Abusive Theology 101

[Godscreated]

He wasn't judging you, Fr0d0 was explaining to you if you are an unforgiven sinner, God says you will go to hell, he is the messenger not the judge. One reason God saves us is to warn others there are consequences to unforgiven sin.

If I knew some kind of grievous harm was going to happen to you or someone you love, shouldn't I warn you, isn't that something any decent person would do.

GC

IF? That one "IF" sounds like all the BS I need to hear to dismiss a claim of a god; "IF" that god indeed exists.

"IF" he decides to accept Christ as his savior, Biblical things shoot right over your head don't they, that's sad, it also makes discussions difficult.

GC

[freedomfromforum]

"IF" he decides to accept Christ as his savior, Biblical things shoot right over your head don't they, that's sad, it also makes discussions difficult.

GC

..."IF" one believes in the unproven god you claim has decided I am a "sinner" from birth. BTW, I taught bible studies for over a decade. Biblibal things do not shoot right over my head, they go striaght between my ass cheeks and right into the dumper.

[John V]

Today I was talking with a homeless man in my neighborhood. I’ve known this man for a few months, and on occasion I have given him food (never cash). I have sat with him on several occasions to keep him company and to listen to him tell his life story. This guy makes no effort to hide his christian association, and in fact he often uses it to pull on the heartstrings of other gullible people (christians), and gets them to give him cash or anything else he can swindle from them. I notice that the “christians” never sit and talk with him, hmmmmm?

If this guy's really a Christian, why do you say that he's swindling from other Christians, and that they're gullible? Why aren't you gullible and being swindled?

[Drich]

You must reevaluate the definition of what it means to judge. Jesus never judged anyone. Are you claiming you are unlike Jesus by judging me and informing me that I am going to Hell?

Seriously? Lol

Where to start? Jesus judges the Pharisees "woe to you Pharisees, and makers of the law you hypocrites!! He does this several different times. What was He doing when he made a whip and over turned the money changers tables and chased them out of the temple? Not to mention the judgement of the unforgivable sin He levied on the Pharisees who called the works of the Holy Spirit the devils work. Would you like me to continue to the end of days where Chirst is the judge of all man kind?

The only thing Christ tells us is not to judge someone in a man or that you yourself are not prepared to be judged, for whatever measure you use against your brother will I turn be used against you.

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Lol. ah, no.

Telling someone that the bible says they are a sinner and as such are hell bound, is like warning someone that the elevator they just stepped into will fall 40 floors when the doors close. There is absolutely no judgement in that statement. Only the fact that everyone on the 40th floor should wait or simply take the stairs. The fact that I can relay this warning places me on the 40th floor as well, rendering any judgements pointless. (Which is why Christ gave us the parable of the unmerciful servant.)

No, if I were to judge you I would have to have the authority to do so, and power to keep you in hell. You have confused my warning with the conviction and authority/power of the one who originated this message in the first place.

Again if you were on the 40th with the elevator out would it be sensible for you to condemn the person who warned you not to get in the broken elevator? Would you say he was judging you for making a bad decision?

Hehe, what a funny analogy. To answer your question first, no I probably won't think he is judging me to start out with.

But... If some whack job is standing on the 40th floor telling people that the lift is broken, I will ask him if he has informed emergency services.

If he tells me that he has not informed them because he has no proof that the lift is going to fall, I would ask him why he thinks that the lift is going to fall.

If he then tells me it is because it is written in a thousand year old book I would think: crazy!

Because I tend to be more careful I would either observe the lift or ask other people if the lift is indeed broken.

If it is not I'll happily take the lift while you climb the 40 sets of stairs.

Guess that is how we are different

And if the whack job informs me that the lift will break for me because I'm a sinner I would definitely think he was judging me.

So.. We are different in that you are willing to do and believe as everyone else's does and believes, and has no issues hinging critical life desisions on how things appear to work. I couldnt help but notice in your best repaint of my analogy you never checked the structural integrity of the 'lift.' No, you were quite content in placing your life in what the group actually thought of the situation rather than seeking the truth. Heck, in your repaint, you could have fabricated a 'lift' repairman to check it out for you, but no. Your 'proof' begins and ends on what others think or rather what others tell you to think of a given situation, and what a situation may look like on the surface.

What a funny analogy indeed.
..and your right, you and I do things quite differently.

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Lol. ah, no.

Again if you were on the 40th with the elevator out would it be sensible for you to condemn the person who warned you not to get in the broken elevator? Would you say he was judging you for making a bad decision?

@Drich...

Why, oh why, did your god break the elevator in the first place? But thanks for the tip. Because your god broke the elevator is precicely why I avoid taking the ride.

