RE: Four questions for Christians
June 23, 2013 at 1:55 pm
(This post was last modified: June 23, 2013 at 2:12 pm by Consilius.)
(June 23, 2013 at 12:26 pm)Rhythm Wrote: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.(June 22, 2013 at 6:48 pm)Consilius Wrote: 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?
Quote: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?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.
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.
Quote: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.
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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.
(June 23, 2013 at 1:44 pm)Fidel_Castronaut Wrote: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.(June 23, 2013 at 8:24 am)Consilius Wrote: 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.