Four questions for Christians

[Consilius]

You are preaching against "no salvation outside the church", which many Christians believe does not exist.

The RCC believed Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus until Vatican II. Before inclusivism was adopted, if you weren't a Catholic, you were in hell.

Or so that was the thought. It was a false belief that had existed for centuries. We need to keep looking over our doctrines and make corrections where needed. The Church can only move forward and fix the mistakes of the past.
We might wanna check out our gay policy next.

[Zen Badger]

The RCC believed Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus until Vatican II. Before inclusivism was adopted, if you weren't a Catholic, you were in hell.

Or so that was the thought. It was a false belief that had existed for centuries. We need to keep looking over our doctrines and make corrections where needed. The Church can only move forward and fix the mistakes of the past.
We might wanna check out our gay policy next.

Strange that, considering that the pope is gods agent on earth, and apparently infallible.

[Cato]

We might wanna check out our gay policy next.

Despite overwhelming evidence, it took your church 367 years to exonerate Galileo. Forgive me if I don't get excited and hold my breath regarding your desire to reconsider your gay policy.

[Consilius]

Or so that was the thought. It was a false belief that had existed for centuries. We need to keep looking over our doctrines and make corrections where needed. The Church can only move forward and fix the mistakes of the past.
We might wanna check out our gay policy next.

Strange that, considering that the pope is gods agent on earth, and apparently infallible.

The pope's infallibility applies to official church teaching on faith or morals given in ecumenical councils, and not his political or personal opinions.

---

You are making generalizations. Now you are just reciting a condemnation based off what you've heard and selective and literalist Bible readings. Correct me if I'm wrong.
If you have a specific instance you would like to put forth, then you may do so. I've already talked about much of the traditional condemnation of the Tenth Plague in conversations with cato and Ryantology.

Exodus 12:12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD.

And for no good reason that I can discern.

Exodus15:3 The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name.

God likes war, no surprise there really.

Exodus32:27 And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.

Even more murder.....

I can provide plenty more examples like these, but I think the point is made.

I've posted a lot of material on the Tenth Plague earlier in this thread. God punished Egyptians for killing Israelite babies.

In the NIV Bible version, 'man of war' is translated as 'warrior. And yes, God fights people. That does not imply that he likes war. Wars were frequent in the ancient world, and God helped the Israelites through many of them. Most of these wars were in self-defense. The Bible verse you are referring to was allegedly sung by Miriam after the Israelites had crossed the Red Sea.

Moses clearly asked whether or not the people would still worship the God who they had recently crossed the sea with. Few of them agreed to. Note this was a runaway band of slaves in the middle of the desert who held the only 'true' worship in the world. God was forming a nation for himself, and he needed to request high standards backed by big miracles if he was to keep their faith pure and their religion intact. It wasn't permissible to get off this early in the program. They people who were killed knowingly challenged a power greater than themselves by their unfaithfullness, and decided that they wanted to be rebels. Not that they had questions (like I think God forgot about us after we crossed the sea), they simply didn't care, didn't want to go with the Israelites, and didn't want to have God with them. That is the definition of hell.

[The Grand Nudger]

If you check, Exodus 10:1, 14:17, and 1 Samuel 6:6 describe the Egyptians as having nothing less than the attribute ascribed to their Pharaoh, the exact mind state that caused the Plagues in the first place: they were hard of heart.

Bravo. I won't check, because I don't care. I'll simply take your word for it and ask you why you thought it would be prudent to defend the narrative by invoking thought-crime? Deep cover poe?

They had enslaved the Israelites together and killed their children together, because they all benefitted from slavery and national security. So why would they be punished any less than their Pharaoh was?
Is this God stooping to Pharaoh's level? For this to be God simply taking revenge on people, he would have had to be offended. He never was. He gave the Egyptians what they had given the refugees in their land: the death of their children. The only person who would punish a party with what they had done to another party without being offended would be a judge.

