Your track record here seems to be a long chain of asserting thing without proof, claiming things suggest the opposite of what they actually do, and getting things basically wrong.
The UK has become a less religious society over the last 100 years. I’d say in that time it’s become a more tolerant and less judgemental society. I think you’re suffering from a bit of decency bias. I’m not sure there is generally more crime today.
The burden you seem to want to place on atheism is the eradication of crime. That’s obviously impossible. Crime happens for a variety of reasons (usually poverty). But if you want to talk about the really nasty stuff - genocides, persecutions, wars, crusades and industrial scale abuse, more often than not you’ll find religion behind it.
My view has always been that if you want to judge the morality of an organised religion, judge it when it has the power to act how wants, not how it is forced to behave by the restraining influence of secular society.
British Christianity was a lot more like the Westborough Baptists when it had real power.
The last Pope’s brother admitted to hitting the kids about a bit at choir school. He also said he had to stop it once Bavarian law outlawed the practice. So that’s the secular bringing morality to the church. If the church doesn’t know what’s moral, what is it for?
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach [them], the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
Doesn’t this mean that the Law, the Torah must still apply to Christians?
Thank God for the great pioneers of the scientific revolution - Copernicus, Kepler, Pascal, Newton - all educated in church sponsored universities.
Several have referenced the Big Bang in the thread. Thank God for Father Georges Lemaitre, catholic priest and professor of physics. He wrote a paper in 1927 called, ‘A homogenous universe of constant mass and growing radius accounting for the radical velocity of extragalactic nebulae.’ (Not the most snappy title, granted). Within the paper he derived what came to be known as Hubble’s Law and estimated a value for Hubble’s constant.
Edwin Hubble, whose name is most associated with the equations of the Big Bang theory, published his work two years after Lemaitre.
(Confession, in my undergrad days I read theology at a solid red brick University in England. Doesn’t make me more or less worthy of a contribution in here, but in matters of hermeneutics with regard to how we read the Bible, the thread is disastrous. Everyone seems to want to be a literalist, when it contains poetry, wisdom, history, and so on. It is a collection of 66 books, written over a period of approximately 1500 years, or 500-600 years if you follow the post-exilic line of scholarship about the time of writing of the Bible).
Anyway, the question in hand, does the Law, Torah, apply to Christians?
No, it does not. Not in the same authoritative sense as the New Testament. The Law is a different covenant for a different group of people, at a different time and place in history.
Jesus came to finish the Law, or complete it. That’s what the Greek Word plerosai, which Jesus uses in the quotation you give, means.
So, by his coming, Jesus announces to the whole world, the Law is now ended. It’s over. Complete. Finished. It’s a new day. (By the way, this is a significant reason why the religious authorities of the day wanted to kill him from early on. They had a very lucrative thing going on, with the temple tax, and their whole enterprise was in jeopardy at the emergence of Jesus).
Jesus ended the OT Law. In addition to Jesus himself saying that’s why he came, other Bible references to back this up would include the following:
Romans 10:4 says Christ is the end of the Law.
Galatians 3:22-23 talks about people being imprisoned by the Law until faith in Jesus was revealed.
Ephesians 2:15 talks about how the Law was abolished, through Christ.
So if the Law ended when Jesus came, what came next?
We need to remember that Jesus said, “A new command I give you…”
The Church is, literally, directly responsible for murder and persecution of numbers untold, destruction, war and many more abhorrent things. The followers of the Church are, literally, directly responsible for the same. All in the name of said book that, apparently, shouldn’t be taken literally. Must be quite the comfort for all those who were the victim of those who should not have taken it literally to know they shouldn’t have, I suppose.
We do agree on the UK becoming a less religious society in the last 100 yrs. Much less religious.
Beyond that, it appears to you that I want to place the burden of eradication of crime onto atheists.
To clarify, I do not.
Crime will never be eradicated, and there will always be people who do awful things, whether on a small scale or a large industrial scale like Stalin. I previously said this atheist was responsible for 9 million deaths, although some historians would go as high as 20 million. Quite industrial.
Stalin tried to eradicate religion from the USSR. Charming fella.
I am quite willing to concede that both the religious and irreligious have committed numerous transgressions, crimes and atrocities, throughout history. That should be clear to everyone.
The crime rate in the UK has dramatically fallen over the last 30 years.
There are numerous theories as to why - these are just some. I am sure there are many more.
It is more difficult to commit crime following the advent of DNA evidence and CCTV - so the criminals have realised that it is a far riskier proposition to commit offences.
Greater education regarding ethical treatment of others within schools.
Following the banning of corporal punishment violence is no longer an accepted or learnt way to resolve disputes/ issues.
And the most controversial theory is that with the rise and acceptance of abortion, fewer children were born into households at the highest risk of offending.
Another reason I believe is that with the thankful demise of religion people have no mythical excuses to cling to - people now realise that they will not be forgiven in some fantasy afterlife and therefore act in a more ethical and just manner in the only life they are going to get.
You often hear God botherers asking “If you dont believe where do you get your morals from?”
If you lived 50,000 years ago and say your tribe came under attack, is it better to assist and help members of your tribe or allow them to perish? For the benefit of your tribe and the continuation of your genetic material it is better to cooperate, assist, encourage and develop systems ( medicine, nursing, defense, food security etc ) to ensure the welfare of your tribe. That is where “morals” formed and developed.
Yes, it is controversial to suggest that abortion reduces crime. The usual religious perspective is that life is very precious indeed, and should be protected, whether in utero or after birth.
It would not be too strong to say that many people of a religious persuasion consider abortion to be a barbaric act of killing a person, albeit at a very early stage of development, whether embryo, fetus or baby. Most religious people I know would say it is inhumane to treat the most vulnerable in this way.
On this issue, by and large, the moral compass of the religious and irreligious is poles apart. The religious person would talk about how life is precious and should be protected and cherished. The irreligious person would dehumanize the person in the womb and make the whole thing about the mother’s rights, with no consideration of the rights of the life she carries.
That’s generalization. There are plenty of religious people who still would be for abortion and I know atheists who consider that the unborn fetus should be protected. It’s definitely not as easy as that.
