I’m reminded of a friend’s defense of political conservatism. He said, “True, lots of conservatives are hypocrites, but at least they actually have moral principles to violate.”

Take fornication. I grew up in churches that preached against pre-marital sex. I’ve read the Bible and know what it says on the matter. I can find adequate non-religious reasons why reducing the amount of sex (or sex partners) can be wise. And yet, I really really want to have sex. Like I really do!

I also know that it is not so much sex, or anything else, but rather the tendency of many things we do to become God substitutes, and our masters. I am reminded of a friend of mine who really enjoys sex (fine in itself), but that hunger crowds out both more productive endeavors and safe habits. On a non-religious level she knows her actions are not healthy, but also, on a non-religious level, she has few tools to deal with her own behavior. And I worry about her (but also, want to have sex with her!)

I can walk around feeling good that I have followed say, the NO fornication thing in the Bible, while not realizing that I am a glutton and selfish (and further, that my level of gluttony has made me chunkier, and less attractive to the types of women I would have a hard type sexually resisting. So, in essence, I am falsely proud of my ability to resist temptations that never even come my way). I am a hypocrite. I see Satan over there (peaking from the lovely cleavage of some woman) and don’t realize he is right here inside my Wendy’s bacon cheeseburger, which I cannot resist. That lack of ability to resist makes me less functional to God, and to my fellows. There is a time for sex, and for fun, as we are human, and biological, but there is also a time for serious matters, which, present habits inforced, I will have an inability to embrace. My last dime and time will go for a meal at The French Laundry, instead of for helping my niece pay for an extra college application or three.

In the end the primary purpose of Christianity is to bring people back to a theoretical God and show love, and that’s what you should be seeing in Christians of any depth. There will always be times where you will see hypocrisy–the Christian guy who drags you to his church, then tries to get you into bed after- as Christians are attempting to deal with all those areas where we are flawed. But in the process, one should at least see a level of love being shown.

All men are flawed and have done evil in the world through history, but the question to ask is has Christianity, or the people professing the faith, done any good.

(Additionally, I don’t think one can make an argument for “faith” in general, or for “religion”, as though all faiths or all religions carry a level of equality. I tend to believe most religion is a variation on one truth, but functions much like the game where people whisper a message from one to another, and by the time the last has heard the message, it has profoundly changed, for people along the way deliberately or accidentally distort it. In some cases the message heard is something authentic and worthwhile, and in other cases, the message has been rendered useless).

All the same, I think it’s justified in some cases. Plenty of people cloak themselves in faith but don’t actually practice what they preach. (This describes every single religious person I’ve gotten to know.) It can mean adhering closely to the showier forms of religious observance (keeping kosher, wearing a yarmulke, going to church every week, trying to convert everyone around them) but violating all the inconvenient rules in private. The most outwardly pious person I’ve ever met has had pre-marital sex, an explicit violation of her religion. She didn’t lose much sleep over it, either. At the time of this “transgression,” she was growing ever more religious. Quite a mystery to me.

I’ve known people amazingly well read in religious texts, people who pray in public like there’s no tomorrow, people who nevertheless run afoul of simple prohibitions like “Do not do unto others what is hateful to you.” So maybe there’s a disconnect in their minds, but I’d prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt: They know perfectly well what they’re doing — and that there won’t be any divine retribution.

All the same, I think it’s applicable in some cases. Lots of people cloak themselves in faith but don’t actually practice what they preach. (This describes every single religious person I’ve gotten to know.) It can mean adhering closely to the showier forms of religious observance (keeping kosher, wearing a yarmulke, going to church every week, trying to convert everyone around them) but violating all the inconvenient rules in private. The most outwardly pious person I’ve ever met had pre-marital sex, an explicit violation of her religion. She didn’t lose much sleep over it, either. At the time of this “transgression,” she was growing ever more religious. Quite a mystery to me.

I’ve known people amazingly well-read in religious texts, people who pray in public like there’s no tomorrow, who nevertheless run afoul of simple prohibitions like “Do not do unto others what is hateful to you.” So maybe there’s a disconnect in their minds, but I’d prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt: They know perfectly well what they’re doing, and they know there won’t be any divine retribution.

Let us nonbelievers drop this one, for a few reasons:
A) You have no more evidence for your suppositions about a believer’s internal mental state than believers do for the existence of God.
B) As a rhetorical matter, this sounds horribly arrogant and immediately discredits the speaker to those who do sincerely believe, or at least sincerely believe that they sincerely believe.
C) The believer’s converse of this is really annoying — when believers claim nonbelievers “really do believe in the hearts, but they convince themselves that they don’t so they can enjoy sinful (sex/drugs/rock ‘n roll) without being wracked with guilt.”

But since all of the above is futile, I’ll say instead that one thing I wish evangelical atheists would stop doing is writing as if they are intimately familiar with religious history while they demonstrate instead a completely unsophisticated and uninformed idea of what religious behavior actually is and has historically been–especially as a core of their argument is that religious people are stupid. If you’re laughing at me as a theist, I as a prof. of medieval history am laughing at your metanarratives and flat misunderstanding of history, straight out of the History Channel. Yup, those “spats between church and monarchy” that offered a choice between sacred and secular authority! Yup, Christians forced into the priesthood and who were anti-thought, retarding technological and medical progress!