Thoughtcrime immediately followed up by the same appeal to hypocrisy. It's as useless now as it was the last time. Let me ask you something Consilius. If someone killed someones child, do you imagine that any judge would sentence that killer to having their own child killed? Why do you think that is? Would you prefer that we handle things in such a manner? Whether or not you imagine your god to have been offended or indifferent is inconsequential, it remains tq, and it remains a revenge tale.

For this order to be a valid statement, all of these people would have had to have tried to kill us as a people without provocation and wipe out OUR memory as a group. This would hardly be noticed as a religious statement, because the fight would have been picked up as an act of self-defense under a political banner. And if they are not wiped out, they will rise up again and we may not be so lucky next time. You can't factor in Christians forgiveness and mercy simply because THERE ARE OTHER LIVES AT STAKE BESIDES YOUR OWN. That's what war is. God can't always be an anti-war hippy because people will need to be defended from their common threat because we all have the will to survive.

Hardly. I don't want to hear any quibbling about "valid statements" as you defend a logical fallacy, understand? A TQ is a form of ad hom, and in my experience on these boards accounts for the vast majority of people's defenses of any given fairy tale. It wouldn't matter if the group in question -had- attempted to do the same to you. The sins or inequity of another does not excuse one's own, in the more common usage "two wrongs don't make a right". It isn't about being "anti-war hippy", that's ridiculous, and at no point did I even imply such a thing. You've held this character up as some sort of moral standard or arbitrator and then proceeded to give examples of precisely how it fails -thoroughly- at either. If this is the standard it's sub-par, if this is the judge, it's incompetent. No amount of "but they did it first" "you do it too" "returning in kind" will ever expatiate this failing. This is why I don't care whether or not any particular god exists beyond the pure curiosity of it. The problem is not that I don't believe in your god, for example, but that you have presented me with an unacceptable object of worship or reverence.

The more you attempt to defend this -fairy tale (which you could easily and simply disavow without any inconvenience to your faith)- along these lines the more you argue in favor of other's points. I simply don't understand. None of this actually happened, so why would anyone be willing to crucify their own beliefs in such a way? I often wonder why I come away from these exchanges with the suspicion that I respect "god" more than the faithful do. For some strange reason, I find it difficult to imagine a god with a poorer understanding of this subject than myself......but who knows, I like to leave room for douche-god and dunce-god.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

The RCC believed Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus until Vatican II. Before inclusivism was adopted, if you weren't a Catholic, you were in hell.

Or so that was the thought. It was a false belief that had existed for centuries. We need to keep looking over our doctrines and make corrections where needed. The Church can only move forward and fix the mistakes of the past.
We might wanna check out our gay policy next.

I think so too (although I doubt anything will change for several years on that topic).

But I also think the get out of jail clause of being able to retrospectively exonerate oneself from past decision is a bit of a cop out for the RCC. It wasn't a false belief up until V2, then it was. Although as a pragmatist I do appreciate when an organiastion is able to change and adapt to the societal status quo, although I don't much like the idea of being a de facto catholic regardless of what I actually [dont] believe.

[Consilius]

If you check, Exodus 10:1, 14:17, and 1 Samuel 6:6 describe the Egyptians as having nothing less than the attribute ascribed to their Pharaoh, the exact mind state that caused the Plagues in the first place: they were hard of heart.

Bravo. I won't check, because I don't care. I'll simply take your word for it and ask you why you thought it would be prudent to defend the narrative by invoking thought-crime? Deep cover poe?

They had enslaved the Israelites together and killed their children together, because they all benefitted from slavery and national security. So why would they be punished any less than their Pharaoh was?
Is this God stooping to Pharaoh's level? For this to be God simply taking revenge on people, he would have had to be offended. He never was. He gave the Egyptians what they had given the refugees in their land: the death of their children. The only person who would punish a party with what they had done to another party without being offended would be a judge.

