Life, The Universe, And Everything

[webmdave]

There are examples of believers having to resist unjust government throughout the Bible.

 

Buddy

 

References, please.

 

Thanks.

[webmdave]

Religious extremism isn't on the decline, however, as radical Islam emerges. Fundamentalist Islamic states will illustrate the same foibles of the 'state church' again.

Buddy

 

Every knee shall bow.

 

Nope... no hint of theocratic rule there.

[BuddyFerris]

Now I'm very confused. I thought the discussion was if USA was a Christian nation based on Christian ideals and that freedom of religion and freedom of speech were based on Christian ideology. But now it sounds to me that Buddy retracted from that position somehow.

 

How is the Jefferson's words at all based on Christian ideology, faith, belief, Bible or dogma? I think I lost the thread here. It's evident that the Constitution was made to protect the individual from the state, regardless of what faith or religion or lack thereof this individual had, and that is not proclaimed or declare or explained anywhere in the Christian faith or in the Bible. So I still fail to see how Christianity had anything to do with freedom of religion!?

HanS,

It all began with the question of a standard for right that was greater than a given individual's personal morality. We wandered from there to self-evident truths and from there to the founding father's original intent. Far afield, indeed.

 

Are there self-evident truths? Truths that are independent of preferences, beliefs, existing law, or social norms? Apparently, though many are resisted by both individuals and societies. Slavery is a good example. Dishonesty (particularly in business) is another. National and international law notwithstanding, both continue. Adultery, pornography, child and spouse abuse, government corruption, neighbor steals from neighbor, country steals from country. The truth exists independent of such behavior; even the perpetrators are aware of their own immorality and make excuse for themselves.

 

Or there are none.

 

Buddy

[BuddyFerris]

There are examples of believers having to resist unjust government throughout the Bible.

 

Buddy

 

References, please.

 

Thanks.

OT: Israel in Egypt as slaves; later in Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar had a policy of king worship that was counter to the personal beliefs of Daniel and the others; resistance should have cost them their lives. The Jews persecuted under Ahasuerus.

NT: Peter and others beaten and imprisoned for teaching and healing; "We should obey God rather than men." Stephen was killed, John the Baptist beheaded, Paul was beaten. Jesus was killed. Others. OK?

[BuddyFerris]

Every knee shall bow.

 

Nope... no hint of theocratic rule there.

Looks like a major improvement to me; enough to make even Dano happy once he got over there being a heaven.

Buddy

[Ouroboros]

HanS,

It all began with the question of a standard for right that was greater than a given individual's personal morality. We wandered from there to self-evident truths and from there to the founding father's original intent. Far afield, indeed.

Ah, okay. At least I'm trying to follow.

 

Are there self-evident truths? Truths that are independent of preferences, beliefs, existing law, or social norms? Apparently, though many are resisted by both individuals and societies. Slavery is a good example.

Well, I'm not sure that slavery was immoral in the older societies. It sure doesn't seem like it was when it comes to history and what different authors say. No one really spoke out against it. Or do you have any old scripture (older than lets say 400-500 years ago) that stand up against slavery? I think the immorality of slavery is a more modern evolution of society.

 

Dishonesty (particularly in business) is another.

Thre are cultures where dishonesty in business isn't as important, at least not when it comes to dealing with people of different religions. So it's not self-evident to 100% of the human population. It is to the western world and we think so and believe so because we're dipped into that mold since birth. It's learned, not self-evident. I even have a fairly modern book about how to gain success and prosperity by dishonesty in business and that the old mold doesn't fit if you want to win. So it's not self-evident to everyone. (It is to me, but I'm not everyone)

 

National and international law notwithstanding, both continue. Adultery, pornography, child and spouse abuse, government corruption, neighbor steals from neighbor, country steals from country. The truth exists independent of such behavior; even the perpetrators are aware of their own immorality and make excuse for themselves.

Not all perpetrators are aware of what is right and wrong. This taken from one of the definitions of a psychopath: "Psychopaths lack a sense of guilt or remorse for any harm they may have caused others, instead rationalizing the behavior, blaming someone else, or denying it outright."

