What if Jeffrey Dahmer's actions made the world a happier place for him? Isn't that what drove Jeffrey Dahmer to do what he did in the first place?
Jeffery Dahmer is not the world. The world has other people besides Jeffery Dahmer.
And I imagine it was his callous disregard of that fact, the callous disregard of others that defines a psychopath, that lead Dahmer to commit the rape, murder, and dismemberment of 17 males, some of them children, at times engaging in necrophilia and cannibalism.
If I were to believe that God doesn't exist, I'd pretty much immediately adopt a Randian/Objectivist philosophy of morality. That seems to be the most logical way to view a world without God if you ask me. If God does not exist, then selfishness is the ultimate virtue. In a world without the existence of God the idea of making any sort of sacrifice for others is illogical.
Why?
Further, let's talk about something here. The whole point of Christianity revolves around two central commandments: You shall love your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your mind; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Now the problem with what you're saying is obvious: you profess to be Christian, and yet you're saying that without God, the only thing you can think to do is become completely selfish and self-absorbed, to the point where you legitimately have no idea why you wouldn't emulate the behavior of a serial killer if you found yourself in a universe without God.
So we can gather from this that you don't actually love your neighbor.
If you had any genuine concern or compassion for your neighbor, you wouldn't be asking, "Why should I care about other people?" You would, by virtue of having genuine concern and/or compassion for your neighbor, already care about other people. You wouldn't have to ask why you wouldn't behave like a psychopath. You would — by virtue of having love, empathy, sympathy, and compassion for others — not behave like a psychopath.
You wouldn't need God to tell you to care about them in order to care about them because you would already care about them. And indeed, if the only reason you care about your neighbors is because you feel forced to because God commanded it, then you cannot be said to actually love or care about them.
So really, you're not obeying God's commandments at all. You are, essentially, displaying the very selfishness you claim you would openly display if God were not a part of the picture.
"If a person doesn't think there is a God to be accountable to, then what's the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges?" -Jeffrey Dahmer
There is no point. Might is indeed right. The strong have the right to take and the weak have the right to perish. We live a life in vain until the day we inevitably return to the primordial ooze from whence we came. No Meaning No purpose No right or wrong. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference. The hope fulled ideals of the secular humanist notwithstanding this is the consequence of a naturalistic world view. Nietzsche was right.
What if Jeffrey Dahmer's actions made the world a happier place for him? Isn't that what drove Jeffrey Dahmer to do what he did in the first place?
Jeffery Dahmer is not the world. The world has other people besides Jeffery Dahmer.
And I imagine it was his callous disregard of that fact, the callous disregard of others that defines a psychopath, that lead Dahmer to commit the rape, murder, and dismemberment of 17 males, some of them children, at times engaging in necrophilia and cannibalism.
If I were to believe that God doesn't exist, I'd pretty much immediately adopt a Randian/Objectivist philosophy of morality. That seems to be the most logical way to view a world without God if you ask me. If God does not exist, then selfishness is the ultimate virtue. In a world without the existence of God the idea of making any sort of sacrifice for others is illogical.
Why?
Further, let's talk about something here. The whole point of Christianity revolves around two central commandments: You shall love your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your mind; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Now the problem with what you're saying is obvious: you profess to be Christian, and yet you're saying that without God, the only thing you can think to do is become completely selfish and self-absorbed, to the point where you legitimately have no idea why you wouldn't emulate the behavior of a serial killer if you found yourself in a universe without God.
So we can gather from this that you don't actually love your neighbor.
If you had any genuine concern or compassion for your neighbor, you wouldn't be asking, "Why should I care about other people?" You would, by virtue of having genuine concern and/or compassion for your neighbor, already care about other people. You wouldn't need God to tell you to care about them in order to care about them because you would already care about them.
Indeed, if the only reason you care about your neighbors is because you feel forced to because God commanded it, then you cannot be said to actually love or care about them.
So really, you're not obeying God's commandments at all. You are, essentially, displaying the very selfishness you claim you would openly display if God were not a part of the picture. You're just pretending otherwise instead of being open about it.
Otherwise, you would not be asking why you wouldn't behave like a psychopath. You would — by virtue of having love, empathy, sympathy, and compassion for others — not behave like a psychopath.
The second most important commandment rests on the foundation of the first. If God does not exist, then the first becomes trivial, and the reason for obeying the second commandment, because of one's love for God, goes away. It is by seeing God's love for me that I know how to love my neighbor. It is out of a thankful heart, one that is thankful for everything that God has done for me, that I love my neighbor. It is God's kindness that brings people to repentance. If God did not exist, then his kindness to bring me to repentance would not exist, and I would have no reason to love my neighbor.
So I guess I'm the only Christian on this board who gives a crap about anyone else for the sake of giving a crap about anyone else, as opposed to a desire for reward or a fear of punishment?
The second most important commandment rests on the foundation of the first. If God does not exist, then the first becomes trivial, and the reason for obeying the second commandment, because of one's love for God, goes away. It is by seeing God's love for me that I know how to love my neighbor. It is out of a thankful heart, one that is thankful for everything that God has done for me, that I love my neighbor. It is God's kindness that brings people to repentance. If God did not exist, then his kindness to bring me to repentance would not exist, and I would have no reason to love my neighbor.
