Rant against anti-atheist agnostics.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well as you're a human being your subject to the same failings. You make your own reparations or live with the guilt.

Apparently I'm not subject to the same failings. I'm not a scapegoater. We may be broadly similar in many ways...but there we diverge as much as possible from each other.

You reject the offer, because you don't get it.

I reject the offer because it is immoral and disgusting to me. I cannot accept it. See above.

I shouldn't reject it if I get it

If you're okay with it, then take it Frodo, haven't I already said that? You won't be the first person to profit from the misery of another, and you won't be the last. It's pointless to take the money, knowing it's provenance, and then bitch when others point out your blatant immorality.

, and you're dead right.. I should do everything in my power to make amends where humanly possible.
What forgiveness gives me though is the ability to fulfill my potential unhindered by guilt. Pride in my own achievements would be a hindrance to that.

A person can be humble without being a scapegoater.

You're not explaining anything. Break it down.

Start at page 1, I'll wait.

[Mudhammam]

I never disown responsibility. If I did I wouldn't earn forgiveness. I continually acknowledge my guilt and seek reparation for it.

Buy the wood and I'll send the nails. Is that what you mean?

[fr0d0]

Rhythm: so you're not human?
You can't accept it = you don't get it. Acknowledged.
You bleating now lol? Your pride stops you taking the money = your problem. Cry me a river. It takes humility to accept help. You're a big man. I get it. Inhuman ability to do what no other human can do. Yep, you're a real hero. Do you do signed autographs? Get real Rhythm.
Start at page 1? No mate, you didn't explain yourself at all. Try and state it clearly. Last chance.

[The Grand Nudger]

What no human can do? Take a moral stance against hurting someone else for one's own misdeeds? Refuse gifts of ill gotten gains? Refuse to abrogate responsibility for their actions and subsequent consequences to a third party? Seems to me that most are -at least- capable.

Last chance for what? You'll find a lengthy and excruciating discussion of the subject in this thread. I've offered a half dozen examples or so that you could take issue with, argue for your principles. We've covered what, four separate conceptualizations of vicarious redemption within the various christian traditions thusfar (there are a few more)? I've responded to your questions and examples -with clarity-.

What is it that you require, precisely? If it's not already here in the thread then sure, we can dance. Are you asking me why vicarious redemption is immoral? You explained that yourself, multiple times (shall I quote you?).

[fr0d0]

Well you said you were different from the rest of us Rhythm... able to make up for human failings that we accept no one can do.
To you it's something you can pay back. Where you cripple your own potential, sadly you want to keep all that to yourself unresolved. At least you didn't have to swallow your pride and admit your failings right? Your noble suffering is your greatest treasure.

You didn't hurt someone else. They carried your load. Their deed was done for you where you accepted it or not. Take the gift and honour them, or spit in their face and carry on suffering. You aren't capable of making reparation, being human. That's a fact. You think you can. I think you're seriously deluded.

[The Grand Nudger]

Different -than you- Frodo, and only with regards to what you have been publicly and vociferously defending.

I actually don't say that it's "something I can pay back". I've accepted -at least for the sake of discussion- that it is not something I can pay back (whatever "it" is). So be it.

What's unresolved? What does my pride have to do with anything, and what is it precisely that you think I'm proud of?

I'm not suffering, let alone nobly so. I don't expect to suffer on this count either. I think that you're full of shit. But if that's how the cosmos is arranged, yeah, I suppose I'm headed for suffering (and I don't imagine that it would be very noble, quite the opposite). And?

I can't accept blood money Frodo. It's just not in me. Similarly, I can't honor the man who holds out the blood money, it's just not in me.

(all of this, of course.....you would find from page 1 onwards, my answers to you are the same as my answers to Chad, and the same as my answers to Micheal. They come from the same place, they derive from the same reasons. If it makes you feel better, you're the best of the bunch thusfar. You'd help me save christ from the ghouls.)

[Brakeman]

You didn't hurt someone else. They carried your load. Their deed was done for you where you accepted it or not. Take the gift and honour them, or spit in their face and carry on suffering. You aren't capable of making reparation, being human. That's a fact. You think you can. I think you're seriously deluded.