 

They don't make excuses for doing something wrong, no, they believe they don't do anything wrong and when something goes wrong the blame is one someone else. It's very different from what you said. I've met psychopaths and sociopaths of different kinds. They understand what you're saying when you say that something is wrong, but they don't understand that it is wrong and they don't act according to (in their mind) your rules, they act truly from the extreme selfish position. They don't have a natural and built-in moral code. So in this particular case, morality is defined by society and the majority group, not the individuals desires or lust. Unfortunately you can't make the psychopath understand or follow the common moral codes. Some of them do, because they're intelligent enough to manipulate the situation so in the end they used the people around them and gained what they wanted. In some cases they're not that smart and will reveal their true selfs in their actions.

 

So in the end, morality isn't completely something you necessarily are born with, but something you have to learn. To some degree you have some morality built in, and some you have to learn, and some are not born with the built in basic moral code and have to learn it, and some doesn't have the faculties to even learn it, or they only have the ability to learn it to a certain degree.

 

In this sense, the public, common "morality" has to be established through the majority.

 

Or there are none.

That's very black and white of you. It's like the world only consists of either 1 or 0. There's no 0.5 in your world? That's sad.

 

If morality is built into the system, why then doesn't everyone automatically have it? (1)

 

If morality is only learned, then we have only relativism. (0)

 

But if morality is the result of the complex structure of game theory, then we have localized (semi-absolute) morality, which actually works and is natural. (0.5)

[BuddyFerris]

Are there self-evident truths? ...

Or there are none.

That's very black and white of you. It's like the world only consists of either 1 or 0. There's no 0.5 in your world? That's sad.

 

If morality is built into the system, why then doesn't everyone automatically have it? (1)

 

If morality is only learned, then we have only relativism. (0)

 

But if morality is the result of the complex structure of game theory, then we have localized (semi-absolute) morality, which actually works and is natural. (0.5)

Well stated, and your distinctions are relevant. Might I begin with the last, though, and ask if it really works. The arrival of a localized standard should provide an awareness of right and wrong; that in turn is expected to result in right choices; does it?

 

The game theory approach seems useful for describing how accommodation might be made among participants but leaves undressed the real gut-wrenchers. E.g. abortion rights vs. right to lifers. No accommodation likely; black and white. You can game that one till hell freezes over, but the best results won't provide more than perhaps keeping them away from each other's throats. Much of human ethical conflict is either/or. The game theory may be most useful in describing possibilities and perhaps less so in illuminating how social norms actually came to be.

 

Tell me more.

Buddy

[Dhampir]

There are examples of believers having to resist unjust government throughout the Bible.

 

Buddy

 

References, please.

 

Thanks.

OT: Israel in Egypt as slaves; later in Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar had a policy of king worship that was counter to the personal beliefs of Daniel and the others; resistance should have cost them their lives. The Jews persecuted under Ahasuerus.

NT: Peter and others beaten and imprisoned for teaching and healing; "We should obey God rather than men." Stephen was killed, John the Baptist beheaded, Paul was beaten. Jesus was killed. Others. OK?

Well, this one looks easy enough for me to field, provided someone doesn't do so by the time I post this.

 

1. Israelites owned slaves, not only from amongst themselves, but from people of other nations. This isn't a matter of injustice, but of actions that were only unjust when directed against the 'chosen people'. " We can make slaves of our own, but you can't make slaves of us"

 

2. How is this resisting unjust government, when worship of some entity was the standard of the theocracy the Israelites had developed, and death was the penalty for failure to comply? The Babylonians had their way of doing things, and the Israelites had theirs. Sure, Nebuchadnezzar was wrong, but that doesn't make the others right.

 

If anything, the first two seem to point to a definite selective morality among the Israelites.

 

3. Peter and others prosecuted for sedition: most likely it was the political unrest that caused these actions (not the ones you describe, unless they actually happened). Don't remember much about Steven, John's beheading as I recall (at the behest of Herod's daughter, if I'm not mistaken), had little to do with government, and Jesus died in order to fulfill the 'divine plan', which to me doesn't speak of resistance at all, and Paul, if the events of his death are credible, seems like another case of sedition; you'll be prosecuted anywhere in the world for stirring political unrest whether the gov't is unjust or not.