Thoughtcrime immediately followed up by the same appeal to hypocrisy. It's as useless now as it was the last time. Let me ask you something Consilius. If someone killed someones child, do you imagine that any judge would sentence that killer to having their own child killed? Why do you think that is? Would you prefer that we handle things in such a manner? Whether or not you imagine your god to have been offended or indifferent is inconsequential, it remains tq, and it remains a revenge tale.

This Bible story did not take place in a democratic 21st century society. This is ancient Egypt. Rulers all around the ancient world killed kids because of what their parents did. It was the common practice. The Egyptians had no reason to expect anything other than the very punishment he had dished out to others. That would be unfair: God judging people by his own unique law code that just so happens to match our particular time and place and not theirs is arbitrary judgement and would be illegal all around the world.

For this order to be a valid statement, all of these people would have had to have tried to kill us as a people without provocation and wipe out OUR memory as a group. This would hardly be noticed as a religious statement, because the fight would have been picked up as an act of self-defense under a political banner. And if they are not wiped out, they will rise up again and we may not be so lucky next time. You can't factor in Christians forgiveness and mercy simply because THERE ARE OTHER LIVES AT STAKE BESIDES YOUR OWN. That's what war is. God can't always be an anti-war hippy because people will need to be defended from their common threat because we all have the will to survive.

Hardly. I don't want to hear any quibbling about "valid statements" as you defend a logical fallacy, understand? A TQ is a form of ad hom, and in my experience on these boards accounts for the vast majority of people's defenses of any given fairy tale. It wouldn't matter if the group in question -had- attempted to do the same to you. The sins or inequity of another does not excuse one's own, in the more common usage "two wrongs don't make a right". It isn't about being "anti-war hippy", that's ridiculous, and at no point did I even imply such a thing. You've held this character up as some sort of moral standard or arbitrator and then proceeded to give examples of precisely how it fails -thoroughly- at either. If this is the standard it's sub-par, if this is the judge, it's incompetent. No amount of "but they did it first" "you do it too" "returning in kind" will ever expatiate this failing. This is why I don't care whether or not any particular god exists beyond the pure curiosity of it. The problem is not that I don't believe in your god, for example, but that you have presented me with an unacceptable object of worship or reverence.

The more you attempt to defend this -fairy tale (which you could easily and simply disavow without any inconvenience to your faith)- along these lines the more you argue in favor of other's points. I simply don't understand. None of this actually happened, so why would anyone be willing to crucify their own beliefs in such a way? I often wonder why I come away from these exchanges with the suspicion that I respect "god" more than the faithful do. For some strange reason, I find it difficult to imagine a god with a poorer understanding of this subject than myself......but who knows, I like to leave room for douche-god and dunce-god.
[/quote]
You just condemned war itself. You can't ask an entire nation to forgive an aggressor because the leader of the country says we should be forgiving. That would be endangering the lives of millions of people. The leader of the nation can get martyred on his or her own, but he or she shouldn't expect the citizens to do so as well.

---

Or so that was the thought. It was a false belief that had existed for centuries. We need to keep looking over our doctrines and make corrections where needed. The Church can only move forward and fix the mistakes of the past.
We might wanna check out our gay policy next.

I think so too (although I doubt anything will change for several years on that topic).

But I also think the get out of jail clause of being able to retrospectively exonerate oneself from past decision is a bit of a cop out for the RCC. It wasn't a false belief up until V2, then it was. Although as a pragmatist I do appreciate when an organiastion is able to change and adapt to the societal status quo, although I don't much like the idea of being a de facto catholic regardless of what I actually [dont] believe.

The belief was very real with the Pope and among Christians, but it wasn't officially and infallibly set in stone until Vatican II. The Pope himself is fallible as a person, and he can only learn the doctrine the others learn and make his best possible ruling on it. But there are times when the Church comes together and the Pope and the bishops try to get things straight.

[LeoVonFrost]

Why should it be his fault if a cognitive being misinterpreted or bent to his own purpose words that were meant to enforce something good? You are still suggesting "God made me do it."

