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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 121 responses total. |
twenex
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response 50 of 121:
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Feb 15 13:43 UTC 2006 |
If there were more real Christians who believed in a realistically-portrayed
OT God, instead of those "Christians" who believed in a "vengeful OT God",
*perhaps* there wouldn't be so much anti-Semitism amongst them.
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fudge
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response 51 of 121:
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Feb 15 13:46 UTC 2006 |
"realistically portrayed"?? good grief jeff where the fuck did you pull that
out of? :) [sorry, couldn't let you get away with that :P ]
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twenex
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response 52 of 121:
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Feb 15 13:51 UTC 2006 |
Huh?
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fudge
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response 53 of 121:
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Feb 15 13:58 UTC 2006 |
how can you realistically portray something no-one can see?
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twenex
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response 54 of 121:
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Feb 15 14:04 UTC 2006 |
By portraying Him as merciful and not "vengeful". Obviously.
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fudge
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response 55 of 121:
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Feb 15 14:13 UTC 2006 |
and where did the "realistic" part come into it? :P
and are you saying believers should ignore unconfortable bits of the sacred
texts, to reconcile the scriptures with accepted morality? jerico wasn't wiped
to give the jews a home, just 'cos they pissed him off? ;)
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twenex
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response 56 of 121:
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Feb 15 14:15 UTC 2006 |
No, I'm saying the portrayal of God in the "OT" as merely vengeful is a
typical Christian misinterpretation of the Scriptures.
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fudge
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response 57 of 121:
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Feb 15 15:09 UTC 2006 |
so he *is* vengeful and petty, just not *all* the time?
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twenex
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response 58 of 121:
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Feb 15 15:16 UTC 2006 |
Who said "petty"?
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fudge
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response 59 of 121:
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Feb 15 15:26 UTC 2006 |
I did. That's what being vengeful for perceived slights is... ;)
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twenex
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response 60 of 121:
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Feb 15 15:33 UTC 2006 |
Who said they're perceived? We're talking about God...
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marcvh
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response 61 of 121:
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Feb 15 15:46 UTC 2006 |
My main point is that not even all Christians can agree on a functional
definition of "who exactly is a Christian?" Catholics have a different
view from fundamentalist Protestants and yet another view is held by
liberal Protestants, and so on. This leaves little hope for any kind
of consistent definition of "who exactly is an x?" for various religious
values of x. It gets even more complicated if you consider that not all
religions are mutually exclusive.
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fudge
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response 62 of 121:
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Feb 15 16:05 UTC 2006 |
re#60: again, I did, you need to accept that I do not take the scriptures as
fact, but I can have my interpretation of what is said...
crap, think how animated it would get in front of a few pints :)
<fudge starts sharpening the blades>
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rcurl
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response 63 of 121:
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Feb 15 16:49 UTC 2006 |
(This discussion has degenerated into proving the contention in "Why can't
we all be Japanese?")
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tod
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response 64 of 121:
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Feb 15 17:45 UTC 2006 |
I have a cousin in Germany that recently gave birth to a boy. She was going
to name him "David" because its a very nice name for a boy. Instead, she
named him something like "Dennis" because she was afraid the anti-semitism
may ruin his opportunities in life. She's not a Jew. That's just how things
work in people's minds.
When I hear somebody talking about "saving" and "salvation", I want to break
their fuckin nose cuz they've never spent a day wondering if they could wind
up hanging from a tree for being a Jew or negro.
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happyboy
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response 65 of 121:
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Feb 15 17:49 UTC 2006 |
"merciful ot god," jeff?
tell it to the cannanites. :P~~~
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tod
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response 66 of 121:
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Feb 15 17:59 UTC 2006 |
I've got nothing against say..the evangelicals that came over from Germany.
I just have a problem when some gomer that can't even run a baseball team
thinks the whole country deserves to hear about his ideas on science.
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kingjon
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response 67 of 121:
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Feb 15 19:31 UTC 2006 |
Re #48: First, I believe that there is such a thing as absolute truth. If a
proposition is true, then its inverse is false. (In other words, I am most
certainly *not* a relativist.) Second, I believe in God because I've met him
and I know him (in a certain small, very limited way). And by "God" in that
last sentence I mean the God that Christians worship -- I'm not going to waste
disk space and inflame tempers by listing titles. I have since demonstrated to
my satisfaction the truth of the testable parts of the Christian confession.
