Gamera

[QUOTE=TomboyMom]You are suffering from a "back formation" imputing your ethics (which derive from the New Testament ironically enough) into a time and culture when they did not exist. So, the Hebrews, like everybody else at that time, would have killed all the men and enslaved the women as a matter of course anyway. These were barbaric people, like everybody was at the time. God slowly separated Israel from other barbarous nations and set them on the road that led to the empathetic ethics of the NT. Don't you think it curious that it was only in Christian ethics that the idea that you should love your enemy arose, and Christianity derives directly from Judaism and the very texts you are criticizing as unethic.

Focus on my words: Jesus taught we should love our ENEMIES. And I suspect you don't agree with that even now. It's a difficult teaching, unique in history.

Gamera

We don't need the OT for that. Historical analysis indicates that up until the rise of Christianity, even "civilized" nations like the Greeks and Romans gave no moral consideration to outsiders. Greeks felt no compunction about enslaving non-Greeks. It was just a matter of getting away with it. And Romans felt no compunction committing genocide. They despised non-Romans.

Honestly the idea that people lived in harmony and peace is pure nostalgia. People were viscious and happily so until Judaism arose and began to require moral consideration as a universal.

Dina Noun

And Christians felt no compunction about enslaving non-Christians, even up into the 1600s.

Just look at the English colony of Virginia. Those Christians held that it was okay to have someone as a slave only if that person wasn't a Christian. So white slave owners had to choose between converting blacks to Christianity - in keeping with the Great Commission from Jesus Christ, their Lord and Savior, Himself - or continuing to reap the economic benefits of free, manual labor. The white Christians didn't do too well: greed won out in general. It wasn't until laws were passed that said if a black person was converted to Christianity that he could still be kept as a slave that the white slaveowners began en masse spreading "The Good News" to their black "property". Very Christian of your forefathers, wasn't it!

TomboyMom

[QUOTE=Gamera] So it was O.K. for God to command his followers to make extra sure to murder all the babies, cuz that was the kind of thing they did all the time anyway? And that was O.K. cuz it led them on the road that led to Christianity? Frankly that's completely f*d up, especially for the babies getting murdered.

TomboyMom

And so does God, apparently, at least as described in the bible. In this respect his morals are not better than the most barbarian of the ancients, probably worse.

If you consider slaughtering babies a moral universal, that is.

sunspark

Once again - are we surprised? - we see Gamera and Sheshbazzar trying to "defend" their god by saying the equivalent of "they had it coming", "God didn't mean it", "I don't see you doing anything about it" and "you're just pissed off with God". Is that all you got? Pu-lease.

Sheshbazzar

Before it slips away, Gamera was referring to "rich happy people", in reference to previous posts in this thread that argued the position that we become what we are as a result of what we "suffer", more particularly those individual circumstances that shape any particular individuals character, and drive them to become what they are.
Cavendish, Goethe, and Lavoisier "suffered" the particular circumstances of their birth, locations, and times.
Cavendish's biography indicates that his wealth was a primary source of his personal angst, turning him into a very "peculiar", "withdrawn" and rather misanthropic person, far more comfortable with pursuing his intellectual pursuits than interacting with society. Certainly not the type of person that anyone familiar with would mistake for a "rich happy person".
And of the others, and indeed anyone who has ever contributed significantly to humanity, (and also every poster or reader on this board) each has had their own personal challenges and "suffering" (not always obvious, and not always revealed to others) that has made them become what the world sees and remembers them as.
Einstein experienced, suffered and was more than just E=mc2, even as each of us is much more than the sum of the words we post here, and it is what we have experienced and suffered that led us to this site, that motivates and colors our perceptions, and the contents and directions of our posts.
We are a product of the reality that we experience, and of HOW we interpret, and how we react in response to what ever things we experience and "suffer".
We are daily fed massive doses of inaccurate "religious" data, some make serious ethical errors in the processing of that data, in taking statements that they know to be less than factually accurate, and applying them as though they were factually accurate, under the false rationale that "it doesn't make any difference", regarding matters "spiritual and social, that actually make all of the difference that can be made in this world.
Foregoing accurately translating and rendering first, and then interpreting the ancient writings, you engage rather in analyzing them as they have been altered and presented to the world by an apostate political/religious movement.
You adopt their "names", and their terms, because it is "Theologically" and socially expedient, and easier for you to conduct your arguments, by conforming, and going along with, rather than demanding accuracy and faithfulness to the words of the original texts.
But every time you permit another 'lowrd", into your speech or into your writing, to supplant the sacred Name YHWH, The Name of Holy One of Israel, or "gawd" to supplant The Elohim, you are contributing to this worldly religions deception, joining in with them in the perverting the of Scriptures, and the doctoring of the word of life.
They say; "It doesn't make any difference",
And you say; "It doesn't make any difference".
But He says, and we say; "You shall surely put a difference between the Holy and the profane,....... My Name is YHWH"