I see things a little different, with a bit of a wider view than others. In this instance I feel that taking a step back we can see that those people that were under the influence of a statewide religious fervor are indeed acting by the will of god (Gott Mit Uns - "god with us" on nazi belt buckles for instance) I can agree that if there were no religion to whip the masses into frenzy, these monsters would have found something else to control them with, but you have to agree that religion has been the most effective tool of control used by bad people. In realizing this you will see that in a larger scope it definitely is "gods will" when these bad people use your god to attain land and gold and power.

For the thing with Cortez, this was a political conquest, not a Crusade. The missionaries came to evangelize the people after the Spanish had forced them down.

You are wrong.

{{from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_col...e_Americas
- Colonial expansion under the crown of Castile was initiated by the Spanish conquistadores and developed by the Monarchy of Spain through its administrators and missionaries. The motivations for colonial expansion were trade and the spread of the Catholic faith through indigenous conversions.}}

The missionaries came along with the Spanish conquistadors in 1942.

The Pope's primary intention was to keep the surplus of knights in Europe from ravaging the countryside by giving them something to do.

You are wrong again. The first crusade was in 1096 and was actually called "the people's crusade" and it involved 20,000 lower class peasants and knights who along the way to the holy land killed 10k jews. The crusade was a disaster and most of the crusaders that pope urban ii had sent to do god's work were killed. In the Albigensian crusade in 1209 hundreds of thousands of cathars (women children priests) were slaughtered in the name of christ because they posed a threat to the catholic church. These are just two examples that prove the fallacy of your statement.

So the whole Holocaust thing is reduced to racism backed by religion, because when you bring religion into it, people have been proven to do anything without actually thinking about what their religion prescribes.

The holocaust wasn't about religion? That is the most nonsensical statement I have heard so far. You can't murder over 10 million people of a certain religion and then call it racism. I have already stated the fact of the belt buckles, every nazi soldier was acting with gods will or at least that's what they were told. I don't want to be a part of something that can convince people to do that, it is poisonous to the human race.

There are many more examples. These were just two.

Those examples were wrong. Can I please hear the others?

[The Grand Nudger]

This Bible story did not take place in a democratic 21st century society. This is ancient Egypt. Rulers all around the ancient world killed kids because of what their parents did. It was the common practice. The Egyptians had no reason to expect anything other than the very punishment he had dished out to others. That would be unfair: God judging people by his own unique law code that just so happens to match our particular time and place and not theirs is arbitrary judgement and would be illegal all around the world.

Regardless of whether or not it was common practice, or who did it, we would consider this a very base sort of immorality. If I am to apply this sort of standard, and if it is to be relevant than you must bring something to the table which amounts to more than a singsong TQ. "Pharoah did it, kings did it, it was common" - is simply more of the same and is as unacceptable now (for the very same reason) as it was the previous two times. I will not explain this again. Does your gods unique code of law match our own, do you figure? Because it seems to me, that this whole genocide bit is part of that code - and not part of ours. Lets not pretend that the code you're talking about belongs in the "now", as opposed to the "then". You like to imagine a fair god, perhaps a more pleasant or just god, good for you, I suggest you ditch this tale for what it is. Fiction. Then you might not feel compelled to defend such horrid shit in such a breathtakingly incompetent way.

You just condemned war itself. You can't ask an entire nation to forgive an aggressor because the leader of the country says we should be forgiving. That would be endangering the lives of millions of people. The leader of the nation can get martyred on his or her own, but he or she shouldn't expect the citizens to do so as well.

No, I've repeatedly condemned the actions of a character in a narrative, and further explained why you have failed to defend them in the manner you clearly wish to do. This is the second time I'll remind you that I have not brought this (hippies, war etc) up, nor have I implied anything of the sort. If you cannot defend the claims made by the narrative - and lets be clear, it doesn't appear that you're capable of doing so....then that's that. You can continue to voice the same defense, I will continue to remind you of it's inadequacy. If there is a way that this narrative (and particularly the characters in this narrative) can be reconciled, you have not found it. So perhaps, and this is just a suggestion - take it or leave it- you should cut "god" a break and stop dragging it's "good name" through the mud of your own ill-conceived justifications?

