Re: Obscenity in ancient texts and the ethics of uploading them

On Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:49:30 +0100, loiner2003 put finger to keyboard
and typed:

Paul Dean wrote:

And why read it if it's not Christian? Why is the purience of a dead
society more interesting than that of our own? (answer: because it's
easier to analyse and can shed light on our own). I would maintain
that such things are of no use to the vast majority of Christians.
Let a few, such as yourself maybe, look into these things and report
back their conclusions to edify the Church. This would fall into my
third category of someone who has a particular calling to expose
themselves to such stuff (I can add historian to my example of
apologetician). Obviously in this case there is no point censoring
the material. I'm arguing against a casual exposure to anything that
is anti-Christ. Put like that it seems obvious, but in practice it
would be a big leap for the vast majority of Christians in the UK.

Paul, you astonish me. It is an argument not very different from that
that was used, and sometimes still is used, for saying that the Bible
should be read only by Christian scholars and teachers - not on the
grounds of prurience (though I still love 1 Kings 21.21 and other
similar texts in the KJV!) but on the grounds that simple souls may be
misled by biblical complexity, so that it is better that a few experts
tell them what to believe.

I don't think Paul's argument is like that at all. There's a big
difference between saying that something is, though good, too complex
for the layman to understand and therefore should be kept from them
and mediated by those with the requisite training and saying that
something is harmful and people should generally avoid it. As the
Bible puts it:

"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is
pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable ? if anything is
excellent or praiseworthy ? think about such things"

Not everything that has been written is worth reading. There is a vast
pile of crap out there that does not enhance the human experience one
iota. And something that was a pile of crap when first written doesn't
become any less a pile of crap just because it's hundreds or thousands
of years old. Historians may well find it interesting as a window into
the past, but that doesn't make it any more valuable as literature -
copralite is useful to the paleontologists, but it's no more
nutritious to us now than it was when it was steaming fresh.

Mark
--
Stuff, some of it good, at http://www.good-stuff.co.uk
"Did I tell you it was wine when really it was water?"
.

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