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Cavaradossi posted:As previously pointed out, the movement against slavery was very strongly led by Christian thought. God guided us (and Catholic doctrine teaches) not to keep slaves. No, the Bible is ambiguous on the question and can be interpreted as tolerating slavery when people decided they wanted slaves for other reasons or as forbidding slavery when people decided they were against slavery for other reasons. Much like women's rights, LGBT rights, racial equality, etc, a text that's ambiguous enough to be used by both sides and is only retconned into "obviously" supporting enlightenment or progressive ideals by the victors isn't much of a moral guide. From a standpoint of "where do our morals come from" it's telling that the alleged source of Christian morality actually lags social progress and has to be reinterpreted to support ethical norms that we adopted from other lines of reasoning.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:04
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VitalSigns posted:No, the Bible is ambiguous on the question and can be interpreted as tolerating slavery when people decided they wanted slaves for other reasons or as forbidding slavery when people decided they were against slavery for other reasons. People did not decide against slavery for "other reasons", they decided due to their Christian beliefs.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:07
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Cavaradossi posted:If we ignore the bit which contradicts the teaching of Christ, then I don't know how to prove them wrong. An additional complication, of course, is that the Roman system of slavery, while still total dogshit, was closer to serfdom or indentured servitude than the bestial horror we got up to here in America. Endorsing the Roman slavery system, without reservation, would still have been more moral than defending the American system!
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Dec 30, 2014 22:08
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Cavaradossi posted:People did not decide against slavery for "other reasons", they decided due to their Christian beliefs. Cavaradossi posted:If we ignore the bit which contradicts the teaching of Christ, then I don't know how to prove them wrong. Once again, plenty of 'Christians' who felt the Bible fully supported their ownership of slaves, Stop making 'No True Scotsman' fallacies. They'd argue that YOU are the one failing to interpret the Bible properly. But that is the problem, the Bible is purposefully ambiguous.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:08
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Cavaradossi posted:No I am not. The answer to this question is: personal experience; attend Mass; live a life of prayer. Come to the Father through Christ and you will find the truth. Yeah, you really are. Look, I was raised Christian, I have attended not only church but several in-depth church functions throughout my life, and though these experiences ranged from "not moving at all" to "deeply moving", none of them helped convince me of the truthfulness of Christianity. I think you're missing what my goal here is. I'm not interested in finding out which religion makes me feel good. I don't want to know which one is easiest, or the most fun, or would require the fewest lifestyle changes. I want to find out which one is true. There are people deeply moved by Islam, there are people for whom Christianity is no more moving or profound than the Epic of Gilgamesh, and all of these people (who subscribe to a religion of some sort) have what they feel is the backing of the true God of the universe. How am I to sort out true from false? Am I really to rely on my own subjective feelings? Aren't subjective feelings wrong a whole, whole, whole lot of the time? And that's ignoring the fact that, at present, my subjective feelings are pointing me in the direction of agnosticism. You'd stop recommending I listen to that still small voice the moment it pointed away from Christianity, wouldn't you?
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Dec 30, 2014 22:10
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Cavaradossi posted:People did not decide against slavery for "other reasons", they decided due to their Christian beliefs. I don't think you are qualified to make this statement (if you were qualified you wouldn't make it so flatly). Let me tell you about noted Christians Maximilien Robbespierre and Thomas Paine. Re: Gaining Weight - if you're actually serious I would just read a lot and purposefully avoid people like this for genuine advice (I mean, I don't believe in God, but you gotta do your own thing).
