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Crowsbeak posted:Aristotle quote I don't know why you keep going on about Aristotle and Plato
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Feb 11, 2015 08:17
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Al Harrington posted:I don't know why you keep going on about Aristotle and Plato You see some people here were maintaining they had a greater influence on our civilization than Christianity, and the original intent of the thread was that Jesus didn't matter. Some even said it wasn't Christianity it was all Aristotle and Plato. You know despite all the obvious influences Jesus's teaching have had on us.
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Feb 11, 2015 08:18
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Crowsbeak posted:You see some people here were maintaining they had a greater influence on our civilization than Christianity, and the original intent of the thread was that Jesus didn't matter. Some even said it wasn't Christianity it was all Aristotle and Plato. You know despite all the obvious influences Jesus's teaching have had on us. anyone who says that probably isnt worth taking seriously.
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Feb 11, 2015 08:21
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and yet they influenced Christianity
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Feb 11, 2015 08:21
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Al Harrington posted:and yet they influenced Christianity No poo poo, anyone can see that, just look at Justin Martyr. However their influence is nothing compared to the Judaism that birthed it. They never altered its basic tenats and it would be the bedrock of the west.
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Feb 11, 2015 08:25
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Crowsbeak posted:No poo poo, anyone can see that, just look at Justin Martyr. However their influence is nothing compared to the Judaism that birthed it. They never altered its basic tenats and it would be the bedrock of the west. "No poo poo" and shall we point out slavery in the Old Testament again? Why does it not count in there?
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Feb 11, 2015 08:35
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Al Harrington posted:"No poo poo" and shall we point out slavery in the Old Testament again? Why does it not count in there? Yet as the founder said, we are all equal, now lets compare that to "natural slavery" Which is what Aristotle and Plato argued for, which is what anti theist like you maintain are the actual bedrock of our civilization.
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Feb 11, 2015 08:39
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Mornacale posted:Christianity was central to abolitionists but also to the creation and perpetuation of slavery. Indeed, American white evangelicalism is characterized largely by a theology designed to support slavery and racism. This suggests that, rather than being a motivating force for abolition, Christianity held a hegemonic position in society in general and was thus used as a tool by people who were driven to support abolition by other forces (I would argue a combination of material conditions and novel ideologies). Trying to conflate the particular strains of Christian thought that were instrumental in abolition with Christianity at large is just as dishonest as if I were to use the Catholic Church to claim that Christianity in general was a huge supporter of 20th Century fascism. This argument can be turned either way, that materialist factors caused Christians in the south to support slavery while Christian ideas in the north lead to abolition against economic interests. I do think you greatly undervalue how deeply abolitionist drew from religious sources. Certainly Quaker antislavery activists like John Woolman, Anthony Benezet and Benjamin Lundy were inspired principally by their faith. I'm reading a fascinating book on abolitionist religion right now, Dan McKanan's "Identifying the Image of God," which persuasively argues that the Garrisonian stream of abolition (and people like Fredrick Douglas who came into the movement through it) drew their inspiration mostly from their understanding of the imago dei in slaves. Abolitionists weren't simply people using a religious argument as a popular appeal. They were committed Christians, as no doubt many slave holders were too.
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Feb 11, 2015 08:45
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Crowsbeak posted:Yet as the founder said, we are all equal Except "the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites"
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Feb 11, 2015 08:52
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Al Harrington posted:Except "the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites" hes talking about jesus
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Feb 11, 2015 08:52
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Crowsbeak posted:
But the cradle has, for 99% of its time, been a horrible, prejudiced violent place, and according to the Bible God himself participated in that violence in ways that would make most dictators blush. Why does an omniscient loving God kill millions and millions of innocent people all the time and feeds our basest most awful parts? Also he didn't give us the means. Evolution did. Stars did. If God created the Universe it sure as poo poo didn't start out with intelligent beings in it. And why can't he just straight up tell us how to get to the other parts of the universe to stop us from killing eachother over resources and space? Why did he make it so difficult and expensive that it is still not possible for us to get to most of it even now, when we know what is out there? DarkCrawler fucked around with this message at 09:31 on Feb 11, 2015 |
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Feb 11, 2015 09:28