Re #49: I don't know where you got that impression.
Christ most certainly did *not* reject the Old Testament; Matthew 5:17-18 (in
the NIV translation) records him as saying, "Do not think that I have come to
abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill
them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest
letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law
until everything is accomplished."
Loving one's neighbor and believing in God's vengeance are not mutually
exclusive.
Re #61: Christians -- Catholics and Protestants, at least -- all believe that
they are local "chapters" of a larger organization that is metaphysically
called "the Body of Christ", and that while the other denominations may be
wrong where they differ, they can still be Christians [saved, etc.]. In
addition, there's a body of literature (in the sense of "a mass of hisotorical
textual information") that all agree to -- the first several ecumenical
councils, for example. Nearly all, if not all, Christian churches hold to the
Apostles' and Nicene Creeds. They don't have the same sort of relationship
with other religions.
You're right -- it is indeed possible to hold to multiple religions at once. It
is possible to be Jewish and Christian, and possibly others as well.
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rcurl
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response 68 of 121:
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Feb 15 20:36 UTC 2006 |
Re #67 inre "First, I believe that there is such a thing as absolute
truth. If a proposition is true, then its inverse is false."
There are very few "absolute truths". 2 + 2 = 4 is one because we
arbitrarily define it that way and it even has some utility, but even then
one must also define that one is talking about 2s of the same thing. Could
you name some other "absolute truths" that are not definitions that we
make up, and how you determine that they are "absolute truths"?
There are certainly things that have probabilities approaching zero or
1.0, but "absolute" is a much stricter requirement.
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marcvh
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response 69 of 121:
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Feb 15 21:35 UTC 2006 |
Fundamentalism believes in moral relativism when it's convenient for it to
do so, you just have to describe moral relativism in fundamentalist language
by using phrases like "human misunderstanding of God's will" or that the
"hard heart of man" could not accept the position of God. Such arguments
are usually employed when discussing things which most of us would regard as
universally immoral but which the Bible explicitly condones (e.g. slavery,
murdering the innocent, genocide, etc.)
So, the language is different from that of moral relativism, but the
result is not. Everyone is a relativist, but some are more relative
than others. :)
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kingjon
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response 70 of 121:
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Feb 15 21:41 UTC 2006 |
Re #68:
So you deny the existence of most absolute truths. Absolute truths are not
necessarily universally accepted; I was just reminding my readers that I have
no axioms in common with relativism (which claims that "what's true for me is
true for me, and what's true for you is true for you"). I would say that "God
exists" is an absolute truth (not that "God" can be finitely described); I
accept that you don't believe that, but that's your problem, not mine.
Re #69:
Not in my book. A relativist is someone who denies the existence of absolute
truth (or of absolute truth in religious matters). I don't deny that there are
some truths that are relevant only to some portions of the population.
The strictest form of relativism isn't self-consistent. To summarize it:
For all X, if X is a universal statement, X is false.
Unfortunately for relativists, this itself is a universal statement.
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marcvh
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response 71 of 121:
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Feb 16 00:15 UTC 2006 |
By that definition nobody is a relativist, which doesn't make for a very
useful model. I'd say relativists as we're talking about here claim that
humans understand and evaluate beliefs and behaviors only in terms of
their historical and cultural context. For example, when a biblical
literalist tries to explain that it was OK for the Israelites to kill
all of the Canaanites in a brutal genocidal slaughter, but it's not OK
to commit genocidal slaughter today because things are different, he is
being a relativist.
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keesan
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response 72 of 121:
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Feb 16 00:36 UTC 2006 |
Absolute truth: kingjon believes there is a God.
Inverse of 2+2 = 1/4
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kingjon
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response 73 of 121:
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Feb 16 00:51 UTC 2006 |
Re #71: And by that definition nearly everyone is a relativist, which means
you've turned a perfectly good word into a meaningless one.
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marcvh
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response 74 of 121:
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Feb 16 01:12 UTC 2006 |
I'd say most people are moral pragmatists, taking a middle ground
somewhere between moral relativism and moral absolutism.
A biblical literalist might chooses to be relativistic on issues like
slavery and genocide and human sacrifice, but choose to be abolutist on
issues like two adult men having consensual anal sex. A secular
liberal, conversely, might be more likely to take an absolute position
against genocide but relativistic on sodomy.
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