Complete garbage.
One who loves does not require reasons to love. One who loves does not require prerequisites to love.
If one requires reasons to love a person, one does not love that person. If one puts prerequisites toward loving a person, one does not love that person.
One who loves does not seek justification for love. Love justifies itself.
Therefore, you, who demand reasons and prerequisites and justifications for love, do not love your neighbor. He who does not love his neighbor does not keep God's commandments.
One who loves his neighbor as himself regards his neighbor as a gift, a blessing, and would continue to value such a blessing regardless of who sent it, whether the sender be God or a happy accident.
So I guess I'm the only Christian on this board who gives a crap about anyone else for the sake of giving a crap about anyone else, as opposed to a desire for reward or a fear of punishment?
The second most important commandment rests on the foundation of the first. If God does not exist, then the first becomes trivial, and the reason for obeying the second commandment, because of one's love for God, goes away. It is by seeing God's love for me that I know how to love my neighbor. It is out of a thankful heart, one that is thankful for everything that God has done for me, that I love my neighbor. It is God's kindness that brings people to repentance. If God did not exist, then his kindness to bring me to repentance would not exist, and I would have no reason to love my neighbor.
Complete garbage.
One who loves does not require reasons to love. One who loves does not require prerequisites to love.
If one requires reasons to love a person, one does not love that person. If one puts prerequisites toward loving a person, one does not love that person.
One who loves does not seek justification for love. Love justifies itself.
Therefore, you, who demand reasons and prerequisites and justifications for love, do not love your neighbor. He who does not love his neighbor does not keep God's commandments.
One who loves his neighbor as himself regards his neighbor as a gift, a blessing, and would continue to value such a blessing regardless of who sent it, whether the sender be God or a happy accident.
Two things:
1) You didn't understand my post. That is made 100% clear by your response. Do you understand what the word "Thankfulness" means? That is the word that I used in my post. It is a word that has nothing to do with earning rewards. It is a response to something that has already been freely given by God's grace. Thankfulness is also something that is not characteristic of someone who fears punishment.
2) You characterized my post as "complete garbage." Your views on things are typically pretty heretical, so the fact that you find Christian orthodoxy to be "complete garbage" is quite unsurprising. The day will come when God judges between us, and we'll find out who really is grounded in the truth of God's Word.
So I guess I'm the only Christian on this board who gives a crap about anyone else for the sake of giving a crap about anyone else, as opposed to a desire for reward or a fear of punishment?
I did not realise that the reason or source of a concern somehow invalidates it
1) You didn't understand my post. That is made 100% clear by your response. Do you understand what the word "Thankfulness" means? That is the word that I used in my post. It is a word that has nothing to do with earning rewards. It is a response to something that has already been freely given by God's grace. Thankfulness is also something that is not characteristic of someone who fears punishment.
Which is disingenuous. If you were truly thankful for your neighbor, you would be thankful for your neighbor regardless of whether or not God was the source of your neighbor.
If I am thankful for a gift given to me, but upon finding out it was not given to me by the person I thought it was, I respond with, "Why should I give a crap about this gift?" and discard it as something of no worth, was I thankful for the gift? Of course not.
Yet, you argue that you are thankful for your neighbor, despite saying that if there is no God, you would promptly regard all neighbors as being of no worth and promptly become selfish and self-centered?
Then you do not love your neighbor. Simple as that.
2) You characterized my post as "complete garbage."
Yes.
Your views on things are typically pretty heretical,
*Shrug* So is believing slavery is wrong. So is believing the earth wasn't created in six days. So is believing that insects have six legs. So is believing that Jesus did not return in glory to judge the living and the dead with the Kingdom of God in all of God's heavenly glory during the first century.
I seek out the truth, for that is where God leads. One who seeks out the truth does not lie to himself, enslaving himself to useless dogmas.
so the fact that you find Christian orthodoxy to be "complete garbage" is quite unsurprising. The day will come when God judges between us, and we'll find out who really is grounded in the truth of God's Word.
You are welcome to explain to God why it is correct to take moral lessons from sociopathic rapist necrophiliac cannibal pedophile serial killers if he weren't around to explicitly tell you not to.
The irony here is that the atheists in this thread as closer to the Kingdom of Heaven than you are. They don't believe in God and yet in spite of this promote the love of their neighbor. They follow the commandment without even recognizing God. Yet you believe in God's existence and still promote contempt of your neighbor. You are quick to profess words of love of God, yet treat your neighbor as being of no worth. Of which of these is closer to Jesus? Which of these is the Good Samaritan, who was not a Jew yet loved his neighbor when the priest and the Levite did not? There is no question!
I did not realise that the reason or source of a concern somehow invalidates it
If the only reason you're doing something is because someone more powerful is telling you to, you're doing it out of fear of punishment. Not out of actual desire. This is evidenced by you saying that you would not do it were God nonexistent — in other words, without fear of punishment.
Thus, you cannot truly said to love your neighbor. One who loves his neighbor would behave benevolently regardless of any promise of reward, and indeed would behave benevolently in spite of threat of punishment.
