richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion
TII 1- ' G O O D ' B O O K A N D T H E M O R A L Z E I T G E I S T 257falls into one's power, one transgresses a negative commandment,as it is said: Thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth.'Unlike Maimonides, the children in Tamarin's experiment wereyoung enough to be innocent. Presumably the savage views theyexpressed were those of their parents, or the cultural group inwhich they were brought up. It is, I suppose, not unlikely thatPalestinian children, brought up in the same war-torn country,would offer equivalent opinions in the opposite direction. Theseconsiderations fill me with despair. They seem to show the immensepower of religion, and especially the religious upbringing ofchildren, to divide people and foster historic enmities andhereditary vendettas. I cannot help remarking that two out ofTamarin's three representative quotations from group A mentionedthe evils of assimilation, while the third one stressed the importanceof killing people in order to stamp out their religion.Tamarin ran a fascinating control group in his experiment. Adifferent group of 168 Israeli children were given the same textfrom the book of Joshua, but with Joshua's own name replaced by'General Lin' and 'Israel' replaced by 'a Chinese kingdom 3,000years ago'. Now the experiment gave opposite results. Only 7 percent approved of General Lin's behaviour, and 75 per cent disapproved.In other words, when their loyalty to Judaism wasremoved from the calculation, the majority of the children agreedwith the moral judgements that most modern humans would share.Joshua's action was a deed of barbaric genocide. But it all looksdifferent from a religious point of view. And the difference startsearly in life. It was religion that made the difference betweenchildren condemning genocide and condoning it.In the latter half of Hartung's paper, he moves on to the NewTestament. To give a brief summary of his thesis, Jesus was adevotee of the same in-group morality - coupled with out-grouphostility - that was taken for granted in the Old Testament. Jesuswas a loyal Jew. It was Paul who invented the idea of taking theJewish God to the Gentiles. Hartung puts it more bluntly than Idare: 'Jesus would have turned over in his grave if he had knownthat Paul would be taking his plan to the pigs.'Hartung has some good fun with the book of Revelation, whichis certainly one of the weirdest books in the Bible. It is supposed to
258 T H !• (i O 1> l> K I U S I O Nhave been written by St John and, as Ken's Guide to the Bibleneatly put it, if his epistles can be seen as John on pot, thenRevelation is John on acid. 100 Hartung draws attention to the twoverses in Revelation where the number of those 'sealed' (whichsome sects, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, interpret to mean'saved') is limited to 144,000. Hartung's point is that they all hadto be Jews: 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes. Ken Smith goesfurther, pointing out that the 144,000 elect 'did not defile themselveswith women', which presumably means that none of themcould be women. Well, that's the sort of thing we've come toexpect.There's a lot more in Hartung's entertaining paper. I shall simplyrecommend it once more, and summarize it in a quotation:The Bible is a blueprint of in-group morality, completewith instructions for genocide, enslavement of out-groups,and world domination. But the Bible is not evil by virtueof its objectives or even its glorification of murder, cruelty,and rape. Many ancient works do that - The Iliad, theIcelandic Sagas, the tales of the ancient Syrians andthe inscriptions of the ancient Mayans, for example. Butno one is selling the Iliad as a foundation for morality.Therein lies the problem. The Bible is sold, and bought, asa guide to how people should live their lives. And it is, byfar, the world's all-time best seller.Lest it be thought that the exclusiveness of traditional Judaismis unique among religions, look at the following confident versefrom a hymn by Isaac Watts (1674-1748):Lord, I ascribe it to Thy Grace,And not to chance, as others do,That I was born of Christian RaceAnd not a Heathen or a Jew.What puzzles me about this verse is not the exclusiveness per se butthe logic. Since plenty of others were born into religions other thanChristianity, how did God decide which future people should
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258 T H !• (i O 1> l> K I U S I O N
have been written by St John and, as Ken's Guide to the Bible
neatly put it, if his epistles can be seen as John on pot, then
Revelation is John on acid. 100 Hartung draws attention to the two
verses in Revelation where the number of those 'sealed' (which
some sects, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, interpret to mean
'saved') is limited to 144,000. Hartung's point is that they all had
to be Jews: 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes. Ken Smith goes
further, pointing out that the 144,000 elect 'did not defile themselves
with women', which presumably means that none of them
could be women. Well, that's the sort of thing we've come to
expect.
There's a lot more in Hartung's entertaining paper. I shall simply
recommend it once more, and summarize it in a quotation:
The Bible is a blueprint of in-group morality, complete
with instructions for genocide, enslavement of out-groups,
and world domination. But the Bible is not evil by virtue
of its objectives or even its glorification of murder, cruelty,
and rape. Many ancient works do that - The Iliad, the
Icelandic Sagas, the tales of the ancient Syrians and
the inscriptions of the ancient Mayans, for example. But
no one is selling the Iliad as a foundation for morality.
Therein lies the problem. The Bible is sold, and bought, as
a guide to how people should live their lives. And it is, by
far, the world's all-time best seller.
Lest it be thought that the exclusiveness of traditional Judaism
is unique among religions, look at the following confident verse
from a hymn by Isaac Watts (1674-1748):
Lord, I ascribe it to Thy Grace,
And not to chance, as others do,
That I was born of Christian Race
And not a Heathen or a Jew.
What puzzles me about this verse is not the exclusiveness per se but
the logic. Since plenty of others were born into religions other than
Christianity, how did God decide which future people should
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