RUmike

Gamera, is there any reason you ignored my post and Quetzalcoatl's (#103 and #106)? I am very interested in hearing your response. I'm not sure if we caught you between a rock and a hard place and you chose to ignore it, or you actually somehow missed both of our posts.

EthnAlln

Of course he did. No one denies that Einstein suffered, especially after the Nazis put a price on his head in 1933. But he didn't suffer for his equations. He enjoyed them; they were the greatest joy of his life. And he could have created them without any suffering; the suffering was irrelevant to his work, despite what you and Gamera are claiming.

Oh dear, Sheshbazzar, you are beginning to sound like one of those people I'm always suspicious of: those who think that they have the truth and that the overwhelming majority of the world, including most of its scholars, are deliberately or through stupidity unaware of this truth that is so plain to you. I urge you to reflect that the truth may not be so firmly on your side as you believe. As Cromwell said, "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ. Think it possible you may be mistaken." (But they didn't, so he had to pound the hell out of them in battle. What a pity he never paused to wonder if he himself was mistaken!) Human history (especially Christian history) is replete with such examples, such as Luther's solution to the "Jewish problem": Have the Jews assembled and forced to listen to the tenets of Christianity. Then give them a reasonable amount of time (a few months) to reflect and convert. If they prove obdurate and refuse to convert, throw them out of the country. All this to be done after destroying their temples and burning their books.



I suppose you've done your duty by warning us. Speaking only for myself, the warning has fallen on deaf ears, since I can hardly recognize commandments of human origin that are attributed to a being who doesn't exist.

spin

Well, most of this I agree with, right up to the mediaeval suffering claptrap.

Why you necessarily throw the suffering into the equation, I know. You have to assume it otherwise your antiquated religious construction would fall apart. Suffering is a relative term in this day and age. You suffer because your dad won't buy you a gameboy. You suffer because your girlfriend doesn't like to play around. Others suffer for real reasons: you know... real sickness, disease, hardship, war, poverty. This generic suffering stuff is just silly. You should grow up and get over it.

Is there any "religious" data that is accurate in the sense of being meaningful and useful? You assume an answer and have a tendentious argument to follow that assumption. That makes your argument relatively meaningless.

Religious people cannot be ethical. They have no ethical decision process. They abnegate responsibility for ethics and trust in the ethics dictated by their religion. It's understandable that if their religion recommends war, they go to war. If it recommends, killing people, they kill people. A religionist is functionally a rubber stamp for the religion they adhere to.

It's very hard for you from a religious position to say anything meaningful about ethics.

Your understanding of knowing is the major problem here. You suffer from an obvious lack of epistemological background to make such a statement as to what "they know", ie your talking about things you have no way of knowing..

Getting here, you are saying very little as though it had some value, proving to have no sound way to get here, so it's no wonder your statements seem contentless.

I have seen your perverse inaccuracies with regard to translating ancient writings. Beware, poor readers, beware.

I thought religionists had quite a share in the expediency market. Just have a look at the apologetics we see from them here.

One has to work with texts to extract their content as accurately and in as unbiased a manner possible. Religionists of course because of their a priori commitments are usually unable to be either accurate or faithful to the ancient texts. Yes, I've seen your distortions (or perhaps at times even self-deceptions) at work.

You are merely complaining about form. What about the content, man?

And they shall put my name on the children of Israel.
In the temple and in Jerusalem ... I will put my name forever.
In Jerusalem shall my name be forever.

So who are you?


spin