If I were to believe that God doesn't exist, I'd pretty much immediately adopt a Randian/Objectivist philosophy of morality. That seems to be the most logical way to view a world without God if you ask me. If God does not exist, then selfishness is the ultimate virtue. In a world without the existence of God the idea of making any sort of sacrifice for others is illogical.
Randianism, whatever else may be said of it, proposes an objective moral code and would strongly condemn the actions of Dahmer. If you think Randianism is logical, then you think Dahmer is wrong, and you think that objectivem oral norms exist in the absence of God.
There is no point. Might is indeed right. The strong have the right to take and the weak have the right to perish. We live a life in vain until the day we inevitably return to the primordial ooze from whence we came. No Meaning No purpose No right or wrong. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference. The hope fulled ideals of the secular humanist notwithstanding this is the consequence of a naturalistic world view. Nietzsche was right.
As I told cloudman about Rand above, Nietzsche actually proposes a definite ethos, aleit an unorthodox one. If you think Nietzsche is right, you think there is a definite right and wrong, and you think that there is a purpose to life. What he says those things are is very different from what most people think, but they're there. Furthermore, you think (crudely) that "might makes right" even if God exists. Nietzsche's beliefs are not contingent on the truth of atheism - in fact, his condemnation of organized religion is all the stronger if there is a God.
No, what you're saying actually echoes not Nietzsche so much as... the Bible. "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity", "Dust we are, and to dust we shall return", etc.
But let's pretend Nietzsche's argument says what you think it does. You still don't have any argument in his favor. You keep telling secular humanists what conclusions we ought to draw and what we ought to believe, but I never see any logic to back it up. The simple fact is that you're lashing out at positions you plainly do not understand. Do you have any rebuttal to - let's take an easy one - Kant's secular argument for deontological ethics based on the existence of a categorical imperative? Because if you don't, all this holier-than-thou moralizing is just wind.
The second most important commandment rests on the foundation of the first. If God does not exist, then the first becomes trivial, and the reason for obeying the second commandment, because of one's love for God, goes away. It is by seeing God's love for me that I know how to love my neighbor. It is out of a thankful heart, one that is thankful for everything that God has done for me, that I love my neighbor. It is God's kindness that brings people to repentance. If God did not exist, then his kindness to bring me to repentance would not exist, and I would have no reason to love my neighbor.
"Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13:8-13)
Your own book appears to disagree with you. But set that aside. Feeling gratitude towards God is still a completely subjective reason to behave morally. Let's say Dahmer does not feel gratitude towards God. Good luck convincing him that he should. Yet again, the existence of God does not solve the subjectivism problem.
Thankfulness is also something that is not characteristic of someone who fears punishment.
Then you don't fear punishment? Because the Bible is pretty clear that you should. "So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you." (Romans 11:20-21)
2) You characterized my post as "complete garbage." Your views on things are typically pretty heretical, so the fact that you find Christian orthodoxy to be "complete garbage" is quite unsurprising.
Highroller is quite unorthodox in many ways, but so too are you. And on this point Highroller happens to be on the side of the orthodoxy: the Roman, Greek, and most major Protestant denominations all agree that a good action which is not performed for its own sake is not truly good. If you poll priests and pastors whether we ought to act good to each other even if there is no God, the answer will be an overwhelming "Yes".
1) You didn't understand my post. That is made 100% clear by your response. Do you understand what the word "Thankfulness" means? That is the word that I used in my post. It is a word that has nothing to do with earning rewards. It is a response to something that has already been freely given by God's grace. Thankfulness is also something that is not characteristic of someone who fears punishment.
Which is disingenuous. If you were truly thankful for your neighbor, you would be thankful for your neighbor regardless of whether or not God was the source of your neighbor.
If I am thankful for a gift given to me, but upon finding out it was not given to me by the person I thought it was, I respond with, "Why should I give a crap about this gift?" and discard it as something of no worth, was I thankful for the gift? Of course not.
Yet, you argue that you are thankful for your neighbor, despite saying that if there is no God, you would promptly regard all neighbors as being of no worth and promptly become selfish and self-centered?
Then you do not love your neighbor. Simple as that.
2) You characterized my post as "complete garbage."
Yes.
Your views on things are typically pretty heretical,
*Shrug* So is believing slavery is wrong. So is believing the earth wasn't created in six days. So is believing that insects have six legs. So is believing that Jesus did not return in glory to judge the living and the dead with the Kingdom of God in all of God's heavenly glory during the first century.
I seek out the truth, for that is where God leads. One who seeks out the truth does not lie to himself, enslaving himself to useless dogmas.
so the fact that you find Christian orthodoxy to be "complete garbage" is quite unsurprising. The day will come when God judges between us, and we'll find out who really is grounded in the truth of God's Word.
You are welcome to explain to God why it is correct to take moral lessons from sociopathic rapist necrophiliac cannibal pedophile serial killers if he weren't around to explicitly tell you not to.
The irony here is that the atheists in this thread as closer to the Kingdom of Heaven than you are. They don't believe in God and yet in spite of this promote the love of their neighbor. They follow the commandment without even recognizing God. Yet you believe in God's existence and still promote contempt of your neighbor. You are quick to profess words of love of God, yet treat your neighbor as being of no worth. Of which of these is closer to Jesus? Which of these is the Good Samaritan, who was not a Jew yet loved his neighbor when the priest and the Levite did not? There is no question!