 

I s'pose y' got one, but then, I've not really studied the persecution under Ahasuerus. Ordinarily I don't argue the bible, cuz' I'm not that versed in it.

[Ouroboros]

Well stated, and your distinctions are relevant. Might I begin with the last, though, and ask if it really works. The arrival of a localized standard should provide an awareness of right and wrong; that in turn is expected to result in right choices; does it?

 

The game theory approach seems useful for describing how accommodation might be made among participants but leaves undressed the real gut-wrenchers. E.g. abortion rights vs. right to lifers. No accommodation likely; black and white. You can game that one till hell freezes over, but the best results won't provide more than perhaps keeping them away from each other's throats. Much of human ethical conflict is either/or. The game theory may be most useful in describing possibilities and perhaps less so in illuminating how social norms actually came to be.

 

Tell me more.

Buddy

If you bring up the question about abortion rights and the right of life you're getting into deep water. First of all the Bible is extremely vague on this issue, for instance the Bible claims that the life is in the blood, and biologically the fetus doesn't produce blood until the third week, so abortion up till the 3rd week should then be completely valid and moral according to the Bible. If you bring up the quote from the Bible "before you were form in the womb I made you", you have to argue that this verse is not a "prophecy" about Jesus, but a reference to all children and also give a reasonable answer to why God do thousands (maybe millions) of natural rejections/abortions every year (if the fetus is misformed or something else went wrong the body will automatically reject the fetus - according to God's moral plan?) So in the end the Bible doesn't not give a better answer to this question, but opens only more questions. You have to go to sociopolitical and cultural augments to find your answers here.

 

Much of human ethical conflicts are not either or. For instance that's why you have a jury of 12 members to decide if a crime was committed or not. On the surface two cases can look the same, but get different outcomes. It is not black and white at all. Only moral preachers paint the picture black-and-white because people sleep better when they think the world is easy to understand. But the world is not.

 

You have justifiable killings in our society. A burglar get killed in action, when he enters a house. The house owner show him in defense, and that is not murder.

 

Soldiers kill in action, and it's not murder.

 

We execute murderers, but the execution itself isn't called murder.

 

And so on.

 

It isn't "either/or". We decide based on context and many parameters, and sometimes we can't even be sure what shade of gray we see.

 

Would you think a woman that do abortion would deserve punishment? Should she be executed for murdering the fetus? What about a rape victim? Or a girl raped by her uncle? Or a woman with a sickness that will die unless they abort? It is a gray zone.

 

To use reason here, we have to understand that abortion has to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis and not either/or basis.

 

Is theft really a theft if you steal back someone that was stolen from you? Is it a theft if you paid for something and the other one kept it away from you, but you took it by breaking in? Was a theft justified if you saved someone's life by doing it?

 

What about lying? What if your family were hiding, and you were tortured to reveal their position, would you lie or would you tell the truth and let them die?

 

What about if you have a choice in a war zone to either save 10 people or save 5 people, but you can't save both? Who will you choose to save?

[dano]

Every knee shall bow.

 

Nope... no hint of theocratic rule there.

Looks like a major improvement to me; enough to make even Dano happy once he got over there being a heaven.

Buddy

 

Buddy!

I don't deny a possible heaven, it just that I believe a benevolent God wouldn't make it necessary to turn ourselves into religion spouting simpletons to get there!

[Grandpa Harley]

Every knee shall bow.

 

Nope... no hint of theocratic rule there.

 

And before someone says something dumb.... the word 'bow' is pronounced 'boe' and means to bend, not pronounced 'bauw' - meaning a dipping of the head to indicate reverence, respect or recognition of rank... it's fancy English for 'kneel' (God's pox on the educational systems of today!)

 

It's just one of the phone book (Lower Manhattan) thick list of things that irritate me... Some cone head sayin' 'knees don't bauw'... there are enough things in this world to make me knuckles itch...