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Dec 30, 2014 22:11
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Has this link (its a long one, cutting through a crazy amount of history, scholarship, and bibliography) on the psychology of Christ been posted in this gargantuan thread yet? Its a great one. http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/books/pp/ch3.htm Just fascinating stuff.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:11
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CommieGIR posted:Once again, plenty of 'Christians' who felt the Bible fully supported their ownership of slaves, And plenty who didn't, hence why I said the movement against slavery was very strongly led by Christian thought.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:11
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Cavaradossi posted:People did not decide against slavery for "other reasons", they decided due to their Christian beliefs. I invite you to prove this. The moment I find a single non-Christian abolitionist, will you back down from this claim? e: it's fascinating that you apparently can't figure out a single reason other than strong Christian belief to oppose slavery. And not only because there are parts of the Bible that can be read as pro-slavery. GAINING WEIGHT... fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Dec 30, 2014 |
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Dec 30, 2014 22:12
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:I think you're missing what my goal here is. I'm not interested in finding out which religion makes me feel good. I don't want to know which one is easiest, or the most fun, or would require the fewest lifestyle changes. I want to find out which one is true. Its funny how religion feels like one giant 'Appeal to Emotion', but apparently its perfectly okay to invalidate other people's 'Truth' found in their religions versus one persons 'personal' religion. Cavaradossi posted:And plenty who didn't, hence why I said the movement against slavery was very strongly led by Christian thought. Or disgust at the lack of humanity that is slavery, there was plenty of Non-Christians who spoke out against slavery both during the heyday of the Romans and during the Civil War. I find it worrying that you think a sense of morality and humanity can ONLY be found and motivated by religion. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Dec 30, 2014 |
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Dec 30, 2014 22:12
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CommieGIR posted:Or disgust at the lack of humanity that is slavery, there was plenty of Non-Christians who spoke out against slavery both during the heyday of the Romans and during the Civil War. And traditional (classical) arguments in favour of slavery (principally Aristotle's) are contingent on points of fact and logic that are disproveable - unlike biblical injunctions - so they don't require moral or spiritual authority to be disproven, only information (e.g. I believe it can be shown that people are not 'provided by nature' to be slaves, and that conquered people are not so deficient in reason so as to require total domination by another).
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Dec 30, 2014 22:15
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Cavaradossi posted:No I am not. The answer to this question is: personal experience; attend Mass; live a life of prayer. Come to the Father through Christ and you will find the truth. All modern religions can say this. They're really good at prompting feelings of profound whatever in their congregations, that's why they're still around. What does your particular flavour of Christianity have over the others? P.S. Kyrie: you still haven't explained how a timeless God can think.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:16
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Cavaradossi posted:No I am not. The answer to this question is: personal experience; attend Mass; live a life of prayer. Come to the Father through Christ and you will find the truth. Nope. That's still not answering his question. What makes your religion more "true", as opposed to the literal hundreds of others out there, both extant and extinct? Or, to phrase it another way, what makes you think that yours is the true religion? Were you raised into it? Converted? What was the crux that made you decide "Yes. This is the religion I wish to live my life by." Pesky Splinter fucked around with this message at 22:22 on Dec 30, 2014 |
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Dec 30, 2014 22:19
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CommieGIR posted:Or disgust at the lack of humanity that is slavery, there was plenty of Non-Christians who spoke out against slavery both during the heyday of the Romans and during the Civil War. Of course there were. It's silly to ignore the large movement inspired by Christianity that campaigned against slavery though, and to assert that God must be immoral because not all his followers manage to reach his perfect morality. Yes, Christian thought has developed over the centuries, and the final abolition of slavery was a social change which wasn't instantly laid down in the Gospel at the time of Christ. To pretend that God is therefore immoral because he doesn't physically prevent us from being immoral is a false conclusion. We have free will; we can choose to do immoral acts. American slavery - distinct as someone has said from Roman slavery in many ways - was clearly, by many laws of the Bible, immoral. Saying this does not exclude the fact that it was contrary to other moral codes.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:20
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Pesky Splinter posted:Nope. That's still not answering his question. My answer to this really is: personal experience. Of course that won't be your answer: you are not me!