I did not realise that the reason or source of a concern somehow invalidates it
If the only reason you're doing something is because someone more powerful is telling you to, you're doing it out of fear of punishment. Not out of actual desire. This is evidenced by you saying that you would not do it were God nonexistent — in other words, without fear of punishment.
Thus, you cannot truly said to love your neighbor. One who loves his neighbor would behave benevolently regardless of any promise of reward, and indeed would behave benevolently in spite of threat of punishment.
Accusing someone of being disingenuous is pretty good way to road block any kind of meaningful discussion. I won't even get into which commands of Christ that breaks.
Having said that love is not defined by what man thinks is love. According to scripture rebuking can be love, if a Christian rebukes his brother. So if you are rebuked by a brother and you repent of your heresy, which is damnable heresy, then the brother who rebuked has done a good work and loved his brother by bringing him to repentance. If a man is not a Christian, and deceivingly believes that he is a Christian then the most unloving thing one can do is tell that man that he is a brother and a Christian. I will not comfort a heretic by telling him that he is a brother and a child of God. I will tell a heretic that he is on his way to hell unless if he repents and trusts in Christ, His Word, and His gospel. To do anything else would be unloving towards someone that is in danger of spending eternity in the lake of fire where people are tormented forever and ever without rest day or night.
Accusing someone of being disingenuous is pretty good way to road block any kind of meaningful discussion.
No, BEING disingenuous is a road block to discussion. Pointing out someone else is being disingenuous is attempting to correct the road block.
I won't even get into which commands of Christ that breaks.
If calling people out on being disingenuous is contrary to Christ, then Christ is contrary to Christ. That's what he did throughout his ministry.
Having said that love is not defined by what man thinks is love. According to scripture rebuking can be love, if a Christian rebukes his brother. So if you are rebuked by a brother and you repent of your heresy, which is damnable heresy, then the brother who rebuked has done a good work and loved his brother by bringing him to repentance. If a man is not a Christian, and deceivingly believes that he is a Christian then the most unloving thing one can do is tell that man that he is a brother and a Christian. I will not comfort a heretic by telling him that he is a brother and a child of God. I will tell a heretic that he is on his way to hell unless if he repents and trusts in Christ, His Word, and His gospel. To do anything else would be unloving towards someone that is in danger of spending eternity in the lake of fire where people are tormented forever and ever without rest day or night.
*Yawn* I will note that nowhere here is a meaningful counter-argument to the ever-expanding list of flaws pointed out about your posts.
Oh, and let's talk about orthodoxy for a second here. Orthodoxy according to WHOM? I asked you a long while ago which denomination of Christianity you subscribed to and you never answered. Because that's the thing, isn't it? There are plenty of people proclaiming themselves orthodox and the rest heretics. The Catholic Church proclaims itself the true Church. But then so does the Eastern Orthodox. Then we have numerous other churches with Orthodox in their name. Then we have the Protestants who believe all of those churches are misguided, and within Protestantism there are numerous denominations all with their own organizations. Then there are the Mormons, whom everyone else distances themselves from. Then there are the Gnostic Christians, who are weird, and that's really all that needs to be said about them.
So which one are you? If you're going to claim that I'm committing heresy, why don't you tell me WHOSE heresy I'm committing?
Randianism, whatever else may be said of it, proposes an objective moral code and would strongly condemn the actions of Dahmer. If you think Randianism is logical, then you think Dahmer is wrong, and you think that objectivem oral norms exist in the absence of God.
Your point here is mostly correct, I think. I'm just referring to the Randian maxim that selfishness is the ultimate virtue. I don't know the ins and outs of the rest of her philosophy, but Jeffrey Dahmer's quote seems to capture that maxim as being the consequence of the non-existence of God. I'd say based on that maxim Dahmer's actions would be wrong for other people, but not necessarily wrong for Jeffrey Dahmer. If all the evil that Jeffrey Dahmer committed made him happy, then I don't see how Rand could condemn what Jeffrey Dahmer did. I think Rand would just deny that Dahmer's actions were in his own personal self-interest, but she'd defend Dahmer's right to do the selfish thing in every circumstance.
"Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13:8-13)
Your own book appears to disagree with you. But set that aside. Feeling gratitude towards God is still a completely subjective reason to behave morally. Let's say Dahmer does not feel gratitude towards God. Good luck convincing him that he should. Yet again, the existence of God does not solve the subjectivism problem.
The book also makes that statement within a certain context. That context involves the existence of The Trinitarian God of the Bible. The book makes no guarantee that that promise is true if God does not exist. The certainty of the promises of God rest on the guarantor of those promises. If the guarantor is an imaginary figure, then the promises themselves are mythological and no different than any of the promises we read from Zeus, Thor, Apollo, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Then you don't fear punishment? Because the Bible is pretty clear that you should. "So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you." (Romans 11:20-21)
As a Christian, I do not fear God's wrath. Where I get that from is John 10 where Jesus says that no one can pluck the elect out of His Father's hand. And then there is also the passage in Hebrews that speaks to the fact that God disciplines His children like a father disciplines his sons. Divine discipline is necessary in the process of sanctification, so I do not fear that either as it is something that God does for the good of the saints.