[webmdave]

There are examples of believers having to resist unjust government throughout the Bible.

 

Buddy

 

References, please.

 

Thanks.

OT: Israel in Egypt as slaves; later in Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar had a policy of king worship that was counter to the personal beliefs of Daniel and the others; resistance should have cost them their lives. The Jews persecuted under Ahasuerus.

NT: Peter and others beaten and imprisoned for teaching and healing; "We should obey God rather than men." Stephen was killed, John the Baptist beheaded, Paul was beaten. Jesus was killed. Others. OK?

 

No, not okay. You have shown, poorly, that some of the mythological stories in your holy book are there to justify the Jews for being disobedient to the established God-ordained powers (Romans 13). However, you haven't shown how these little legends support your statement about believers having to resist unjust government throughout the Bible. That idea is a ridiculous twisting of the obvious intent of these made up stories. It's not about resisting unjust government, it's about remaining faithful Jews. Oh, and ALL the stories you listed are JEWS -- except for Paul.

 

OK?

[Grandpa Harley]

Notice he doesn't mention Jewish persecutions by Christians... which started just after Nicea and moved to Imperial sanction after Theodosius...

[webmdave]

Every knee shall bow.

 

Nope... no hint of theocratic rule there.

Looks like a major improvement to me; enough to make even Dano happy once he got over there being a heaven.

Buddy

 

Maybe you have a point, Buddy. Spending a little time on your knees probably really gets you going.

 

 

The point, my mystical clown, is that THERE IS NO FREEDOM IN YOUR WORLDVIEW! It's a fucking dictatorship!

 

 

 

Buddy. All you are doing is parroting the fundamentalist-evangelical rhetoric, almost verbatim. You have swallowed all that position and quite apparently are unable to see things from any other perspective. You have made it painfully apparent that your opinions on every one of these not-even-Biblical-but-almost-gospel-in-American-churchianity rabbit trails is impervious to further reflection beyond regurgitation. You are here to evangelize, and nothing more. You have continually said you are only here to talk about this nonsense because Christians are boring, but that's not it at all. You see yourself as some great apostle to the apostates.

 

Well, congratulate yourself. Pat yourself on the back. Feel good about your efforts! You have presented your perspective -- again, one which nearly all of us could puke up without much thought, at moment's notice -- so why the disingenuousness? Why not just admit that you are here to witness to your magical faith? Why is it so difficult for someone who believes in absolute standards based on a Bronze-Age mentality, mired in magic and too much wine, to be transparent and honest.

 

You don't seem to realize, Buddy, that many people like you have been here over the past six years. All the arm-chair philosophizing, parroting of religious propaganda, re-writing of history, re-interpreting everything, denigrating science, promoting magic, and self-righteously hinting at hell for those who don't have the right opinion about your religion, does nothing buy reveal how strong is the religious meme. You and the Islamic have much in common. You are brothers in dogmatism, yet you can present ZERO evidence that your god exists anywhere outside your crippled imaginations. You rejoice in the advancement of your religion and the destruction of all those opposed to your religion. You have no choice but to rejoice like that, because your god commands it, and you know your god is good, even though you have no idea how your god setting up a silly "plan" that included torturing most of humanity forever makes a damned bit of sense.

 

Buddy, you have presented a wonderful picture of how mind-numbing and destructive to rational thought your religion is.

 

Thank you.

[Deva]

Notice he doesn't mention Jewish persecutions by Christians... which started just after Nicea and moved to Imperial sanction after Theodosius...

 

Grandpa, I am sure he would say that the "state" church did that and not the "real" church, which is evidently wherever two or more are gathered together... Sorry, we can't use real church history to win on this one.

[Grandpa Harley]

Clifford's Tower in York was a lynch mob... that's Buddy's definiton of 'church'... same with Athanasius' crowd in Alexandria. The Roman soldiers didn't stop them storming the prison and flaying the Arians alive... again two or three gathered together, doing what the Lord would do if he had the facts of the matter.