One of my favorite moments in Sam Harris’s *End of Faith* is when, amid blathering on and on about the need for “facts” and “evidence,” he repeats twice a blazing factual error about the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Oh, but we already “know” that Christianity in the Middle Ages was all about superstition and hostility to experimental science and punishing people for free thought, right?–because that’s what we learned in high school or what some popular polemicist tells us–so we needn’t bother pursuing further.

(I’m entertained by atheists who arrogantly attack the intelligence of theists while they are under the impression that the plural of “dictum” is “dictums.” But I suppose demeaning those empty centuries without progress means that you don’t bother to learn Latin.)

Please, please, please, get a more sophisticated knowledge of religious history before you embark upon arguments against “religion.” Anyone, Jew or otherwise, should know that there was a precise historical context that gave the ancient Hebrews “you shall have no other gods before me.” It was *not* designed to get rid of rational doubt, in the Hebrews or in future Jews and Christians. It reflected anxiety about Hebrew participation in neighboring Palestinian cults (e.g. those of Ba’al and Ashtarte) in the fervent context of identity- and nation-formation during the early, chaotic days of YHWH cult and Israelite communities. Now, you might not like the fact that some people at certain points, including now, use such a Biblical statement to stop discussion (this in itself demands a great deal of nuance). But don’t try to pass off this ahistorical generalization (”religions do this…”) as if it’s a historical or conceptual truism.

I could complain similarly about Todd’s distillation of “spats,” but I won’t bother. Suffice it to say that bland “religion does X,” “religion thinks this” “religion has done this in history” statements are unpersuasive unless you know what you’re talking about. Sam Harris, for example, knows *nothing* about the complexities of religious history or of religion today. He makes colossal generalizations garnered from seeing Islamic and Christian fundamentalists on tv (e.g. “religion means accepting a dogmatic text as true”) and explodes it into what he thinks is an incisive destruction of “faith.” But these generalizations are unbelievably flat, without nuance, without accuracy, without historical knowledge, without familiarity with how religious persons and communities actually operate. As a religious historian, I’ll say that not a single supposed criticism of *religion* (as distinct from theism), including those here, has persuaded me of its proponent’s knowledge or insight. I suppose a by-product of thinking something is stupid is not really needing to attend to its dynamism very closely, but all you do is weaken your own position when you’re seeking to attack from a position of putative intellectual authority.

I don’t give a rat’s ass whether you believe in God or not…but you are all on much firmer ground if you stick to your theoretical arguments re: the existence of God, and don’t slide into the much more difficult critique of “religion.”

I’ll concede Dave’s point about Jews emphasizing written and oral teachings to the extent that the “god or no god” question often takes a back seat. But I challenge his implication that daily Talmud/Mishna and Torah study, along with hours of regimented prayer meant to serve as conversation with a god, has any value its own merits. In the absence of a god, one gleans nothing useful from these texts. (”Who is rich? He who is happy with what he has.” Move over, W.B. Yeats.)
Certainly, prayer without a god is a ridiculous joke and a waste of time.

I spent ten years in an institution of religious orthodoxy, so I can speak on these themes with some experience. Most of the religious teachings that don’t address the rituals of Judaism have, instead, the aim of driving home morals (e.g. do until others). Respect for the rights of others is a noble thing, but religious teachings try to instill this moral by appealing to self-interest in the most pathetic way. There’s always the story of someone doing something, supposedly thanklessly, and then begin “surprised” by a huge reward. And of course implicit in Judaism, as in all religions that I know of, is the expectation of the mother-of-all-rewards at the end of a life properly lead. To summarize: Wishful thinking, unrealistic expectations and a general feeling of moral superiority do not a good belief system make.

For centuries, the brightest Jews on Earth slaved over the Mishna, Talmud and Torah. They grappled with such crucial topics as daily prayer rituals, the “purity” of women, the sinfulness of certain food, and the precise constitution of forbidden work on the weekly day of rest. Often they disagreed, and they responded to each other with finely tuned arguments.

One of the great tragedies of the human race has been the decision to funnel its most promising scholars into such narrow, unproductive professions — Jews into the rabbinate, Christians into the priesthood. It is difficult to fathom the extent of medical, technological and artistic progress retarded during centuries spent contemplating this drivel. Christians, at least, encouraged music and art for the glorification of the divine. Otherwise the faith-blinded genius would have very few productive outlets at all.

There are Jews who do NOT believe in God - Reform judiasm, for example, views belief in God as optional - who believe the Talmud has value for guidance and wisdom. Since the existance of God is not necessary for adherance to the religon - both orthodox and reform Jews succesfully exist under a premise of studying the Torah, one with God, one without - Contemplating God’s existence is an activity for outside the realm of the religion. Conservative Judiasm has rested on WHAT is the meaning of the Talmud and how can this tradition be applied. It assumes that the existance of God is not provable through debate or observation - which is true for both the faithful and those who don’t believe in God. They’re taking one side, but acquesing that rational men have been making this debate for many more lifetimes than a single one, so choose to move beyond this single point which has not been settled.

Saying that you “just know” that the only conscious and active agent in the universe is limited the level of human consciousness is an act of faith itself. By definition, you would not be aware of such a thing!

Is a discussion on whether there is plant-like life on a specific planet one billion light years away from earth rational? If so state your case, cause I want to know.

But go ahead. Point to the beliefs of Fundamentalist Christians as evidence that Judiasm believes in a literal interpretation of the English translation of the bible. Point to Muslim extremists as evidence that Christianity believes in suicide bombing.