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Barlow posted:This argument can be turned either way, that materialist factors caused Christians in the south to support slavery while Christian ideas in the north lead to abolition against economic interests. Excuse my lack of clarity. I'm not saying that abolitionists adopted Christianity as a rhetorical tool to argue for their ideas; I absolutely believe that they sincerely believed their movement to be justified by religion. Neither do I claim that Christianity naturally supports slavery unless material factors intervene. Rather I'm saying that since "following Christianity" was a constant on both sides of the slavery debate, it must be that some other factor besides being a Christian led a person to the choice of sides. Ergo, Christianity--as a whole, at least--can't be credited for "motivating" abolition or slavery, but rather for helping to motivate people to more fervently pursue whichever side they happened to fall on. To bring this back from a historical argument to a personal one: I don't think Christianity would exist in a perfect world, since I believe faith is a vice (though just like any vice, a natural and understandable thing). But an interpretation of Christianity that fights sexism is a much greater force for good than an MRA that fights for atheism. Consequently, while I'd be happy to convince Christians to change their epistemology to a more materialist viewpoint, I'd be even more happy to convince a regressive Christian that their religion is consistent with leftism. I think atheists do the world a huge disservice when they position the worst interpretations as True Christianity to score points against religion, but similarly am nonplussed by Christians focusing on scoring points for religion rather than encouraging good work. Mornacale fucked around with this message at 10:24 on Feb 11, 2015 |
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Feb 11, 2015 09:47
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Orkin Mang posted:of course they're finite (ie contingent) beings. a finite being in the way i'm talking about is simply a being that doesn't contain the source of its own existence. so long as that criterion is fulfilled it doesn't matter one bit whether that being has incredible powers or does not inhabit the world; it could be an immensely powerful, eternal, totally immaterial being, but so long as it is not the source of its own existence then it is contingent; the demiurge might be a good example of such a being. i only used the examples of zeus and odin because that other guy brought them up; in the context of this argument i don't care about the particular details of their roles in greek mythology. This is simply a statement that only a monotheistic god is a monotheistic god. It lacks any particular meaning since it's defined so narrowly.
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Feb 11, 2015 11:16
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Crowsbeak posted:No poo poo, anyone can see that, just look at Justin Martyr. However their influence is nothing compared to the Judaism that birthed it. They never altered its basic tenats and it would be the bedrock of the west. I dunno, I'd argue that Platonism did alter the basic tenets of Christianity to a degree considering that Paul was big on the whole "flesh is evil, spirit/soul is good" thing from Plato, and Jesus never really said anything like that. In fact it kind of flies in the face of one of the major points of belief in Christianity which is that God had to become a man to die for our sins.
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Feb 11, 2015 11:47
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Crowsbeak being a more incompetent defender of Christianity than Kyrie ITT.Mornacale posted:Excuse my lack of clarity. I'm not saying that abolitionists adopted Christianity as a rhetorical tool to argue for their ideas; I absolutely believe that they sincerely believed their movement to be justified by religion. Neither do I claim that Christianity naturally supports slavery unless material factors intervene. Rather I'm saying that since "following Christianity" was a constant on both sides of the slavery debate, it must be that some other factor besides being a Christian led a person to the choice of sides. Ergo, Christianity--as a whole, at least--can't be credited for "motivating" abolition or slavery, but rather for helping to motivate people to more fervently pursue whichever side they happened to fall on. Well yes, but this idea is less knotted if you begin to unpack the idea that there are really lots of kinds of Christianity. British arguments for abolition were very caught up in arguments about specifically non-conformist and evangelical ideas of Christianity. However, in Wilberforce's major speech in Parliament on the subject, he did more or less make a secular argument, which can be found here. It ends rather portentously: quote:Having heard all of this you may choose to look the other way but you can never again say that you did not know. Disinterested fucked around with this message at 12:28 on Feb 11, 2015 |
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Feb 11, 2015 12:20
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Mornacale posted:Excuse my lack of clarity. I'm not saying that abolitionists adopted Christianity as a rhetorical tool to argue for their ideas; I absolutely believe that they sincerely believed their movement to be justified by religion. Neither do I claim that Christianity naturally supports slavery unless material factors intervene. Rather I'm saying that since "following Christianity" was a constant on both sides of the slavery debate, it must be that some other factor besides being a Christian led a person to the choice of sides. Ergo, Christianity--as a whole, at least--can't be credited for "motivating" abolition or slavery, but rather for helping to motivate people to more fervently pursue whichever side they happened to fall on. Mostly I'm focusing on actually showing Christianity has a huge influence on the west even to this day. Which anti theists would prefer to rewrite. But yes good works are actually really great and people should do them in order to make this world a less poo poo place. I for one would like the Church to do more for the poor, to do more for women, and to do more against pollution because doing all certainly protects God's children. Unlike some christians I don't want the church to act like some sort of Hans Herman Hoppe wet dream, and act primarily to tell everyone they're going to hell, while saying spiritual poverty is far worse than actually starving.