 

In fact the history of 'THE Church' and the congregation (don't you love semantics... means you can make a word mean anything you like... I think Texan lawyers are less cynical than our evangelist in many respects) tends to be blood soaked. From Christian mobs tarring and feathering Jews in the 1920s all the way back to them killing each other over whether the dying man-god was fully divine, just a teacher, wholly divine, or not even flesh....

 

I'm British of Irish ancestry. Religion in my family has been more brother versus brother than the American Civil War. So don't tell me about the nobility of the church in any sense you want to call it.

[alanh]

We have left the state church behind,

Your blinders are showing again, you no doubt approve of the "faith-based" policies of the present US administration. Separation of church and state is a continuous struggle, unfortunately we are suffering from an administration that sees that separation as an obstacle to be worked around. However its not that the current administration is actually religious, they are just taking advantage of a proven means of social control. If the US government funnels taxpayer money to inner city churches would you protest?

 

The problem with your argument is if you believe that your particular holy book contains the one true external standard for human morality, then you are going to want a government that follows your holy book. That's just the nature of the beast: as a Christian you want a "kingdom" here on Earth that reflects the "kingdom" described in the Bible. As you said there's nothing in the Bible about democracy or civil liberties.

thanks to the framers of our constitution, so that we may believe as we will, honestly.

But you don't want us to believe as we will, remember? You believe the Bible is the "standard for right that [is] greater than a given individual's personal morality." If the Bible taught that one should respect other's beliefs and to live and let live that would be OK, but that's not what it says.

[Sparrow]

 

...text...

 

...text...

 

You don't seem to realize, Buddy, that many people like you have been here over the past six years . All the arm-chair philosophizing, parroting of religious propaganda, re-writing of history, re-interpreting everything, denigrating science, promoting magic, and self-righteously hinting at hell for those who don't have the right opinion about your religion, does nothing buy reveal how strong is the religious meme. You and the Islamic have much in common. You are brothers in dogmatism, yet you can present ZERO evidence that your god exists anywhere outside your crippled imaginations. You rejoice in the advancement of your religion and the destruction of all those opposed to your religion. You have no choice but to rejoice like that, because your god commands it, and you know your god is good, even though you have no idea how your god setting up a silly "plan" that included torturing most of humanity forever makes a damned bit of sense.

 

...text...

 

 

Bravo!!! Encore!!!

 

This one, like every other passing brain-washed religious moron, seems to think that they'll be the first to say something staggering and genuinely new.

 

This one is special though. He seems to think that if he persists he'll somehow manage to be different. What he doesn't understand is that after a while, what looked like tenacity and perserverance, starts to be perceived as stupidity and pig-headed stubborness - and he's well past that point now.

 

By now, a smarter, more self-aware person would have well and truly disappeared, but sadly, talking to this guy seems to only encourage him.

 

Thanks

 

Spatz

[Grandpa Harley]

"talking to this guy seems to only encourage him."

 

I seem to remember a definition of 'troll' that contained something like that line...

[BuddyFerris]

If you bring up the question about abortion rights and the right of life you're getting into deep water. First of all the Bible is extremely vague on this issue, for instance the Bible claims that the life is in the blood, and biologically the fetus doesn't produce blood until the third week, so abortion up till the 3rd week should then be completely valid and moral according to the Bible. If you bring up the quote from the Bible "before you were form in the womb I made you", you have to argue that this verse is not a "prophecy" about Jesus, but a reference to all children and also give a reasonable answer to why God do thousands (maybe millions) of natural rejections/abortions every year (if the fetus is misformed or something else went wrong the body will automatically reject the fetus - according to God's moral plan?) So in the end the Bible doesn't not give a better answer to this question, but opens only more questions. You have to go to sociopolitical and cultural augments to find your answers here.

 

Much of human ethical conflicts are not either or. For instance that's why you have a jury of 12 members to decide if a crime was committed or not. On the surface two cases can look the same, but get different outcomes. It is not black and white at all. Only moral preachers paint the picture black-and-white because people sleep better when they think the world is easy to understand. But the world is not.