---

He wasn't judging you, Fr0d0 was explaining to you if you are an unforgiven sinner, God says you will go to hell, he is the messenger not the judge. One reason God saves us is to warn others there are consequences to unforgiven sin.

If I knew some kind of grievous harm was going to happen to you or someone you love, shouldn't I warn you, isn't that something any decent person would do.

GC

IF? That one "IF" sounds like all the BS I need to hear to dismiss a claim of a god; "IF" that god indeed exists.

Why do you assume God is the one who broke the elevator?

[ManMachine]

Today I was talking with a homeless man in my neighborhood. I’ve known this man for a few months, and on occasion I have given him food (never cash). I have sat with him on several occasions to keep him company and to listen to him tell his life story. This guy makes no effort to hide his christian association, and in fact he often uses it to pull on the heartstrings of other gullible people (christians), and gets them to give him cash or anything else he can swindle from them. I notice that the “christians” never sit and talk with him, hmmmmm?

Today he asked me for food after telling me that I was hell bound for being born a sinner, and for turning my back on Jesus (I am atheist). I told him “No problem, I‘ll feed you”, and I invited him over for a steak and lobster dinner which I promised I would freely give to him. I told him I had a room in my home prepared for him, and that he could feast, and live in comfort and luxury for all of his days. He was very excited!

I told him to come by around 6:00PM and to be prepared to worship me if he expected to get what I had promised him. He seemed perplexed. He then asked, “Why would you withhold what you’ve promised me unless I agree with your ideas, and do as you say?” I responded, “Because you arrive at my door defiled and deserving death”. He said I was being violent toward him because of my gross mischaracterization of him, and he demanded to know what gave me the right to ask him to perform as I dictated, and to judge him as worthy of death. He then cursed me out for dangling a proverbial carrot in front of his face (my promise of paradise), and he then proceeded to list my many sins. I guess you could say that he didn’t like my theology.

How ironic that he stumbled away unaware of what had just happened to him, and how sad that I will now have to eat another lobster tail with my second fillet. Tisk, tisk.

Seems to me all you did was turn him into a 'freedomfromfallatheist'.


MM

[ITChick]

So.. We are different in that you are willing to do and believe as everyone else's does and believes, and has no issues hinging critical life desisions on how things appear to work. I couldnt help but notice in your best repaint of my analogy you never checked the structural integrity of the 'lift.' No, you were quite content in placing your life in what the group actually thought of the situation rather than seeking the truth. Heck, in your repaint, you could have fabricated a 'lift' repairman to check it out for you, but no. Your 'proof' begins and ends on what others think or rather what others tell you to think of a given situation, and what a situation may look like on the surface.

What a funny analogy indeed.
..and your right, you and I do things quite differently.

Nope. We are so different that you didn't even realise that anything I did after finding out that this guy believed the elevator is broken because he read it in a 1000 year old book is completely unnecessary.

Observing the lift and speaking to other people is simply to put my own mind at ease. It gives this guys theory way more credence than it is worth - calling out an engineer would be overkill.

Calling security to remove him would be a more viable option.

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Why do you assume God is the one who broke the elevator?

Didn't god make everything? So he made the lift and also the reason why it is broken. He is also omnipotent so could have easily stopped the lift from breaking.

Remember: you cannot of a creation without a creator.

[Mister Agenda]

"It's quite a stretch to get 'told they are evil' from 'drives off thieves'. "

It's not at all a stretch to get it from "condemned.

"It clearly benefits the group to be intolerant of stealing, to get angry about it, similar to the feeling we get when someone cuts in front of us or gets a bigger share of cake than we do. The thieving gorilla isn't condemned for being evil, they're just on their own because they're a liability to the group."

He said they're condemned, you say they aren't. Go figure.

I focus on the subject, you focus on the verb. Go figure.

"Evolution has given us the ability to form all kinds of ideologies, governments, philosophies, and religions; which often reflect our natural social instincts, but also reflect our experiences, history, imaginations, observations, and prejudices. They are our creations and there's no rational reason why we shouldn't judge them on their own merits and flaws."

What criteria determine whether a behavior is natural v. our creations? If we are natural, are not our creations natural? Do we know that gorillas' behaviors aren't influenced by experiences, imaginations, etc?

You realize you inserted that right before the paragraph that goes over why a behavior's naturalness is morally irrelevant, right?

"Even if religion were a direct product of evolution, that wouldn't make it a good thing, unless you consider reproductive success to be the only measure of what is good. There's a fallacy named after claiming something is a moral good because it's natural."

So you would take exception to the statement, "TA DA! There you have it. We have developed these sets of 'laws' naturally. We humans, like other animals, just get it, and do not need to be told that we are evil for being natural" - right?

