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This isn't intended to be a reply or argument against the other thread, but rather an argument of its own. Jesus, if he was real, is long dead. Very long dead. And in spite of the many people who would contest that because of various interpretations of the bible, any sincere attempt to answer the question: "Is Jesus (Christ) alive and well?" is going to find nothing. All framings of his opinions, beliefs, and actions are almost entirely irrelevant to any modern discussion of the real world. People intuit this. Most Christians, though they inform their own values from the bible and the teachings of Jesus, by-and-large recognize that political debates need pragmatic, non-biblical justifications for policies. Even extraordinarily Christian in origin positions, like anti-gay or anti-abortion ones, tend to be surrounded with non-Christian arguments, like the nature of personhood or the traditions of marriage. The actual distance between what was a moral concern in biblical times and modern times is so great that only the most basic of moral messages, like the golden rule and murder, still have any meaning at all. 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. quote:“This place is not a place of honor. Somebody fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Feb 25, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 01:06
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In before CoC and Kyrie show up to spread the good words of poor dears and Catholicism.
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Feb 6, 2015 01:06
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Oh wow another athiest  thread. Also another where all us horrible theists are deluded idiots who are no different than some ancap trad catholic who probably reads to much hhh.
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Feb 6, 2015 01:11
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Crowsbeak posted:Oh wow another athiest  Kyrie get's his Jesus thread.
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Feb 6, 2015 01:12
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CommieGIR posted:
Mostly its you guys telling Kyrie he is wrong. Also most likely he will be posting in this one to. So you're expanding his lovely presence with this thread.
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Feb 6, 2015 01:16
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Crowsbeak posted:Mostly its you guys telling Kyrie he is wrong. Also most likely he will be posting in this one to. So you're expanding his lovely presence with this thread. True. Got me there. I just wanted to contribute 
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Feb 6, 2015 01:17
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ikanreed posted:Most Christians, though they inform their own values from the bible and the teachings of Jesus, by-and-large recognize that political debates need pragmatic, non-biblical justifications for policies. Even extraordinarily Christian in origin positions, like anti-gay or anti-abortion ones, tend to be surrounded with non-Christian arguments, like the nature of personhood or the traditions of marriage. 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.
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Feb 6, 2015 01:26
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ikanreed posted:The actual distance between what was a moral concern in biblical times and modern times is so great that only the most basic of moral messages, like the golden rule and murder, still have any meaning at all. 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. I think you can draw a lot of lessons about humanity (in the general sense) from the Bible, but the same would probably true of any other similar set of collected writings. When I say humanity here, in order to be really loving explicit, I mean what you might call 'aspects of human nature and behavior, as observed practically.' The same stuff that comes up in Shakespeare. EXPLICIT DISCLAIMER: I make absolutely no claims for the Bible other than literary and historical value. (Also in anticipation: It has been a seminal influence on European thought for over a millenium. This makes it a historically important set of documents.)
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Feb 6, 2015 01:50
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Bizarro Something Awful is leaking!! I expect the next one to be a well-thought and eloquent essay by Bizarro Kyoon about the dangers of beliefs without evidence. Don't let me down, alternate universe!
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Feb 6, 2015 01:54
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Is there really any difference between someone who worships a God in the Christian tradition and someone who worships the rejection of that same God in the Christian tradition
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Feb 6, 2015 02:07
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Nessus posted:I think you'd have to break down what moral imperatives you're talking about. I mean if you take literally every statement in the bible that is of one of the following forms: 1. Literally imperative(such as thou shall not worship craven idols) 2. [Class of Action] is an abomination/holy/blessed/etc (such as gay sex, shrimp, women having authority over men) 3. God directly punishes someone for [action] (such as spilling your seed, mocking a bald dude) The majority of those would be either amoral or immoral guidance.
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Feb 6, 2015 02:15
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ikanreed posted:I mean if you take literally every statement in the bible that is of one of the following forms:
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Feb 6, 2015 02:18
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Nessus posted:Yeah but there's a bunch of parables and stories and poems and poo poo in there too. It INCLUDES but IS NOT JUST a legal code. That's completely true, but I think you'll find the grand total of implied stances from parables is in the low double digits, and won't shift the balance.
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Feb 6, 2015 02:41
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Nessus posted:Yeah but there's a bunch of parables and stories and poems and poo poo in there too. It INCLUDES but IS NOT JUST a legal code. A lot of the stuff we consider really heinous in the Bible Jesus redacted with the New Covenant, however. America Inc. fucked around with this message at 06:50 on Feb 6, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 06:48
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Maybe you should read a book or two to familiarise yourself with the object of your critique.
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Feb 6, 2015 06:59
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Feb 6, 2015 07:01
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfXzM1o2T2w also yeah
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Feb 6, 2015 07:03
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lSNctxeB8c
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Feb 6, 2015 07:06
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cool poo poo
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Feb 6, 2015 07:12
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7ib0e9mU3g
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Feb 6, 2015 07:19
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this is now the bionicdance megathread
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Feb 6, 2015 07:20
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Nessus posted:Yeah but there's a bunch of parables and stories and poems and poo poo in there too. It INCLUDES but IS NOT JUST a legal code. There are better versions of those parables elsewhere without the bigot baggage. I'll take Aesop over an apostle any day. Better poetry and songs as well.
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Feb 6, 2015 07:45
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I come into this thread with severe food poisoning from eating at a poorly-kept mexican restaurant and throw up all over the place
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Feb 6, 2015 08:23
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Jesus got accidentally killed by a drone Jesus starved in front of a fat man Jesus was killed by a cop, charges dropped Jesus choked on crisp Beijing air God Hates Jesus America Inc. fucked around with this message at 09:13 on Feb 6, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 09:04
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McAlister posted:There are better versions of those parables elsewhere without the bigot baggage. I'll take Aesop over an apostle any day. Better poetry and songs as well. My favorite fable by Aesop is the story of Hermes and the Arabs! See, Hermes is transporting a cargo of dishonesty and lies through the desert to distribute to all the nations of the world. But when he reaches Arabia, his cart breaks down, and the locals loot it all. Moral: Arabs are all thieves and liars! So inspiring!
