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Sunday, May 29, 2016

In the name of Jesus

To the Socialist Party, the question whether there existed an historical Jesus of the Gospels is hardly a burning question. Some believe in the physical existence of Jesus but far fewer people believe in the Christ part nowadays so there is some sign of progress. There is nothing inherently improbable in the collection of ancient myths around an historical personage and the attribution to him of the magic commonly believed in at the time. The non-historicity of Christ remains in the realms of the “may have been”, the “probable” and the “perhaps”.

It has long been acknowledged by Christian theologians, and by anyone else who cares to study the evidence, that the Bible does not give a coherent account of the life and sayings of Jesus. There are just too many contradictions and inconsistencies within and between the various books which make up the New Testament. Not only that, many of the historical and geographical references involving Jesus are not confirmed by modern scholarship. For instance, the earliest known archaeological record for the existence of Nazareth in Palestinian Galilee dates from no earlier than the third century AD, which undermines the case for a “Jesus of Nazareth.” The Jesus story may derive ultimately from the life of a first-century itinerant Galilean preacher, but to separate out such authentic material from the mass of unhistorical narratives is a well-nigh hopeless task.  Saying that there is no historical evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ is not the same as saying that no person called Jesus existed. For all we know – for all anybody knows – there may well have been at least one itinerant Jewish preacher in Galilee some two thousand years ago who called himself Jesus.

Christianity is patently untrue. Its basic premise—that an all-powerful god who had created the universe caused a virgin to have a son by him who became a religious preacher and miracle-worker in an obscure border area of the Roman empire, was killed and then rose from the dead and eventually ascended into the sky and disappeared—is not only ridiculous but also biologically and physically impossible. It just never happened. It is not a matter of great importance whether or not there was an “historical Jesus” since if there was he would not have been the “Son of God”. And he wouldn't have walked on water, turned water into wine or raised the dead either.

At the birth of Christianity men not only longed for a new structure of society, for peace, justice, and happiness on earth, but they trembled at the expectation of the early occurrence of world-wide catastrophe which would put a terrible end to all existence. In the New Testament Jesus is often reported as saying that the world is about to end and that the end will come in the lifetime of his listeners (Matthew 4,17; 10,23; 16,28; 24,34). This is why he advocated giving away personal possessions, and forms the basis of the myth that Jesus was an early socialist. We agree that what evidence there is seems to show that the first Christians practised a form of what Kautsky in his Foundations of Christianity called “a communism in articles of consumption”, but it also shows that they were more interested in the world “to come”, which they believed to be imminent, than in changing the corrupt (as they saw it) world in which they lived.

Many defenders of the Enlightenment tradition of respect for reason and evidence against its traditional foe, religion. But they see nothing wrong with capitalism. Socialists share in the Enlightenment inheritance but recognise that the main source of irrationality in the modern world is to be found in the capitalist system of society. For socialists, therefore, the struggle against religion cannot be separated from the struggle for socialism. We fight religious superstition wherever it is an obstacle to socialism, but we are opposed to religion only insofar as it is an obstacle to socialism. Belief in religion – any religion – warps and hampers the ability to think objectively, particularly about social and political issues such as those now filling the newspapers (Islam, immigration, cultural clashes, etc.). In order to grasp the urgent need for and the possibility of achieving major social change one must first be able to think clearly and to understand just how capitalism works – or, quite often, doesn't. This is something men and women are much less able to do if their heads are full of religious fantasy and their thinking is correspondingly irrational. The disappearance of all religious beliefs, whether “We poor sinners here below” or “Allah's will be done!” should be seen as an essential part of our struggle for socialism and not just as a fringe irrelevance.

The case for socialism, as the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, is a secular doctrine based on the facts of the situation today and not on quotations from the sacred texts of one particular religion. We say that socialist understanding is based not simply on a materialist approach to history (no supernatural intervention) but also on a materialist approach to the universe (no supernatural intervention there either), and also to life – this is the only one all of us are going to get, so let's make the most of it by establishing the best material environment for it, down here on Earth, i.e the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. We readily accept that people can – and do – hold contradictory views but don't see this as something to be encouraged by opening our ranks to them.

Socialists seek the universal brotherhood of men, but for religions to sloganise ideals and in practice support a system that precludes their realisation, is a worse than a hollow gesture, it erects a barrier to their practical achievement. What an organisation that genuinely aspires to social harmony on a world scale should do is relate it to specific social situations within actual experience, and discern and illuminate and explain the reasons why men now behave in a manner contrary to their mutual interests. It should argue a valid social theory and advocate a practical course for political action that offers the sure prospect of the unity of all men based on relations of genuine social equality. Only socialists do this.

Neither god nor master
Banish gods from the sky and capitalists from the earth
No hell below us, Above us only sky

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