The context of Romans 11 is laid out in Romans 9 and 10, and Paul is seeking to answer the question of why did Israel not believe. His argument is that Israel did not believe because it served God's purpose in election and predestination. And the way that Romans 11:20-21 plays into that argument is this: Election is on the basis of God's grace alone, and if you become conceited thinking that you were elected because you were better than the Israelites, then you are believing a false gospel (read Galatians 1) and God cut off Israel because they did not believe the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Whatever word is translated "fear" in Romans 11, it is contrasted with pride. I have in my studies heard that the word translated as fear carries with it the connotation of reverence or awe, which seems like it would be the antithesis of pride, but I'll have to get my concordances out and check on that one when I get a chance.
Highroller is quite unorthodox in many ways, but so too are you. And on this point Highroller happens to be on the side of the orthodoxy: the Roman, Greek, and most major Protestant denominations all agree that a good action which is not performed for its own sake is not truly good. If you poll priests and pastors whether we ought to act good to each other even if there is no God, the answer will be an overwhelming "Yes".
Biblically speaking without faith a person cannot please God. So I find that the Bible is consistent with my position that adherence to the second greatest commandment is impossible without adherence to the first commandment. They are connected.
Also, which of my beliefs would you consider unorthodox?
No, BEING disingenuous is a road block to discussion. Pointing out someone else is being disingenuous is attempting to correct the road block.
I was not being disingenuous. For you to claim so is to bear false witness against me, and to bear false witness against me while claiming the name of Christ is to take God's name in vain.
If calling people out on being disingenuous is contrary to Christ, then Christ is contrary to Christ. That's what he did throughout his ministry.
Jesus, being God in human flesh, knew the hearts of men and could see right into a man's heart. You are not Jesus, and you don't know me. I was being genuine even if that contradicts the portrait you've already painted of me in your imagination.
Oh, and let's talk about orthodoxy for a second here. Orthodoxy according to WHOM? I asked you a long while ago which denomination of Christianity you subscribed to and you never answered. Because that's the thing, isn't it? There are plenty of people proclaiming themselves orthodox and the rest heretics. The Catholic Church proclaims itself the true Church. But then so does the Eastern Orthodox. Then we have numerous other churches with Orthodox in their name. Then we have the Protestants who believe all of those churches are misguided, and within Protestantism there are numerous denominations all with their own organizations. Then there are the Mormons, whom everyone else distances themselves from. Then there are the Gnostic Christians, who are weird, and that's really all that needs to be said about them.
So which one are you? If you're going to claim that I'm committing heresy, why don't you tell me WHOSE heresy I'm committing?
I'm just a Reformed Baptist. For the most part the 1689 London Baptist Confession is a pretty good starting point if you want to get a doctrinal statement out of me. I disagree with minute details here or there, but I'd consider that to be an Orthodox Confession of Faith among others like the Westminster Confession of Faith.
I note in passing that you have declined to respond to the most topical paragraph in my entire post: "Feeling gratitude towards God is still a completely subjective reason to behave morally. Let's say Dahmer does not feel gratitude towards God. Good luck convincing him that he should. Yet again, the existence of God does not solve the subjectivism problem."
Having said that love is not defined by what man thinks is love. According to scripture rebuking can be love, if a Christian rebukes his brother. So if you are rebuked by a brother and you repent of your heresy, which is damnable heresy, then the brother who rebuked has done a good work and loved his brother by bringing him to repentance. If a man is not a Christian, and deceivingly believes that he is a Christian then the most unloving thing one can do is tell that man that he is a brother and a Christian. I will not comfort a heretic by telling him that he is a brother and a child of God. I will tell a heretic that he is on his way to hell unless if he repents and trusts in Christ, His Word, and His gospel. To do anything else would be unloving towards someone that is in danger of spending eternity in the lake of fire where people are tormented forever and ever without rest day or night.
Your book doesn't appear to agree with you here either -
"Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother." (Romans 14:13)
"Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge." (James 4:11)
- but never mind that. Has it ever occurred to you that you might be the one being rebuked here?
"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world." (1 John 4:1)
Your point here is mostly correct, I think. I'm just referring to the Randian maxim that selfishness is the ultimate virtue. I don't know the ins and outs of the rest of her philosophy, but Jeffrey Dahmer's quote seems to capture that maxim as being the consequence of the non-existence of God. I'd say based on that maxim Dahmer's actions would be wrong for other people, but not necessarily wrong for Jeffrey Dahmer. If all the evil that Jeffrey Dahmer committed made him happy, then I don't see how Rand could condemn what Jeffrey Dahmer did. I think Rand would just deny that Dahmer's actions were in his own personal self-interest, but she'd defend Dahmer's right to do the selfish thing in every circumstance.
You would be incorrect. Ayn Rand says that sacrificing others for your own interest is precisely as abhorrent as sacrificing yourself for others' interest - that you must respect others' self-interest just as you expect others to respect yours. It is a reciprocal ethos. And she's not exactly obscure about this. She puts it right there in John Galt's big line from Atlas Shrugged: "I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
In short, Rand's Objectivism is precisely the kind of secular morality that you want us to believe is impossible without God.
