQ scores. This boundary between faith and science, as proven by facts, has been much more fluid and permeable than we are willing to admit (just take a look at the list of first-rate scientists who were also religious to disprove such an assumption I doubt they were all indoctrinated idiots. Google it and you will find tasty surprises: here is a first list relating to the Catholic field
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_clergy_scientists ).
But in any case, even if science and faith have stepped on each other's toes for centuries and continue to do so, their respective ultimate contents and objects of study remain largely very different, it never hurts to reiterate this. If some naive Christians have not understood it, even many atheist scientists, conversely, are not joking.
"The Bible teaches how to go to Heaven. Science how heaven works." It's a dated joke attributed to Galileo, who probably heard it in turn from Cardinal Baronio, but it doesn't get old: old but gold.
If we wanted to talk about it in purely philosophical/Aristostelian terms, science is currently able to identify the material and efficient causes of nature and reality (what a reality is "made" of and how it is born/arises). The formal causes (i.e. the profound and original essence, unless the mathematical modeling that the physics of nature does can be equated with finding them) and the final causes (what reality is ultimately used for) escape it. Science and religion generally converge their attention on these points. Why there is being and not nothingness is the ultimate question that has held the human mind in check for millennia, whether we want to use reason or not.
But here too I would like to hope that, after a giant of thought or as Kant was in the end of the 18th century, it was clear both to the faithful and to the most convinced scientists and rationalists, that what escapes a space-time categorization (Soul, World and God, the nodes of both metaphysics and religion), it cannot be the object of rational demonstration and therefore become the object of science.
Therefore, if the believer cannot affirm anything about the existence of metaphysical objects rationally, neither can the iron rationalist. Indeed, I would say that the atheist - if he wanted to be fully honest with himself and not self-contradictory - should exercise prudent skepticism here, and also abstain from judging the existence of God, under penalty of wanting to ascribe to himself a type of demonstration that our epistemological and rational faculties cannot cope.
Now if human rationality has its limits and if Humanity, for millennia, has almost always felt the need for a prop to give a profound meaning to itself and to the world, it is not as if there is much else left outside of religion and of faith. Which is certainly to be criticized and condemned when it is used ideologically, forcibly political and persecutory towards other communities or individuals. But it cannot be suppressed on an intimate and personal level.
You ask yourselves why these anthropological elaborations that smack of myths and fairy tales continue to exist. Let's not beat around the bush too much: no one is happy to imagine themselves transient and thrown randomly into existence. Subconsciously we almost always harbor a hope that our earthly adventure will not end in a memorial stone under which to rot. These are questions that pop into our heads either when we begin to glimpse our end, or when we are in a desperate situation, with which we measure our finiteness. Someone said there are no atheists on a crashing plane.
You ask why people believe (stupidly?) in a presumed and imaginary benevolent and transcendent God, despite the evil that afflicts and weakens the world. I would turn the question around: it is precisely because Humanity experiences evil that it develops a religion, either to find comfort with respect to the pain it feels in the face of misfortunes and injustices, or because it is hoped that these negative events, in the economy of existence , happen according to a superior logic and with a purpose that we cannot understand, but which justifies our suffering (the famous "Providence", which is not just a fantasy or a Christian whim, but something already discussed by the thinkers of Classical times , especially by the Stoics).
Having said this, and regardless of whether one is a believer or not, why do I believe that Christianity should be recognized as having some merits (despite all its limitations, because it is the result of human development)? For at least three points:
- it has effectively focused on and spread the ethics of reciprocity, that is, love/respect for oneself and others, more than any other system. What we would like done to us, we should do to others (Mt 7, 12). A moral rule already present in other philosophical and cultural systems, even older ones, but no longer expressed only in a negative key, but rather positively and proactively. I believe that even a non-believer can accept what is in fact a cornerstone of normal civil life;
- it highlighted the distinction/separation between the religious sphere and the temporal sphere with the famous «Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's» (Mt 22, 21; Mk 12,17; Lk 20,25). One could object that the Church has done something completely different in history: correct, but this falls within the aspects to be execrated in which religion is reconverted by its officials to a political instrument and in any case represents a failure to fulfill a precept given by its founder (the mess is caused not by the Christian message as such, but by its lack of and opposite application);
- as long as we try to consider it intrusive and alien compared to the indigenous European culture, and as much as I myself recognize that it has had some negative or disruptive effects compared to previous civilisations, Christianity has also given a lot, and the connection with this that Europe is as we know it now is inextricable (by the way, this applies to all religions, but here perhaps even more so: religion survives because it often becomes an ethnic marker that distinguishes the identity of those who profess it). At a biblical level there are parts that are universal literary masterpieces (see the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes). But it is mainly to Christianity and its medieval monks that we owe a large part of the preservation of the literary heritage of Antiquity. The biblical-Christian contents are in fact the inspirational ideas for much of medieval and modern European art. A Europe without the skyline of its basilicas and cathedrals, without the Divine Comedy, without the Sistine Chapel, the Last Judgment or Michelangelo's Pietà, without Bach's masses and chorales, would be a rather squalid and insignificant place.
I would therefore urge caution among those who want to get rid of Christianity and eradicate it from the Old Continent. Precisely because you see parallels with the collapse of ancient civilizations, remember that Christianity took over not so much by virtue of its initial cultural and conceptual scope (in the end it is a sort of vulgarised Platonism/Neo-Platonism), but because it found fertile ground there, with a population who no longer found satisfaction in previous cults. For someone it was a good thing, for others a terrible misfortune or an involution.
What is certain is that a void is almost always filled by something else. One thinks of beginning the age of full Reason, then perhaps he will have to deal with something more bigoted than what he has abandoned.
The history of art has shown us that this is exactly the way Christians imagine their god - an old bearded guy in the sky inspired from Zeus/Jupiter. Modern Christians now tend to reject this image because it is laughable even to them, so they copied Muslims and now usually claim that god cannot be represented. Nevertheless all the teachings and qualities (character, moral values, knowledge of the world, etc.) of that god are still ridiculously outdated - clearly the work of Bronze Age and Iron Age minds.
). Contrarily to what fundamentalist Christians will tell you, evolution is not a 'belief', but a fact. Usually the same people who claim that always believe that Earth is flat (because dixit the Bible).