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Dec 30, 2014 22:21
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Cavaradossi posted:Of course there were. It's silly to ignore the large movement inspired by Christianity that campaigned against slavery though, and to assert that God must be immoral because not all his followers manage to reach his perfect morality. Yes, Christian thought has developed over the centuries, and the final abolition of slavery was a social change which wasn't instantly laid down in the Gospel at the time of Christ. To pretend that God is therefore immoral because he doesn't physically prevent us from being immoral is a false conclusion. We have free will; we can choose to do immoral acts. American slavery - distinct as someone has said from Roman slavery in many ways - was clearly, by many laws of the Bible, immoral. Saying this does not exclude the fact that it was contrary to other moral codes. And yet multiple factions of Christianity justified slavery with the same book you condemn it with. Your 'No True Christian' argument is STILL not working. Cavaradossi posted:My answer to this really is: personal experience. Of course that won't be your answer: you are not me! Right, which is why I pointed out should we really be trusting our emotions to decide if something is true or false? Do you convict a criminal based on evidence or appeal to emotions? Your advice to prove the truth of Christianity to him was to become a Christian, if you feel good, surprise! Christianity is true. But that is the same way ALL OTHER religions work. So, better question is, why are they false? CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Dec 30, 2014 |
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Dec 30, 2014 22:21
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Cavaradossi posted:Of course there were. It's silly to ignore the large movement inspired by Christianity that campaigned against slavery though, and to assert that God must be immoral because not all his followers manage to reach his perfect morality. Yes, Christian thought has developed over the centuries, and the final abolition of slavery was a social change which wasn't instantly laid down in the Gospel at the time of Christ. To pretend that God is therefore immoral because he doesn't physically prevent us from being immoral is a false conclusion. God was able to almost totally stamp out plural marriage from the time of Christ by just saying "hey cut this out". This required no physical force preventing us from marrying many women. But on the issue of slavery He is so ambiguous that it takes Christians almost another two milennia, along with the influence of classical and humanist thought to finally retcon the Bible into barring slavery. Are you missing the point on purpose?
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Dec 30, 2014 22:23
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I mean, we keep saying the bible is ambigious, but it is in reality mostly pro-slavery, unless it's of male adherents.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:24
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Cavaradossi posted:You asked about doctrine. This is doctrine. Confirmed by Christ to his apostles. It doesn't get more truthy than that, in Catholicism. Cavaradossi posted:Not in Catholicism (CCC 552). Dzhay posted:To the various Christians and pseudochristian trolls in this thread: if you're going to go full Plato, does your God not end up being timeless and unchanging? If so, how can it think, or have opinions on whither dicks should go? Dzhay posted:P.S. Kyrie: you still haven't explained how a timeless God can think.  To your previous post, does God have specific opinions on where dicks go? Nah, gently caress that, god doesn't give a poo poo about that stuff. Do what you want, as long as you aren't hurting other people, and preferably make the world a better place at the same time. God's fine with whatever.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:26
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VitalSigns posted:You're not addressing the criticism. "Almost totally"...except for the many people throughout the same two millennia who called themselves Christian and supported polygamy. God doesn't force us to get it right, people still get things wrong.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:27
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fade5 posted:To your previous post, does God have specific opinions on where dicks go? Nah, gently caress that, god doesn't give a poo poo about that stuff. Do what you want, as long as you aren't hurting other people, and preferably make the world a better place at the same time. Go'd fine with whatever. As far as I can see, this claim is substantially more baseless than their's.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:27
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Cavaradossi posted:"Almost totally"...except for the many people throughout the same two millennia who called themselves Christian and supported polygamy. God doesn't force us to get it right, people still get things wrong. Is it God? Or is it People? "No True Christian....."
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Dec 30, 2014 22:28
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fade5 posted:See, you keep saying "in Catholicism", but there are ~800 Million Protestants and ~250 Million Eastern Orthodox Christians who don't follow some of the things in Catholicism. There's plenty of overlap in beliefs sure, but just saying "Catholicism says [x]" doesn't answer the question when the person you're talking to isn't a Catholic. Those answers were of course giving Catholic doctrine, I'm not quite as up on Orthodoxy or all the sorts of Protestantism. Presentation of Catholic doctrine is after all the purpose of this thread!