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Feb 6, 2015 09:24
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Inevitably religion threads here seem to end up a mess. First a few antitheists show up and quote scripture, interpreting it more literally than most fundamentalists. Some idiot will cite Richard Carrier and make a stupid argument that Jesus was a myth. Than CoC and Kyrie will show up, and people start debating their strange idiosyncratic views, which will be taken as somehow representing a position that is worth rebutting. At the very least if we are going to engage in a debate lets pick some interesting religious voices as counterpoints, Terry Eagleton's "Reason, Faith and Revolution" nad his review of the "God Delusion" (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/terry-eagleton/lunging-flailing-mispunching) was a pretty interesting defense of Christianity for instance.
Barlow fucked around with this message at 10:10 on Feb 6, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 09:57
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Angry Salami posted:My favorite fable by Aesop is the story of Hermes and the Arabs! See, Hermes is transporting a cargo of dishonesty and lies through the desert to distribute to all the nations of the world. But when he reaches Arabia, his cart breaks down, and the locals loot it all. Moral: Arabs are all thieves and liars! Never heard that one and don't care if its real it not. The beauty if Aesops 600 + fables is that they don't claim to be divinely inspired and we can toss stupid ones on the rubbish heap. The well known fables are ones like The Boy Who Cried Wolf and we don't have to defend the bad ones because we like the good ones. We can just say - "yeah that ones bullshit" and move on. Same with coyote tales, Brer Rabbit stories, Anansi fables, etc. But not with the bible. It ties all its stuff into a single narrative and demands believers honor the bad as well as the good. It puts poo poo in the sandwich and says eat or starve.
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Feb 6, 2015 10:53
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Barlow posted:Inevitably religion threads here seem to end up a mess. First a few antitheists show up and quote scripture, interpreting it more literally than most fundamentalists. Some idiot will cite Richard Carrier and make a stupid argument that Jesus was a myth. Than CoC and Kyrie will show up, and people start debating their strange idiosyncratic views, which will be taken as somehow representing a position that is worth rebutting. At the very least if we are going to engage in a debate lets pick some interesting religious voices as counterpoints, Terry Eagleton's "Reason, Faith and Revolution" nad his review of the "God Delusion" (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/terry-eagleton/lunging-flailing-mispunching) was a pretty interesting defense of Christianity for instance. Terry Eagleton's article operates on snide attacks and an absurd amount of assumptions that he feels no reason to back up since he can default to the old chestnut that theology is not to be commented on by those who haven't spent three decades studying it. in any event "His transcendence and invisibility are part of what he is" god is conveniently beyond any attempts to see or understand him it seems. One of the letters in response brings up some points: quote:One doesn’t need to have Richard Dawkins’s level of certainty to find Terry Eagleton’s Catholic sermon utterly incoherent (LRB, 19 October). On the one hand, according to Eagleton, God is transcendent, invisible, not a principle nor an entity, not even ‘existent’: indeed, ‘in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist.’ This God is neither inside nor outside the universe, but is mysteriously ‘the condition of possibility’. Crowsbeak posted:Oh wow another athiest khwarezm fucked around with this message at 13:48 on Feb 6, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 13:30
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khwarezm posted:Terry Eagleton's article operates on snide attacks and an absurd amount of assumptions that he feels no reason to back up since he can default to the old chestnut that theology is not to be commented on by those who haven't spent three decades studying it. in any event "His transcendence and invisibility are part of what he is" god is conveniently beyond any attempts to see or understand him it seems. read a fucken book man.
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Feb 6, 2015 13:36
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Crowsbeak posted:Oh wow another athiest To be fair, you do believe in Iron Age fairy stories. That is pretty idiotic.
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Feb 6, 2015 14:18
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McAlister posted:But not with the bible. It ties all its stuff into a single narrative and demands believers honor the bad as well as the good. No it doesn't.
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Feb 6, 2015 14:24
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zeal posted:To be fair, you do believe in Iron Age fairy stories. That is pretty idiotic. oh dang, look out y'all
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Feb 6, 2015 14:24
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Oh wow look at me I'm so postmodern I don't believe in anything. E: Christians: ended slavery Atheists: ??? Miltank fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Feb 6, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 14:41
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Miltank posted:Oh wow look at me I'm so postmodern I don't believe in anything. Christians: for slavery before they were against it.
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Feb 6, 2015 14:52
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Let's ignore that Christian scripture was used to justify slavery for centuries, in favor of noting that abolitionists happened to belong to the dominant religion.
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Feb 6, 2015 14:53
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Miltank posted:Oh wow look at me I'm so postmodern I don't believe in anything. Defeated the Nazis
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Feb 6, 2015 14:55
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Miltank posted:Christians: ended slavery Christians: invented the galley slave
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Feb 6, 2015 14:56
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Starving Autist posted:Christians: for slavery before they were against it. Every civilization in the history of the world has had slavery until pious Christians realized how poo poo it was. E:^the wikipage you linked says otherwise brah
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Feb 6, 2015 14:59
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cpaf posted:Is there really any difference between someone who worships a God in the Christian tradition and someone who worships the rejection of that same God in the Christian tradition Don't have to get up early on Sunday.
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Feb 6, 2015 15:02
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OwlFancier posted:Don't have to get up early on Sunday. Most Christians I know don't.
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Feb 6, 2015 15:03
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