If you want to bicker with someone over the morality of conflict be my guest, start that thread, find someone who's even remotely interested in engaging you in that conversation.

[Consilius]

Why should it be his fault if a cognitive being misinterpreted or bent to his own purpose words that were meant to enforce something good? You are still suggesting "God made me do it."

I see things a little different, with a bit of a wider view than others. In this instance I feel that taking a step back we can see that those people that were under the influence of a statewide religious fervor are indeed acting by the will of god (Gott Mit Uns - "god with us" on nazi belt buckles for instance) I can agree that if there were no religion to whip the masses into frenzy, these monsters would have found something else to control them with, but you have to agree that religion has been the most effective tool of control used by bad people. In realizing this you will see that in a larger scope it definitely is "gods will" when these bad people use your god to attain land and gold and power.

For the thing with Cortez, this was a political conquest, not a Crusade. The missionaries came to evangelize the people after the Spanish had forced them down.

You are wrong.

{{from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_col...e_Americas
- Colonial expansion under the crown of Castile was initiated by the Spanish conquistadores and developed by the Monarchy of Spain through its administrators and missionaries. The motivations for colonial expansion were trade and the spread of the Catholic faith through indigenous conversions.}}

The missionaries came along with the Spanish conquistadors in 1942.

The Pope's primary intention was to keep the surplus of knights in Europe from ravaging the countryside by giving them something to do.

You are wrong again. The first crusade was in 1096 and was actually called "the people's crusade" and it involved 20,000 lower class peasants and knights who along the way to the holy land killed 10k jews. The crusade was a disaster and most of the crusaders that pope urban ii had sent to do god's work were killed. In the Albigensian crusade in 1209 hundreds of thousands of cathars (women children priests) were slaughtered in the name of christ because they posed a threat to the catholic church. These are just two examples that prove the fallacy of your statement.

So the whole Holocaust thing is reduced to racism backed by religion, because when you bring religion into it, people have been proven to do anything without actually thinking about what their religion prescribes.

The holocaust wasn't about religion? That is the most nonsensical statement I have heard so far. You can't murder over 10 million people of a certain religion and then call it racism. I have already stated the fact of the belt buckles, every nazi soldier was acting with gods will or at least that's what they were told. I don't want to be a part of something that can convince people to do that, it is poisonous to the human race.

There are many more examples. These were just two.

Those examples were wrong. Can I please hear the others?

Religion has been used many times to control people with large-scale results. That does not take away from the integrity of religion or its ability to do good.

To say that the first thing the Spanish monarchy thought of when she heard of an enormous landmass full of people across the sea was turning them into Christians would be like saying that the goal of the Crusades was to evangelize. They were weak labels that were given to get people's support.
"H.E.J. Cowdrey, a well respected scholar whom I often look to for council, claims Pope Urban II saw the defense of the Byzantine Empire as a primary reason for calling for the First Crusade. If our Christian brothers to the east can see how strong our faith is in the Lord, then they will be persuaded to adopt our views and be brought back into the light."
In the end, more people were killed by Cortez than converted, and more killed by Crusaders than evangelized.

"Let none of your possessions detain you, no solicitude for your family affairs, since this land which you inhabit, shut in on all sides by the seas and surrounded by the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population; nor does it abound in wealth; and it furnishes scarcely food enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder one another, that you wage war, and that frequently you perish by mutual wounds. Let therefore hatred depart from among you, let your quarrels end, let wars cease, and let all dissensions and controversies slumber. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulcher; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves.'—Pope Urban II, speech to Clermont
This could be another crusade, but it shows that the Pope had a few more motives than he regularly let on.