The book also makes that statement within a certain context. That context involves the existence of The Trinitarian God of the Bible. The book makes no guarantee that that promise is true if God does not exist. The certainty of the promises of God rest on the guarantor of those promises. If the guarantor is an imaginary figure, then the promises themselves are mythological and no different than any of the promises we read from Zeus, Thor, Apollo, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
It's strange: it's like you've heard about contextual arguments, but have no idea how to actually make one yourself. For the record, a contextual argument generally uses specific other passages in the text to shed light on the meaning of a passage in question. For example, that video you linked in the other thread about 2 Peter 3 - whatever its other flaws - made a contextual argument correctly when it asked what was meant by "dear friends" and looked elsewhere in the book to find out. You have done this... not at all.
Now, when I admonish you with your own scripture, it's a safe bet that I'm doing so from your point of view (that the Bible has truth value) rather than mine (that the Bible has only literary value). The existence of God here isn't "context" except in the broadest sense - it's just a background assumption. Assuming that God exists and inspired the words of the Bible, he seems to want you to believe that love is greater than hope or faith. But you are saying that love is secondary to faith. So you are disagreeing with God.
From my point of view, I have no problem with people disagreeing with what a fictional character says. But from your point of view, from the "context" that God exists, that's a huge problem. So my argument here doesn't doesn't ignore this "context" - it is based upon it.
As a Christian, I do not fear God's wrath. Where I get that from is John 10 where Jesus says that no one can pluck the elect out of His Father's hand.
Funny how you assume you're one of the elect. That's pretty much exactly what Paul is saying you shouldn't do. Paul is saying that if even God's chosen people weren't automatically "elect", nobody else should feel safe in their status either.
Divine discipline is necessary in the process of sanctification, so I do not fear that either as it is something that God does for the good of the saints.
Not just one of the elect, but a saint! Do I need to quote that long string of admonitions against pride again? Because it doesn't seem to have taken the first time around.
Whatever word is translated "fear" in Romans 11, it is contrasted with pride. I have in my studies heard that the word translated as fear carries with it the connotation of reverence or awe, which seems like it would be the antithesis of pride, but I'll have to get my concordances out and check on that one when I get a chance.
The word root is φόβος. As in "phobia". It carries with it the connotation of reverence or awe in the sense of great respect for something with the power to harm you - it is the feeling you get when you're dropped into a cage with a live tiger. The word is used in that passage, and also in this one -
"And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28)
- which makes the "fear of harm" meaning even more explicit. (Side note: are souls actually destroyed in Hell? I thought it was supposed to be an eternity.)
Biblically speaking without faith a person cannot please God. So I find that the Bible is consistent with my position that adherence to the second greatest commandment is impossible without adherence to the first commandment. They are connected.
This is a simple non sequitur. Nobody is arguing that the Bible supports salvation without faith - the book is pretty clear about that. But it does not follow from "If you don't have faith, you won't be saved" to "If you don't love God, you can't love others". In fact, the message of the Bible seems strongly to be the other way around - "If you don't love others, you can't love God":
"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us." (1 John 4:7-12)
It's not "whoever knows God loves"; it's "whoever loves has been born of God and knows God". It's not "Anyone who does not know God does not love"; it's "Anyone who does not love does not know God". It's not "If God abides in us, we love one another"; it's "if we love one another, God abides in us".
In the New Testament, love is primary. It is not secondary to gratitude or fear or worshipfulness or anything else. It comes first; everything else follows. Paul stated explicitly that it is even greater than faith. If you think that faith is greater than love, you're disagreeing with Paul. Which, again, is fine with me but not with you.
Also, which of my beliefs would you consider unorthodox?
For starters, any point on which you differ with the Roman Catholic Church, which is by far the largest Christian denomination on Earth, and in addition has the most robustly devoloped theology and (with Greek Orthodoxy) the best claim to continuity from the original Christianity. All Protestant denominations are heterodoxical. That's what it means to be Protestant: you're protesting the orthodoxy of Catholicism.
In particular, your Calvinism is a minority view. Your embrace of pride and open contempt for sinners is a minority view. Your defense of slavery and genocide are minority views. And again, your position in this thread on moral motivations is a minority view.
- but never mind that. Has it ever occurred to you that you might be the one being rebuked here?
It all depends on who is my brother. In this thread and others on mtgs I do not believe I have treated a brother in the way that is described in those passages.
It's strange: it's like you've heard about contextual arguments, but have no idea how to actually make one yourself. For the record, a contextual argument generally uses specific other passages in the text to shed light on the meaning of a passage in question. For example, that video you linked in the other thread about 2 Peter 3 - whatever its other flaws - made a contextual argument correctly when it asked what was meant by "dear friends" and looked elsewhere in the book to find out. You have done this... not at all.
Now, when I admonish you with your own scripture, it's a safe bet that I'm doing so from your point of view (that the Bible has truth value) rather than mine (that the Bible has only literary value). The existence of God here isn't "context" except in the broadest sense - it's just a background assumption. Assuming that God exists and inspired the words of the Bible, he seems to want you to believe that love is greater than hope or faith. But you are saying that love is secondary to faith. So you are disagreeing with God.