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Dec 30, 2014 22:29
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CommieGIR posted:Is it God? Or is it People? God of course has answered this by establishing One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:30
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Cavaradossi posted:God of course has answered this by establishing One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. How do you know? Everyone else thinks THEIR religion is true. Cavaradossi posted:Presentation of Catholic doctrine is after all the purpose of this thread! .....Kind of, Kyrie created the thread to berate D&D for not being holy enough by calling us all sociopaths and prophesying that one our dying breath we would convert to Christianity. Catholicism is just his chosen tool to enforce it.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:31
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Cavaradossi posted:And plenty who didn't, hence why I said the movement against slavery was very strongly led by Christian thought.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:32
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CommieGIR posted:How do you know? Everyone else thinks THEIR religion is true. It's a circular argument, it goes nowhere unless you buy into it. Fundamentally, it's the true church because it says it is - and whatever the true church says must be true. For anyone ITT who is curious how Catholicism got itself to this spot, I recommend the work of Brian Tierney - particularly relevant here would be Origins of Papal Infallibility.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:34
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Cavaradossi posted:Of course there were. It's silly to ignore the large movement inspired by Christianity that campaigned against slavery though, and to assert that God must be immoral because not all his followers manage to reach his perfect morality. God isn't immoral because humans don't live up to whatever standards, God is immoral because he specifically condones and instructs where to get slaves and what to do with them.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:36
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Nessus posted:The Church held land with serfs in the middle ages; was slavery less wrong then? Not everything the Church has done was good - before you all start asking me to justify the Inquisition! We are all sinners.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:37
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Cavaradossi posted:My answer to this really is: personal experience. Of course that won't be your answer: you are not me! So, wait, are you contending that Christianity isn't actually true, it's just that you like it the best? Do you think it's important that people be Christian? If not, are you only a Catholic cause it makes you feel good, and not because you think the events and system described therein are actually, factually correct? And that still doesn't explain how taking that same advice (go to the religious service, pray, try to convince yourself it's true) and applying it to Islam or Hinduism would yield the same result even when those religions aren't true. If I came to you and said, "Cav! You were right! I prayed and prayed, and praise be to Allah, I found the one true religion!" you'd think I made a mistake somewhere, right? I didn't land on Christianity.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:37
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CommieGIR posted:How do you know? Everyone else thinks THEIR religion is true. Catholicism is the right one because it's right; if it wasn't right, then it wouldn't be the right one, and since we've already established that it is right, then it can't not be right now can it?  quote:.....Kind of, Kyrie created the thread to berate D&D for not being holy enough by calling us all sociopaths and prophesying that one our dying breath we would convert to Christianity. He also create it to decry society-destroying Modernist concepts like women wearing pants, people being permitted to disagree, and the end of divine right of kings.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:38
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Cavaradossi posted:"Almost totally"...except for the many people throughout the same two millennia who called themselves Christian and supported polygamy. God doesn't force us to get it right, people still get things wrong. Christian plural marriage is an extraordinarily small minority, has been heavily suppressed among Christians since the founding of the Church, and the only major sect that supported it had to (1) write their own sequel to the Bible and (2) was driven out by other Christians and eventually pressured to abandon the practice. If Christian thought had achieved anything like that level of near-universal and immediate success on the slavery question, that would have been a massive achievement and a huge boon to arguments that Christianity has a super-duper divine morality behind it. The miserable performance on the slavery question in comparison, and the huge influence of classical, enlightenment, and humanist thought on the abolitionist movement is a pretty solid blow to any claims of divine inspiration of the Bible in my eyes. What's the point of a moral guide if a ton of important moral questions require you to resolve them some other way and then reinterpret the text to agree? VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Dec 30, 2014 |
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Dec 30, 2014 22:39