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Feb 11, 2015 14:24
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Holy poo poo people are seriously arguing the "ended slavery" point?  I stopped punching children recently, anyone wanna come congratulate me about that??
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Feb 11, 2015 15:08
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Serious question: if I abuse the poo poo out of my children for years but then stop doing it, does stopping make me a good person
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Feb 11, 2015 15:14
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Y'all know abolitionists and slaveowners were different people right? Abolitionists fought against slaveowners sometimes at great personal risk. It's not like all they had to do was let their slaves go and then ask for a medal.
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Feb 11, 2015 15:16
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Those ANTI THEIST strawmen must be real embarrassed right now.
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Feb 11, 2015 15:19
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VitalSigns posted:Y'all know abolitionists and slaveowners were different people right? We're talking about the wider Christian community, of which slaveholders and abolitionists were both apart of.
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Feb 11, 2015 15:23
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VitalSigns posted:Y'all know abolitionists and slaveowners were different people right? And even if we look past that this is still an absurd argument on the level of those stupid Facebook posts where people compare WHAT CHRISTIANS/WHITES HAVE ACHIEVED to WHAT MUSLIMS/BLACKS HAVE ACHIEVED.
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Feb 11, 2015 15:24
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It's not about getting credit, it's about recognizing influences on abolitionist thought.
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Feb 11, 2015 15:43
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Radbot posted:Serious question: if I abuse the poo poo out of my children for years but then stop doing it, does stopping make me a good person If everyone on earth for all of history brutally beat their children including you until one day you realize how wrong it is and stop beating your children and try to make everyone else in the world stop beating their children then yes.
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Feb 11, 2015 16:21
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VitalSigns posted:It's not about getting credit, it's about recognizing influences on abolitionist thought. No, getting credit was the sole reason Milktank brought it up in the first place, so that Christianity would have more points in the "did good" column than the "did bad".
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Feb 11, 2015 16:29
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Only you only came to that realization after creating the most widespread and brutal system of child abuse ever, and using that to get rich as gently caress
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Feb 11, 2015 16:32
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Irony Be My Shield posted:Only you only came to that realization after creating the most widespread and brutal system of child abuse ever, and using that to get rich as gently caress It is in many ways appropriate that your avatar is more or less fedoratipping.jpeg.
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Feb 11, 2015 16:35
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Who What Now posted:No, getting credit was the sole reason Milktank brought it up in the first place, so that Christianity would have more points in the "did good" column than the "did bad". Okay fine, but that doesn't obligate us to take the equal-and-opposite wrong position.
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Feb 11, 2015 17:01
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I don't think anyone has taken the opposite position, I'm not saying that slavery is a black mark on Christianity or anything. I guess my first post could be read like that but the idea is to challenge the basis of what is fundamentally a really stupid argument (hence the comparison to other non-sequitur "Look how great this arbitrary group was historically compared to this other one" arguments).
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Feb 11, 2015 17:13
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Radbot posted:Serious question: if I abuse the poo poo out of my children for years but then stop doing it, does stopping make me a good person If thats all you do it still makes you a shithead, but then John Brown never owned any slaves.
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Feb 11, 2015 17:23
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Miltank posted:If everyone on earth for all of history brutally beat their children including you until one day you realize how wrong it is and stop beating your children and try to make everyone else in the world stop beating their children then yes. Except it was outlawed several times before in different cultures and/or was a lot different than when Chrsitianity was involved. I have been reading the thread and I seriously don't get how you can point to Christianity as the Ender of Slavery. Religions get coopted to mean different things all the time, sure. That doesn't have any bearing on the validity of their teachigns nor the historicity of their accounts. Its true that squaring slavery with Jesus' teachings is contradictory at best which leads me to question not so much which one is more "true", but rather, why they need squaring up at all? If its contradictory and shown to be anachronistic, why not look at the results rather than the texts? Which leads to the OP. What Jesus actually said doesn't matter. Being excellent to one another does, and if Jesus was right some of the time, then great! Doesn't mean we have to give anything else more weight.
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Feb 11, 2015 17:50
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Liberal_L33t posted:That was hyperbole, followed by sarcasm. The point stands. I just wanted to post that sweet picture.