From my point of view, I have no problem with people disagreeing with what a fictional character says. But from your point of view, from the "context" that God exists, that's a huge problem. So my argument here doesn't doesn't ignore this "context" - it is based upon it.
Any person with any sort of background in the Bible knows that the Bible presupposes God's existence. Personally, I didn't think that needed an argument proving so, as it is common knowledge. It also seems like common sense that if a major presupposition of every argument made in the entire Bible is proven to be false that those arguments themselves take a major hit.
Funny how you assume you're one of the elect. That's pretty much exactly what Paul is saying you shouldn't do. Paul is saying that if even God's chosen people weren't automatically "elect", nobody else should feel safe in their status either.
I am not just assuming that I am one of the elect. I look at the evidence. There are many people who face trials in their life and walk away from the faith. The fact that my faith has withstood trials is something that I can look back upon and see that God is continuing to work in my life. Paul's point is not that we can't know. Paul's point is to stay humble, and not get proud. Assurance of salvation and humility are two simultaneously possible realities. A humble person can have assurance and give God all the glory.
Not just one of the elect, but a saint! Do I need to quote that long string of admonitions against pride again? Because it doesn't seem to have taken the first time around.
You are looking at the word through a Roman Catholic lens and not a Biblical one. All Christians are saints because we have all been perfected forever as Hebrews 10:14 says. So I use the word synonymously with the word "Christian," as in any lowly sinner who has been saved by the blood of Christ.
This is a simple non sequitur. Nobody is arguing that the Bible supports salvation without faith - the book is pretty clear about that. But it does not follow from "If you don't have faith, you won't be saved" to "If you don't love God, you can't love others". In fact, the message of the Bible seems strongly to be the other way around - "If you don't love others, you can't love God":
"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us." (1 John 4:7-12)
It's not "whoever knows God loves"; it's "whoever loves has been born of God and knows God". It's not "Anyone who does not know God does not love"; it's "Anyone who does not love does not know God". It's not "If God abides in us, we love one another"; it's "if we love one another, God abides in us".
In the New Testament, love is primary. It is not secondary to gratitude or fear or worshipfulness or anything else. It comes first; everything else follows. Paul stated explicitly that it is even greater than faith. If you think that faith is greater than love, you're disagreeing with Paul. Which, again, is fine with me but not with you.
This is a fair point. Jesus also said if you love me, then you will obey my commandments. So it appears that the relationship between loving God and loving others is biconditional.
"Whoever loves has been born of God..." compare that to John 5:21. When they are quickened they are born of God. And those who are born of God love God and love others. They are given a faith not of their own, and those are the Christians, the people who please God.
There is a perfect 1:1 to ratio between those groups.
For starters, any point on which you differ with the Roman Catholic Church, which is by far the largest Christian denomination on Earth, and in addition has the most robustly devoloped theology and (with Greek Orthodoxy) the best claim to continuity from the original Christianity. All Protestant denominations are heterodoxical. That's what it means to be Protestant: you're protesting the orthodoxy of Catholicism.
In particular, your Calvinism is a minority view. Your embrace of pride and open contempt for sinners is a minority view. Your defense of slavery and genocide are minority views. And again, your position in this thread on moral motivations is a minority view.
I suppose it all depends on what "orthodox" means. When I say the word orthodox I mean the historic Christian faith. I believe the reformed faith has a very good case when you look at the church fathers. Many of the church fathers believed in limitedatonement. With so many of the early church fathers espousing the doctrines of Calvinism I think it is quite difficult to say it is not orthodox.
When it comes to responding to people who are openly mocking the Christian faith I don't think I am doing anything different than what Paul did in Acts 17 when he went out into the streets and argued with the pagans.
As for slavery, I recognize it as inherently oppressive, and the Bible does too. Government can be oppressive too, but the Bible still defends the right of governments to exist and for people to submit to the authority of those governments. Slavery is the same deal. It is oppressive, but Christians are still commanded to submit to their masters if slavery still exists I'm their current society.
Do you honestly not realize that he can say exactly the same thing to you?
It is different. He has confessed without shame that he believes heresies. If I take him at his word, then I must conclude that he is a heretic and not a believer. Now have I inferred anything else about his character? Correct me if I am wrong, but to my knowledge I don't think I have.
If the only reason you're doing something is because someone more powerful is telling you to, you're doing it out of fear of punishment. Not out of actual desire. This is evidenced by you saying that you would not do it were God nonexistent — in other words, without fear of punishment.
So what about it exactly? If a fear of going to jail keeps you from breaking the law what exactly is the problem? If it keeps enough people from breaking the law then maybe you would have a just society. I'm hope you get my analogy.
@ BS
I guess I will have to concede that it would have been better for the last sentence to be Moral Nihilism is right.
Of course you were. You call yourself a saint — a "cloud man," as it were — when your posts are defined by outright avoidance of anything anyone posts anything contrary to what you are saying. You refuse to justify any argument you make, instead wanting to be declared correct without actually doing any of the leg work in demonstrating that you actually are, in the face of an ever-expanding amount of evidence that what you are promoting is untenable. You run around declaring how holy and saintly you are, yet you have never once justified your position in the face of an overwhelming amount of evidence that the Bible being infallible is an absurd and incorrect position.