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Cavaradossi posted:Not everything the Church has done was good - before you all start asking me to justify the Inquisition! We are all sinners. But, the question stands; was it "OK" then? Because otherwise it seems that religious impulses are not directly leading to the abolition of slavery. Captain_Maclaine posted:He also create it to decry society-destroying Modernist concepts like women wearing pants, people being permitted to disagree, and the end of divine right of kings.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:39
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:If I came to you and said, "Cav! You were right! I prayed and prayed, and praise be to Allah, I found the one true religion!" you'd think I made a mistake somewhere, right? I'd think you went to a pretty peculiar Mass.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:41
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Also, anyone who says that Biblical slavery is different than American slavery is full of loving poo poo (sorry, Nessus). Any system where you own a human being as property and can rape or beat them to death without consequence is not meaningfully different from any other system where you can own human beings and rape them or beat them to death without consequence.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:41
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Cavaradossi posted:Not everything the Church has done was good - before you all start asking me to justify the Inquisition! We are all sinners. The idea of there being a meaningfully centralised medieval 'inquisition' is pretty debunked now anyway. It never really took off as a fully crazy movement in places like Germany. Good book on that would be something like Kieckhefer – Repression of Heresy in Germany or Hamilton The medieval inquisition. (Book recommendations are my way of trying to make this thread less loving crazy). Who What Now posted:Also, anyone who says that Biblical slavery is different than American slavery is full of loving poo poo (sorry, Nessus). Any system where you own a human being as property and can rape or beat them to death without consequence is not meaningfully different from any other system where you can own human beings and rape them or beat them to death without consequence. It would have been conceptualised differently. In some ways American slavery is arguably better (or worse), since it at least tries to give itself the excuse that the slaves aren't people. Disinterested fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Dec 30, 2014 |
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Dec 30, 2014 22:42
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Cavaradossi posted:Of course there were. It's silly to ignore the large movement inspired by Christianity that campaigned against slavery though, and to assert that God must be immoral because not all his followers manage to reach his perfect morality. Yes, Christian thought has developed over the centuries, and the final abolition of slavery was a social change which wasn't instantly laid down in the Gospel at the time of Christ. To pretend that God is therefore immoral because he doesn't physically prevent us from being immoral is a false conclusion. We have free will; we can choose to do immoral acts. American slavery - distinct as someone has said from Roman slavery in many ways - was clearly, by many laws of the Bible, immoral. Saying this does not exclude the fact that it was contrary to other moral codes. Again, it's not that God didn't stop people from owning slaves, it's that he didn't even condemn it in the first place. Sure, people continued to practice polygamy, but there are clear rules against that, so it's easy to call those practitioners out on their sinfulness. With slavery, there isn't that clear rule. In fact, there is seeming approval of it, and even guidelines for how to do the slavery thing properly. I don't buy that God didn't want to put in hardline strictures against slavery cause he thought the whole Jesus thing might not take root if he did. He banished a few things that the pagans of the time held dear, and the religion sure as poo poo survived regardless. No one is trying to argue this: quote:God is therefore immoral because he doesn't physically prevent us from being immoral No one. They are saying that he doesn't even tell people it's immoral in the first place. So please, no more strawmen.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:43
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Cavaradossi posted:I'd think you went to a pretty peculiar Mass. Apparently, so did Cat Stevens
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Dec 30, 2014 22:43
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Nessus posted:"We are all sinners" seems like a great way to shut down argument and justify anything bad in the past with a wave of the hand. Naming a sin does not justify it! But if the position of the Church was that all actions in its name forever had all been right, I think you'd take that as more of a way of shutting down argument. "We are all sinners" means: we don't always, any of us, always do what is right. I don't find that a very controversial position. Neither do I think it condones any particular action of any particular person. It is merely a statement of fact.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:45
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:No one. They are saying that he doesn't even tell people it's immoral in the first place. So please, no more strawmen. Free will requires that God not even tell us that slavery is immoral because He wants us to work it out ourselves. This is also why all alleged revelations are false: God would never interfere with our free will by telling us things so the Bible is a man-made hoax QED.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:45
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