Notice how the word 'Jew' applies both to a race and a religion. They are generally in the same demographic, but not completely. Hitler claimed Aryans "the master race". Becoming a Christian didn't save you from belonging to an "inferior" race. That is why the Holocaust is termed "racial genocide" and not "religious persecution".
However, Hitler did have some Christian motives. He drew back on his Catholic upbringing and his German heritage to become an antisemite. It's not hard to use the Bible that way. But Jesus didn't advocate for taking revenge, and neither should have they. Notice how Hitler didn't tell anyone to 'evangelize' the Jews, like Martin Luther in his book "The Jews and their Lies", but simply to kill them. That's becuase they couldn't be preched out of seizing to be Jews.

---

This Bible story did not take place in a democratic 21st century society. This is ancient Egypt. Rulers all around the ancient world killed kids because of what their parents did. It was the common practice. The Egyptians had no reason to expect anything other than the very punishment he had dished out to others. That would be unfair: God judging people by his own unique law code that just so happens to match our particular time and place and not theirs is arbitrary judgement and would be illegal all around the world.

Regardless of whether or not it was common practice, or who did it, we would consider this a very base sort of immorality. If I am to apply this sort of standard, and if it is to be relevant than you must bring something to the table which amounts to more than a singsong TQ. "Pharoah did it, kings did it, it was common" - is simply more of the same and is as unacceptable now (for the very same reason) as it was the previous two times. I will not explain this again. Does your gods unique code of law match our own, do you figure? Because it seems to me, that this whole genocide bit is part of that code - and not part of ours. Lets not pretend that the code you're talking about belongs in the "now", as opposed to the "then". You like to imagine a fair god, perhaps a more pleasant or just god, good for you, I suggest you ditch this tale for what it is. Fiction. Then you might not feel compelled to defend such horrid shit in such a breathtakingly incompetent way.

You just condemned war itself. You can't ask an entire nation to forgive an aggressor because the leader of the country says we should be forgiving. That would be endangering the lives of millions of people. The leader of the nation can get martyred on his or her own, but he or she shouldn't expect the citizens to do so as well.

No, I've repeatedly condemned the actions of a character in a narrative, and further explained why you have failed to defend them in the manner you clearly wish to do. This is the second time I'll remind you that I have not brought this (hippies, war etc) up, nor have I implied anything of the sort. If you cannot defend the claims made by the narrative - and lets be clear, it doesn't appear that you're capable of doing so....then that's that. You can continue to voice the same defense, I will continue to remind you of it's inadequacy. If there is a way that this narrative (and particularly the characters in this narrative) can be reconciled, you have not found it. So perhaps, and this is just a suggestion - take it or leave it- you should cut "god" a break and stop dragging it's "good name" through the mud of your own ill-conceived justifications?

If you want to bicker with someone over the morality of conflict be my guest, start that thread, find someone who's even remotely interested in engaging you in that conversation.

For whatever reason 'eye for and eye' existed in the ancient world, you can take that up with an ancient law court.
The reason the Tenth Plague disturbs you is because you see God killing children for what their parents did. Yes, God did kill children, and their parents bore the consequences of no longer having their firstborn child.
You would argue that killing the parents would have been a better idea. But the Egyptians didn't destroy the lives of grown Israelite men and women, but killed their children. You can imagine a parent wanting to die in place of a child. He or she would have to live with the grief. In the ancient world, it was a double blow because the propagation of a family name, which was much more important to them than it is to us (sleeping with slaves serious), was rendered hopeless. The Egyptians hadn't granted the Israelites death, but rather a much more painful blow. God followed their example.
In the very same ancient law, reciprocation of offenses was well understood as a punishment to the parents and not the children. The flaw with this is that the children will still feel pain, and therefore be punished for nothing. If God is a perfect judge, why wouldn't we expect that he punish everyone exactly accoriding to their sins? For the Egyptian boys, no punishment at all. For their parents, exactly what they had been giving Israelite parents for the past 80 years or so. The Egyptians died in their sleep and went to heaven. The Israelite babies were drowned in rivers.
And yes, the Egyptian boys still died, and God killed them.