CommieGIR posted:

Man, if the Old Testament is not considered valid, we should really get an editor to hit that book.

CommieGIR posted:

And that is all I was saying. Seriously.

Miltank posted:

It is extremely obvious that he is a historical materialist which is like... really not a productive method.

VitalSigns posted:

Jesus was born centuries after the Old Testament was written so when we're discussing the moral lessons that Jesus taught then no, I'd say that the Old Testament probably isn't going to contain any useful Jesus quotes about anything.

Miltank posted:

you said it terribly, congrats.

Kaal posted:

Well obviously lots of Christians managed it throughout history, and instead used Jesus to justify slavery instead. Too bad the son of God didn't manage to mention "Slavery is bad" anywhere. Real oversight on his part, to be sure.

CommieGIR posted:

The Old Testament falls within the realm of the Christians, even if Christ wasn't in there.

CommieGIR posted:

Fair enough, you're right! But considering Western thought has been far more influenced by political aspirations dressed in the clothes of religion, shouldn't we actually focus on the direct impact of the individuals that utilized his teachings and not Jesus and his 2000+ year political agenda?


Christianity was used to justify the Crusades, which was literally only for the purpose of material gain. Lot of religions have been used to do that.

CommieGIR posted:

From the guy who cannot take responsibility for the idea that his religion has done harm as well as good.


The Old Testament falls within the realm of the Christians, even if Christ wasn't in there.


The difference between you and me: I can accept that atheists do bad things, like Pol Pot and Stalin. You cannot even come to terms with the idea that your own faith has ALSO been used to do and justify bad things. Well done.

VitalSigns posted:

If you're going to take quotes from the Old Testament to prove that Christianity is evil, you would earn more as a fox news anchor pulling random Koran quotes to justify condemning Muslims.

Sinnlos posted:

So Jesus does matter to the modern day through his direct and indirect influence on Western thought and history.

Miltank posted:

Christians diddo many terrible things. I reserve the right to call a Christian's faith lukewarm, but that doesn't mean they aren't "christian" in the descriptive sense.

CommieGIR posted:

Fair enough, you're right! But considering Western thought has been far more influenced by political aspirations dressed in the clothes of religion, shouldn't we actually focus on the direct impact of the individuals that utilized his teachings and not Jesus and his 2000+ year political agenda?


Christianity was used to justify the Crusades, which was literally only for the purpose of material gain. Lot of religions have been used to do that.

Miltank posted:

Christians diddo many terrible things. I reserve the right to call a Christian's faith lukewarm, but that doesn't mean they aren't "christian" in the descriptive sense.

CommieGIR posted:

The difference between you and me: I can accept that atheists do bad things, like Pol Pot and Stalin. You cannot even come to terms with the idea that your own faith has ALSO been used to do and justify bad things. Well done.

CommieGIR posted:

I don't think anyone was arguing that religion does not influence peoples decisions.

CommieGIR posted:

The difference between having an impact on world history and


Is that plenty of history did not involve him at all. Just because someone used their religion as a rallying cry or a call to arms does not make Jesus the motivator.

Crowsbeak posted:

Also the people who were abolitionists had material reasons to be against slavery right? They had material reason to risk life and limb bringing men to freedom?

Disinterested posted:

You are so bad at your own ideology that you may as well join the other side to inflict maximum damage.

Badger of Basra posted:

CommieGIR posted:

I don't think anyone was arguing that religion does not influence peoples decisions.

The argument is whether it can be used to justify bad moral decisions as well as good ones.

ikanreed posted:

The core thesis I'm making is that the solid majority of moral imperatives set down in the bible are either meaningless in the modern era, or now viewed as actively immoral.

Jesus' words don't really matter to the modern world, and have to be stretched extraordinarily to fit much of anything.

Starving Autist posted:

The Old Testament isn't "supposed" to matter for Christians, but that doesn't stop them from using it whenever it's convenient to justify their bigotry. In theory it's not supposed to matter; in practice it actually does.

Sinnlos posted:

The argument is that the words and teaching of Jesus do not matter in the modern world. This is demonstrably false, due the historic impact his existence and words have had.

VitalSigns posted:

Yeah, then we should probably argue that Christians who do that are misinterpreting their faith rather than agreeing with Fred Phelps and trying to convince Christians that he's right and their faith calls them to be bigots.

Starving Autist posted:

Oh come on, just earlier you were saying that slavers did not count as Christian, because slavery is un-Christian, despite it being explicitly endorsed by scripture.

CommieGIR posted:

You are Miltank are the ones arguing I'm a materialist, I am not arguing from that standpoint.

The question is whether abolitionists where morally outraged with slavery sans Christianity or not. The argument made by Miltank was that you HAVE to be Christian to be an abolitionist.

Apparently Atheists, Deists, and others cannot be morally outraged with slavery.

CommieGIR posted:

I accept that premise, yes. But my argument was that most of the historical impact that was created by his words and teachings can be traced to the efforts and political ideology of those that wielded it, not Jesus himself.

Crowsbeak posted:

Nope, but they certainly were not the base of the abolitionist movement, or even a significant minority.

Sinnlos posted:

I can almost see the goalposts... moving!

SedanChair posted:

I don't think being anti-gay or anti-abortion ought to be "extraordinarily" Christian positions, after all there's a lot about those patriarchal, controlling ideas in the Old Testament and the bullshit Paul was making up as he went, but really none in the sayings of this esoteric Master we see quoted occasionally.