Who said it was Rhythm load to carry? If I said you owe me ten thousand dollars for me doing your part on building my fence, do you really owe it?
Of course not, you would both have to agree to do it and get some benefit for yourself, neither apply here, as god is supposedly all powerful and he doesn't need anyone's help carrying a "load" for his own purpose, and Rhythm didn't make a previous agreement.

The whole premise of a omnipotent god needing mankind to do or be anyway is a non-sequitur.

[The Grand Nudger]

Nor would I go about squaring that debt if I did agree to it by sending my boy Kunta as payment. Nor should anyone accept it if I did.

It really doesn't matter, you can give a christian miles and miles...it won't help. The notion is beyond redemption, to borrow Whatev's clever turn of phrase.

[Whateverist]

I'm curious as to how others define human perfection.

Those are some standard Christian views too. I tend to think of my own situation and how I hold myself back. The 7 deadly sins articulate it I suppose.

Morally, Aristotle's formulation points at why perfection in the abstract doesn't really make a lot of sense. He would say the best way is always a "golden mean" between an extreme of excess and another of deficiency. So the brave person was somewhere between foolhardy and cowardly. So perfection, if it exists at all, is a tension between traits. To me that suggests that it is always situationally dependent as well.

[fr0d0]

You didn't hurt someone else. They carried your load. Their deed was done for you where you accepted it or not. Take the gift and honour them, or spit in their face and carry on suffering. You aren't capable of making reparation, being human. That's a fact. You think you can. I think you're seriously deluded.

Who said it was Rhythm load to carry? If I said you owe me ten thousand dollars for me doing your part on building my fence, do you really owe it?
Of course not, you would both have to agree to do it and get some benefit for yourself, neither apply here, as god is supposedly all powerful and he doesn't need anyone's help carrying a "load" for his own purpose, and Rhythm didn't make a previous agreement.

The whole premise of a omnipotent god needing mankind to do or be anyway is a non-sequitur.

Yes. Like Rhythm, you seem to completely misunderstand. It's rhythms debt just as it is yours and mine. Because we're all flawed humans. It's prideful to think, as Rhythm does, that you can overcome that flawed state. Best you can do is accept your flaws and get on with it.

What Christianity is offering here is not denial of those flaws, or dismissal or irresponsibility, but acknowledgement of the fact and a means to overcome it. Symbolically, the sacrifice is as extreme as it has to be. The debt has to match the deficit. It's pretty much the point of Jesus life, to match that deficit.

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Morally, Aristotle's formulation points at why perfection in the abstract doesn't really make a lot of sense. He would say the best way is always a "golden mean" between an extreme of excess and another of deficiency. So the brave person was somewhere between foolhardy and cowardly. So perfection, if it exists at all, is a tension between traits. To me that suggests that it is always situationally dependent as well.

What we're talking about here is humans trying to reconcile their innate failings. Perfection is unattainable. That's a fact. Dealing with the life draining aspect of that is what Christianity confronts with this central tenet.

Modern society is no better at dealing with this problem that any preceding it. It seems like we're worse at it, with our breakdown of the family, massive scale capitalism etc, but I think we're just the same.

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Different -than you- Frodo, and only with regards to what you have been publicly and vociferously defending.

I actually don't say that it's "something I can pay back". I've accepted -at least for the sake of discussion- that it is not something I can pay back (whatever "it" is). So be it.

What's unresolved? What does my pride have to do with anything, and what is it precisely that you think I'm proud of?

I'm not suffering, let alone nobly so. I don't expect to suffer on this count either. I think that you're full of shit. But if that's how the cosmos is arranged, yeah, I suppose I'm headed for suffering (and I don't imagine that it would be very noble, quite the opposite). And?

I can't accept blood money Frodo. It's just not in me. Similarly, I can't honor the man who holds out the blood money, it's just not in me.

(all of this, of course.....you would find from page 1 onwards, my answers to you are the same as my answers to Chad, and the same as my answers to Micheal. They come from the same place, they derive from the same reasons. If it makes you feel better, you're the best of the bunch thusfar. You'd help me save christ from the ghouls.)

Bull crap. "It's not in you" is your prideful denial. Cut the crap and stop trying to be a hero. I'm not impressed.

It's not some future suffering that your denying. It's this moment, right now. Supposedly psychopaths are insensitive to their failings, but I don't accept that. Maybe they're desensitised. But what's that... denial, delusion.

You don't know what 'it' is huh? How/ why the hell are you discussing it then?!