 

You have justifiable killings in our society. A burglar get killed in action, when he enters a house. The house owner show him in defense, and that is not murder.

 

Soldiers kill in action, and it's not murder.

 

We execute murderers, but the execution itself isn't called murder.

 

And so on.

 

It isn't "either/or". We decide based on context and many parameters, and sometimes we can't even be sure what shade of gray we see.

 

Would you think a woman that do abortion would deserve punishment? Should she be executed for murdering the fetus? What about a rape victim? Or a girl raped by her uncle? Or a woman with a sickness that will die unless they abort? It is a gray zone.

 

To use reason here, we have to understand that abortion has to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis and not either/or basis.

 

Is theft really a theft if you steal back someone that was stolen from you? Is it a theft if you paid for something and the other one kept it away from you, but you took it by breaking in? Was a theft justified if you saved someone's life by doing it?

 

What about lying? What if your family were hiding, and you were tortured to reveal their position, would you lie or would you tell the truth and let them die?

 

What about if you have a choice in a war zone to either save 10 people or save 5 people, but you can't save both? Who will you choose to save?

HanS,

Downloading #6 of 164 emails from the #!$@@# office; I've got time to respond.

 

We can do each case you describe, but there's a prep point I need. You're absolutely correct at the second level of detail, if the first is the general standard. We probably agree to the necessity of adjustment for circumstance and degree questions; my curiosity arises regarding the prior premise. For instance, don't kill people. That's the first level premise; a category and generalized behavioral requirement statement. Subsequently, we can ask the questions of justifiable homicide, self defense, defense of country, execution for capital crimes, accidental death, negligent homicide. Without the first level premise, the subsequent questions become either unanswerable or foundational, not refinement of the general. Absent the standard, seems like every act must be evaluated from scratch. It's the first outline level I'm looking for, before the second makes sense. Sensible?

 

Have a good family day off, if you get this one.

Buddy

[BuddyFerris]

This one, like every other passing brain-washed religious moron, seems to think that they'll be the first to say something staggering and genuinely new.

 

This one is special though. He seems to think that if he persists he'll somehow manage to be different. What he doesn't understand is that after a while, what looked like tenacity and perserverance, starts to be perceived as stupidity and pig-headed stubborness - and he's well past that point now.

 

By now, a smarter, more self-aware person would have well and truly disappeared, but sadly, talking to this guy seems to only encourage him.

 

Thanks

 

Spatz

Good morning, Sparrow.

I came here for the conversation, not conversion. Feel free to participate.

 

I'm well aware that the regulars here have experience with Christians, mostly negative from the accounts. I didn't come to change their opinion about Christians. I came strictly for my own benefit, intellectual and relational. If you would prefer that I not post here, try not responding on the thread. Should that be the consensus, I'll be out of folks with whom to swap thoughts, and will by default be gone.

 

I hope the conversation will be mutually beneficial; perhaps thought provoking, perhaps a way to pass time or a place to vent. I'd prefer a little less adversarial, but otherwise, we're good. I don't need enemies, nor do I need to win. Like everyone else, I need to think and am provoked to do so by folks who think differently than I.

 

Buddy

[BuddyFerris]

Every knee shall bow.

 

Nope... no hint of theocratic rule there.

 

And before someone says something dumb.... the word 'bow' is pronounced 'boe' and means to bend, not pronounced 'bauw' - meaning a dipping of the head to indicate reverence, respect or recognition of rank... it's fancy English for 'kneel' (God's pox on the educational systems of today!)

 

It's just one of the phone book (Lower Manhattan) thick list of things that irritate me... Some cone head sayin' 'knees don't bauw'... there are enough things in this world to make me knuckles itch...

The obvious benefit of an international forum... thanks, Grandpa.

BF

[Grandpa Harley]

Enlightened self interest...

[Legion]

Like everyone else, I need to think and am provoked to do so by folks who think differently than I.

Then please think about this Buddy. Where do we obtain an external moral standard?

[Deva]

 

Yes, Buddy, and you also said "Be patient on the issue of self-evident truth." and we are still waiting.