BadBadBad

At Seebs' UberChristian site, I captured this little gem of liberal Christianity on sin and mankind:

Seebs - "People suck."

I've been told that morality doesn't matter because who are we to judge? Who are we to condemn? If Jesus tolerates and forgives, why shouldn't we. Therefore morality is a bad thing. It's just evidence that we're all utterly corrupt and broken. The kid who steals a candy from the stop'n'go is just as immoral as the man that lines up little girls in the school house and goes down the line shooting them one by one in the head. We all suck equally. Who would like to tell me one more time that liberal Christianity is better than fundamentalism? An ugly ideolgy with a pretty mask is not better. It's worse.

Oh, and Seebs tells me he has a solution to this problem of all of us peeps sucking so bad. Maybe he'll share it here with all his friends.

naturalist.atheist

Any one care to take any bets as to what it is?

I wonder if there is a top ten list?

trendkill

I agree with seebs.

BadBadBad

I think you took me out of context there a bit. I was describing Seebs and other's position there, not my own.

By my definition of morality, if Bob does some immoral shit, he's likely to get shit on. That's how Bob is encouraged to not do that again. Otherwise, when Bob rapes and kills Jane, if we care too much about Bob and whether his feelings get hurt or whether poor Bob is punished, next week it might be Susy or maybe Susy's 10 year old daughter.

In Seebs view, who are we to judge Bob? Plus, Jesus won't condemn or judge Bob. Why should we? He'll just forgive Bob. In fact Bob's a pretty good guy. He's just like us. He's a sinner. We're no better than Bob.

trendkill

Yeah, I know. Your position was the opposite, as you reiterated. We are supposed to hate Bob because he did a bad thing that's worse than the bad thing we did, and we hide that behind the euphemism of "teaching him a lesson" or "giving him what he deserves". With seebs, I reject the hatred of Bob, because if we're going to hate people, we should be consistent. Either we hate people who do bad things, or we don't. We don't draw arbitrary lines. And if we hate people who do bad things, then we hate everybody. The alternative is realizing that we don't love people because the manifestation of their selfishness meets some arbitrary standard of badness, but instead simply because they are people.



We don't have to hate Bob to protect other people from him, and I don't think anyone has argued that facing the facts about humanity and evil means we have to pick rape and murder over Bob's hurt feelings.

In my view, also. I don't know what its like to be Bob, and even Bob doesn't realize all the forces that go into Bob's actions. For all we know, it might be about as realistic to expect Bob to stop raping and killing voluntarily as it would to expect someone else to stop being attracted to women.

Again, protecting people from Bob does not require passing judgment on Bob.


Yep. On a fundamental level, we are all selfish, and we all have to deal with what material we have to work with. When you think you're better than someone, that's when you start thinking that it's okay to do evil. Heck, it's even moral to hate. I'm better than him, why shouldn't I hate him? And you know what, there's a lot of other people that I'm better than, too. And pretty soon we've got tribes and warfare and arbitrary prejudices about homosexuality and whatnot. Because why should we tolerate those who we're better than? Why not get rid of the bad and keep the good?

Soul Invictus

I disagree. An ugly ideology with an ugly mask is much worse.

I think the problem with Seebs's position is that he errantly assumes that liberal Christianity tries to equate the quality of immorality actions (stealing candy as compared to killing) like conservate Christianity does, instead of considering them both for what they are, which is immoral.

Conservative Christianity tries to make one "better" than the other whereas liberal Christianity understands that they are both wrong.

Yahzi

Are you operating under the assumption that the difference between stealing candy and shooting children is an arbitrary line?

While I acknowledge that hatred is at best problematic, assking people whose daughters were shot by Bob to not hate him is a vastly greater moral crime than choosing to hate Bob out of sympathy for the families.

JamesBannon

Are both actions wrong? Yes.

Are both actions equivalent? Obviously not since they don't have comparable consequences.

Are both individuals equally culpable? Depends on the maturity of each individual.

Should we hate either individual? No. Hatred is a waste of time, though it is an understandable emotion and not necessarily culpable.

How should we treat each individual? Both require to make reparation (unless they are not responsible for their actions). However, even if both cannot be deemed responsible for their actions the man who shoots the children is dangerous and ought to be incarcerated both for his own safety and for the safety of the general public.

Oh, one more thing: People don't suck. People are people. Anyone who believes that the entire human race is utterly broken should see a psychiatrist.

Styrofoamdeity

I am temporarily closing this thread for discussion with board admins. The thread may be opened at a later time.