Yeah, perhaps they’re straw men. There seems to be a bit of a shortage of non-straw defenders of (serious) religion, though. I mean, there are the fundamentalists and the young-earthers and such—I’m focusing on Christianity because that’s the religion I know best; maybe things are different with other religions—who are (sometimes) clear and (usually) forceful but also obviously wrong. And there are the woolly liberal types who mostly refrain from saying anything too testable.
Unless a religion is simply going to degenerate into power-worship, you can’t just say “no fair applying ethical standards to God”. If you believe in a god whose behaviour fits my notions of psychopathic evil, then I’m not going to be interested in worshipping him, and I decline to regard that as a cognitive failing. (Of course some actions might be almost always wrong when done by humans but sometimes right when done by God. But that’s an argument that actually needs making in each case. For that matter, some actions might be almost always wrong when done by you but sometimes right when done by me, but if I murder your spouse or smash your house with a wrecking ball then you’re going to insist on some actual evidence before believing that I had mysterious sufficient reasons.)
Why single that episode out as factual? Well, firstly I’m not sure anyone is doing. Factual or not, the story is presumably there for a reason and is meant to be taken seriously one way or another. Secondly, there’s the little fact of its being the story behind possibly the single most important of all Jewish religious festivals, and one of the founding myths of the Jewish people, and also something appropriated in a big way (albeit metaphorically) by Christianity. So if what’s at the centre of the story is an act of atrocious evil by the supposedly good God who’s the hero of the story, it seems like that might be worth noticing.
(And, really. What a story. God visits all these horrors (culminating in the death of every firstborn) on the Egyptians, most of whom didn’t have anything to do with the Israelites’ woes. Why does he have to do these things? Because nasty mean Pharaoh won’t Let My People Go. And why won’t he? Well, er, because “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart”. Splendid. What a fine moral example for us all.)
I don’t know what evidence Eliezer has for how the Bible (the OT in particular) used to be used.
Your last paragraph is puzzling. If the alleged principle is that “people can be unbiased” then the response is that no one at all is claiming any such thing, so it doesn’t seem like making that parallel with “the biblical account could be true” is any use to you. But if it’s that “bias can be reduced” then you’ve offered no evidence against it, whereas there is in fact ample evidence that “the Biblical account” is not true.
And it’s not a matter of proof, but of evidence; not a matter of possibility (as in “the biblical account could be true”) but of probability. You appear to be offering an argument that something can be possible even though there’s a bit of evidence against it. Well, yes, obviously, but Eliezer isn’t saying (and neither am I) that Orthodox Judaism or not-outrageously-liberal Christianity is impossible because there’s some evidence against it; but that it’s very improbable because there’s lots of evidence against it.
Yeah, perhaps they’re straw men. There seems to be a bit of a shortage of non-straw defenders of (serious) religion, though. I mean, there are the fundamentalists and the young-earthers and such—I’m focusing on Christianity because that’s the religion I know best; maybe things are different with other religions—who are (sometimes) clear and (usually) forceful but also obviously wrong. And there are the woolly liberal types who mostly refrain from saying anything too testable.
Unless a religion is simply going to degenerate into power-worship, you can’t just say “no fair applying ethical standards to God”. If you believe in a god whose behaviour fits my notions of psychopathic evil, then I’m not going to be interested in worshipping him, and I decline to regard that as a cognitive failing. (Of course some actions might be almost always wrong when done by humans but sometimes right when done by God. But that’s an argument that actually needs making in each case. For that matter, some actions might be almost always wrong when done by you but sometimes right when done by me, but if I murder your spouse or smash your house with a wrecking ball then you’re going to insist on some actual evidence before believing that I had mysterious sufficient reasons.)
Why single that episode out as factual? Well, firstly I’m not sure anyone is doing. Factual or not, the story is presumably there for a reason and is meant to be taken seriously one way or another. Secondly, there’s the little fact of its being the story behind possibly the single most important of all Jewish religious festivals, and one of the founding myths of the Jewish people, and also something appropriated in a big way (albeit metaphorically) by Christianity. So if what’s at the centre of the story is an act of atrocious evil by the supposedly good God who’s the hero of the story, it seems like that might be worth noticing.
(And, really. What a story. God visits all these horrors (culminating in the death of every firstborn) on the Egyptians, most of whom didn’t have anything to do with the Israelites’ woes. Why does he have to do these things? Because nasty mean Pharaoh won’t Let My People Go. And why won’t he? Well, er, because “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart”. Splendid. What a fine moral example for us all.)
I don’t know what evidence Eliezer has for how the Bible (the OT in particular) used to be used.
Your last paragraph is puzzling. If the alleged principle is that “people can be unbiased” then the response is that no one at all is claiming any such thing, so it doesn’t seem like making that parallel with “the biblical account could be true” is any use to you. But if it’s that “bias can be reduced” then you’ve offered no evidence against it, whereas there is in fact ample evidence that “the Biblical account” is not true.
And it’s not a matter of proof, but of evidence; not a matter of possibility (as in “the biblical account could be true”) but of probability. You appear to be offering an argument that something can be possible even though there’s a bit of evidence against it. Well, yes, obviously, but Eliezer isn’t saying (and neither am I) that Orthodox Judaism or not-outrageously-liberal Christianity is impossible because there’s some evidence against it; but that it’s very improbable because there’s lots of evidence against it.