In any case, sure, pragmatism is a guide for creating and executing policies; but without the code of ethics provided largely by the words of Jesus, Western civilization would have no framework. Before Jesus, it was a strange idea that people should pay attention to sick people, or poor people, or prisoners or outsiders of any kind, really. We just took it for granted that you butchered those people outside the city gates as you deemed it necessary, and looked after your own family and your own state. But because of the cultural virus of the words of Jesus, we now have a framework of human rights. Liberals in power may only allude to these rights insincerely, or intending that they be applied unequally in practice, but nonetheless they do say the words. In fact most of us as citizens, if we fall for war fever, do so for humanitarian reasons that have been fabricated for us to believe in.

One could even argue that in the United States, all political arguments based in ethics pit two religious worldviews against each other: the first, a Christian worldview that seeks to help others and live a life in balance and free of ostentation, and the second a brutal neo-Roman state paganism where manifestations of strength and power are worshiped as gods, and the weak are to be deplored and further exploited. Very often, self-identifying "Christians" fall into the latter category.

Sinnlos posted:

I can almost see the goalposts... moving!

VitalSigns posted:

Isn't this going to be true for any philosophy? It's not like Confucius lived for 8,000 years and become the Emperor of China and the ruler of all Buddhist states and personally did every important thing that his philosophy influenced.

If that's your standard for historical impact then what would actually qualify?

CommieGIR posted:

You are Miltank are the ones arguing I'm a materialist, I am not arguing from that standpoint.

The question is whether abolitionists where morally outraged with slavery sans Christianity or not. The argument made by Miltank was that you HAVE to be Christian to be an abolitionist.

joat mon posted:

A good post.

Miltank posted:

You argued that abolitionists used Christianity as a means to an end which is a standard materialist reading of history. Your line of thought about historical abolitionism without Christianity also led me to believe this because it was very materialistic.

VitalSigns posted:

Maybe he thought that "what you do to the least among you, you're doing to god" was explicit enough since obviously no one is going to say it'd be cool to whip god in the gold mines.

Your argument seems to assume that Jesus actually was supernatural and that he knew the future and how Southern gentlemen would twist his words 1800 years later and therefore should have known to be more explicit, which is a weird thing to do. You're adding in all kinds of assumptions to avoid taking his words at face value.

There's really no way to reconcile slavery with Jesus' teachings of charity and humanity and turning the other cheek and treating everyone like your family or like God. Obviously people are going to try because slavery is profitable, but those people are demonstrably wrong.

Kaal posted:

More like a moronic post. Anyone trying to separate Christianity from "The Cruel Romans" is living in a fairy tale. Christianity is essentially the Romanization of some fairly brutal varieties of tribal monotheism. It was a populist, suburban religion that was intentionally civilized and adopted by the Roman state.

CommieGIR posted:

Your argument being that you have to be Christian to be an abolitionist. Which is demonstrably false. It still took legal viewpoints to completely dismantle slavery, and there is too many Christians on both sides of the pro/con field of slavery to say that your religion was the sole reponsible motivator.

Crowsbeak posted:

More like took over the Roman State.

Starving Autist posted:

The Old Testament isn't "supposed" to matter for Christians, but that doesn't stop them from using it whenever it's convenient to justify their bigotry. In theory it's not supposed to matter; in practice it actually does.

Who What Now posted:

Sure there is, by not considering slaves to be real people to whom those teachings don't apply or by not seeing slavery as inherently wrong or immoral. Which is exactly what many Christians thought for a very long time, and while you and I understand this makes those people immoral assholes who have a warped interpretation of scripture, it doesn't make them not Christian.

Who What Now posted:

And I'm not saying Jesus should have seen American slavery coming and spoken out against it, I'm saying he more than likely had views more in line with the culture he grew up in, that slavery wasn't inherently wrong, and not our modern ones which is why he didn't explicitly speak out against slavery but did speak out against needless cruelty.

Who What Now posted:

We have progressed since his time and so we can apply his ideals in better ways than even he probably imagined and this included abolishing slavery.

LLJKSiLk posted:

The idea that the Old Testament "doesn't matter" is a fairly modern interpretation which I believe is primarily based on the fact that the Old Testament is just so goddamned weird and indefensible with all the slavery, genocide, penises, and incest. If the Old Testament "doesn't matter" then neither do the ten commandments, or any of the other moral pronouncements made within.

In addition, you can't have justification for the New Testament without the alleged foretelling contained within the Old.

Just my two cents. I think the idea that the Old Testament shouldn't matter is wrong theologically speaking.

VitalSigns posted:

That's pretty obviously not a modern interpretation since like half of the New Testament after the Gospels was people arguing whether gentiles needed to follow the law in the old testament and hack their penises and give up bacon or not.

Spoiler alert: the answer the the church settled on for "do you have to follow Leviticus" was "no, and also gently caress no"

CommieGIR posted:

Your argument being that you have to be Christian to be an abolitionist. Which is demonstrably false. It still took legal viewpoints to completely dismantle slavery, and there is too many Christians on both sides of the pro/con field of slavery to say that your religion was the sole reponsible motivator.

Kaal posted:

...Christianity is essentially the Romanization of some fairly brutal varieties of tribal monotheism...

Mark 3:1-5 posted:

Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Stand up in front of everyone.”

Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent.

He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.

John 8:2-11 posted:

At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women.Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap,in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

“No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,”Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

Miltank posted:

I was arguing in an underhanded way by using 'abolitionist' in its academic meaning ie the American Abolitionist Movement which was specifically Christian. I have no doubt that there were atheist who were anti-slavery, but the First Republic is about as bad of an example of this as exists, not the least because they allowed slavery to continue in San Domingo.