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Feb 11, 2015 17:59
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Orkin Mang posted:an ape? what are you talking about? i'm just talking about classical theism--not christianity in particular. the relation of christ's humanity to his divinity isn't what i'm talking about; you should probably find a book on it if you're interested in that particular problem. (one approach might be to say something like that christ was the manifest image of a necessary being--the most perfect expression of the nature of god in creation--whereas zeus or odin are not manifestations of a necessary being but simply contingent beings with certain peculiar causal powers). What I'm talking about regarding apes is that the traditional Christian view is that God supposed to be, in some fundamental meaning, like humans, which are a branch of African ape. I keep bringing it up because it's a more thought-provoking example of what that religious view entails (including the abstract academic "necessary being," if it wasn't an ape then what was it?), and one that quickly brings out its absurdity. Saying "human" doesn't make the point as well, because we take ourselves for granted and take no pause at anything being compared to us. Case in point, most religious don't find anything questionable about the notion of God being like a human; the opposite is true, it's a central tenet of their world view. Classical theism is simply an academic practice of Abrahamic religion, so your delineation that that's what you're talking about doesn't actually change the premises in the discussion. Now let's say I grant you that you want to talk about only the subset of "classical theism" that excludes common conceptions of Christiantiy, Judaism, and Islam (which is an abstract and empty notion, like talking about biology but without the living things), then you'd be talking about something unrecognizable to the common religious practitioner and would demonstrate that when religion is forced to acknowledge what it logically entails, any viable remaining claim would be a back-pedal to some overly abstract notion undiscernable from "nothing." Be careful you don't backpedal as far as Terry Eagleton in his rebuke of Dawkins and say "God does not in fact exist" and replace him with a bunch of mealy-mouthed nonsense like "the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves!"  Oh and by the way, your initial post about "classical theism" was a reply to a post very specifically about Christianity. Either you're willfully goalpost-shifting, or arrogantly demanding the discussion shift to the subject YOU want to talk about, without so much as even the courtesy of explicitly requesting, or even demanding, so. You bring up a topic in a reply to a different one, and you demand we automatically switch to yours? quote:and of course it's logically possible that there was temporality before there was a material universe. classical doctrines of god's nature claim that god is timeless, anyway, so that sort of problem only presents itself if you think that god is temporal in some way. Could there have been members of of the genus Homo in this "temporality before there was a material universe?" Because that would be required for Christianity to be true. Otherwise, how does God's brain get wired up just like one? Miltank posted:Mankind being made in God's image is widely (if not universally) understood to refer to something like sentience or self perception. Sentience and self-perception are qualities of humans and some other animals with well-developed nervous systems, so if you're looking to distance your position from the standard religious view that God is in some fundamentally important way like a man, you just shot yourself in the foot. vessbot fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Feb 11, 2015 |
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Feb 11, 2015 19:09
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vessbot posted:What I'm talking about regarding apes is that the traditional Christian view is that God supposed to be, in some fundamental meaning, like humans, which are a branch of African ape. I keep bringing it up because it's a more thought-provoking example of what that religious view entails (including the abstract academic "necessary being," if it wasn't an ape then what was it?), and one that quickly brings out its absurdity. Saying "human" doesn't make the point as well, because we take ourselves for granted and take no pause at anything being compared to us. Case in point, most religious don't find anything questionable about the notion of God being like a human; the opposite is true, it's a central tenet of their world view. Are you seriously arguing that the majority (or significant portion of) Christians believe that God is a biological being of flesh and nervous systems?
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Feb 11, 2015 19:26
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Valiantman posted:Are you seriously arguing that the majority (or significant portion of) Christians believe that God is a biological being of flesh and nervous systems? The bible explicitly states that god created man in his image, as humanity has been scientifically proven to be a species of african ape, and that likeness works both ways, God is something like an ape, same as us. How you reconcile that with all the other stuff about god is up to you.
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Feb 11, 2015 19:29
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Valiantman posted:Are you seriously arguing that the majority (or significant portion of) Christians believe that God is a biological being of flesh and nervous systems? No you twit, I said "God supposed to be, in some fundamental meaning, like humans" and it's true.
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Feb 11, 2015 19:31
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So has the Chapel Hill shooting come up yet?
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Feb 11, 2015 19:32
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BrandorKP posted:So has the Chapel Hill shooting come up yet? Yes, in the appropriate thread.
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Feb 11, 2015 19:33
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vessbot posted:No you twit, I said "God supposed to be, in some fundamental meaning, like humans" and it's true. And you took it to mean that the likeness is generally understood as something physical or at least having nervous systems?
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Feb 11, 2015 19:45
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Valiantman posted:And you took it to mean that the likeness is generally understood as something physical or at least having nervous systems? He would obviously have to have something like our nervous system (oh yeah, and Y chromosome) if he has emotions, reactions, intentions, and speech acts like the ones produced by ours. But in "necessary" form instead of physical 
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Feb 11, 2015 19:49
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