There's more than a 'Ta da!' involved, yes. Evolution provides a reasonable explanation for our drives and impulses. Their origin doesn't make them inherently moral or immoral. Both our impulse to protect and our impulse to attack are natural and acting on those impulses can be courageous and moral or cowardly and vicious depending on the situation. Moral reasoning and philosophy...or, lacking that, clear societal (even if based on religion) rules and consequences are needed to have a moral system once can compare favorably to that of a band of chimps.

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Lol. ah, no.

Telling someone that the bible says they are a sinner and as such are hell bound, is like warning someone that the elevator they just stepped into will fall 40 floors when the doors close.

More like warning them that the elevator floor will someday open to drop them into a pit of alligators, when everyone and their grandmother has already told them that.

There is absolutely no judgement in that statement.

There wouldn't be any judgement in it if you had reason to believe they were unaware of the warning. I'm not sure what the motivation is to repeat a warning you know virtually everyone has heard, but it's hard to buy the 'no judgement' line. At some point it becomes 'You're staying in the elevator despite our frequent warnings that at some point you'll be eaten by alligators if you keep using the elevator!'

Only the fact that everyone on the 40th floor should wait or simply take the stairs. The fact that I can relay this warning places me on the 40th floor as well, rendering any judgements pointless. (Which is why Christ gave us the parable of the unmerciful servant.)

Everyone on the 40th floor should keep taking the elevator until someone provides convincing evidence it's an alligator-trap.

No, if I were to judge you I would have to have the authority to do so, and power to keep you in hell.

You don't need authority to be judgemental. You just need to feel you're entitled to be judgemental.

You have confused my warning with the conviction and authority/power of the one who originated this message in the first place.

It's not Jesus. We already got that memo. It's you speaking for Jesus we're talking about here.

Again if you were on the 40th with the elevator out would it be sensible for you to condemn the person who warned you not to get in the broken elevator? Would you say he was judging you for making a bad decision?

Yep, if he couldn't explain satisfactorily how he knows the elevator is broken (he had a dream or derived it from the quatrains of Nostradamus or whatever), he's got no business interrupting me. I understand the unbalanced are sometimes compelled to do such things, and I would probably feel sorry for the guy. If he were rational, he could say all kinds of things that would work in keeping me off that elevator: that he's off-duty and responding to a repair call, that the building manager just called him on his cell and told him there's something wrong with the elevators...but this poor sap is going with an explanation no reasonable person could be expected to believe. And that's with no alligators.

[John V]

I focus on the subject, you focus on the verb. Go figure.

How does focusing on the subject make a difference? Are you arguing that gorillas are automatically precluded from exercising condemnation, and if so, what is your basis for that position?

You realize you inserted that right before the paragraph that goes over why a behavior's naturalness is morally irrelevant, right?

I realize it comes before a paragraph that asserts that a behavior's naturalness is morally irrelevant - there are those who would argue against that. The point is, what distinguishes gorilla's behavior as natural, but certain human behavior as unnatural? If you can't define and support that distinction, then what do gorillas have to do with it at all?

[Mister Agenda]

Why do you assume God is the one who broke the elevator?

It doesn't matter who broke it, the landlord is responsible for maintaining the building and getting the lift repaired as soon as possibe while taking all reasonable measures to make sure no one falls in the meantime.

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I focus on the subject, you focus on the verb. Go figure.

How does focusing on the subject make a difference? Are you arguing that gorillas are automatically precluded from exercising condemnation, and if so, what is your basis for that position?

No, I'm arguing that you're focusing on approval and disapproval in a conversation about good and evil.

I realize it comes before a paragraph that asserts that a behavior's naturalness is morally irrelevant - there are those who would argue against that. The point is, what distinguishes gorilla's behavior as natural, but certain human behavior as unnatural?

I think you might be misunderstanding the sense in which the word 'natural' is being used.

4.
c. Biology Not produced or changed artificially; not conditioned: natural immunity; a natural reflex.

That is, we're talking about innate/instinctual vs. learned/conditioned.

If you can't define and support that distinction, then what do gorillas have to do with it at all?

I'm not the one who brought up gorillas, but regardless of how satisfied you are with the distinctions, chimps and gorillas illustrate that moral concerns aren't limited to humans, and aren't based on good and evil...more the other way around. A 'sense' of empathy and fairness is not unique to humans, but combining those feelings with moral reasoning and abstracting them into concepts like good, evil, and justice is unique to humans, as far as we're able to discern.

[Godscreated]

"IF" he decides to accept Christ as his savior, Biblical things shoot right over your head don't they, that's sad, it also makes discussions difficult.

GC

..."IF" one believes in the unproven god you claim has decided I am a "sinner" from birth. BTW, I taught bible studies for over a decade. Biblibal things do not shoot right over my head, they go striaght between my ass cheeks and right into the dumper.

You must have been a fairly bad teacher to not of understood what I said to begin with.

GC