For some inscrutable reason, you have the audacity to claim sainthood, yet demonstrate none of the bravery attributed to saints. Saints are those who bear witness to their faith in the face of adversity, yet you are unwilling to even address challenges to your faith in an internet forum. Jesus died for his preaching; Paul suffered torture, risked death countless times, and endured imprisonment; many Christians suffered persecution and death; Augustine openly proclaimed his faith at a time when such a thing carried enormous risk; Francis gave up his wealth and privilege out of conviction for his ministry for the poor. Yet you, on an internet forum, in total anonymity, in a historical period in which Western society views Christianity as the norm and carries with it not only no risk to identify as Christian, but more risk to identify as not Christian — you compare yourself to saints while outright demonstrating yourself unwilling to even try to address the concerns against your arguments?
Then by what measure are you honest? Can you honestly claim that you seek to promote the truth and not your own ego? If so, then why do avoid the questions posed against you? If it is not unwillingness to admit that you are wrong, then what is it?
Is it the Bible's infallibility, or your own that you have such a hard time believing might not be real?
Jesus, being God in human flesh, knew the hearts of men and could see right into a man's heart. You are not Jesus, and you don't know me. I was being genuine even if that contradicts the portrait you've already painted of me in your imagination.
You are not being genuine, for you are lying to yourself. You claim knowledge when you clearly do not have the knowledge you claim. Moreover, when you are demonstrated to be false, you react with denial, instead of listening to reason. Thus, you are being disingenuous.
Yes, you may be authentically representing your beliefs, but that is of no consequence. True belief is meaningless if what one believes is not true.
I'm just a Reformed Baptist. For the most part the 1689 London Baptist Confession is a pretty good starting point if you want to get a doctrinal statement out of me. I disagree with minute details here or there, but I'd consider that to be an Orthodox Confession of Faith among others like the Westminster Confession of Faith.
And thus you are a heretic, by both the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Oh, you don't accept their authority? Why not? Why should we care what the Reformed Baptists find heretical and not what other denominations think?
(Besides, aren't Baptists the ones who refuse alcohol? Then I really have no use for their theology.)
When it comes to responding to people who are openly mocking the Christian faith I don't think I am doing anything different than what Paul did in Acts 17 when he went out into the streets and argued with the pagans.
You haven't done that. You've mocked other people for disagreeing with you, they've responded by pointing out problems with your arguments, and you've openly avoided responding to them. So do not compare yourself to Paul. Paul went out and confronted unbelievers in the open, risking death and ultimately being imprisoned for doing so. You are on an anonymous internet forum in a world where Christianity is the majority religion, and yet – despite absolutely no risk of harm to your own person — still refuse to face those who contradict you.
As for slavery, I recognize it as inherently oppressive, and the Bible does too.
You've never read Philemon. You should read it, and thus absolve yourself from any misconceptions you might have about the Bible being anti-slavery.
Not to mention you might want to read the Old Testament as well.
So what about it exactly? If a fear of going to jail keeps you from breaking the law what exactly is the problem? If it keeps enough people from breaking the law then maybe you would have a just society. I'm hope you get my analogy.
Because any criminal can be dissuaded from committing a crime for fear of being caught. This is not what loving thy neighbor is.
One who truly loves his neighbor would not harm his neighbor even if given the opportunity to do so without punishment.
One who truly loves his neighbor would not require anyone dissuading him from harming his neighbor, for such a person would not wish harm against his neighbor out of love for his neighbor.
It all depends on who is my brother. In this thread and others on mtgs I do not believe I have treated a brother in the way that is described in those passages.
Everyone is your brother. (Even the women, oddly - but let's table the topic of Biblical sexism as we have enough on our hands already.) It's "Love thy neighbor", not "Love thy neighbor as long as he believes the same thing you do". And it's "Judge not", not "Judge not those who believe the same thing you do", Heck, Matthew 7 doesn't even invoke the concept of "brother" until later in the passage: it's "judge not", period, as in "judge not anyone", and only later does it speak of your "brother" as the person you're not supposed to be judging - reinforcing the interpretation that everyone is your brother.
And it is beyond obvious that you're passing judgment on Highroller (and me).
Any person with any sort of background in the Bible knows that the Bible presupposes God's existence. Personally, I didn't think that needed an argument proving so, as it is common knowledge. It also seems like common sense that if a major presupposition of every argument made in the entire Bible is proven to be false that those arguments themselves take a major hit.
Your "common sense" is fallacious. Falsifying a premise does not falsify the conclusion; you can have a true conclusion in spite of false premises. If I argue, "Whales are fish, all fish live in water, therefore whales live in water", and then I discover that whales are not fish, I have not thereby learned that whales do not live in water.
Or to go back to the Bible - the Bible states that there is a city called "Jerusalem". If the God premise were false, would the Jerusalem claim be false? When an atheist such as myself talks about Jerusalem, do you think, "How can he be talking about Jerusalem? He doesn't have faith in God and the truth of Scripture - he has no basis for believing there is such a city"? Or do you just accept that I have verified the existence of Jerusalem through means independent of religious faith?
So why then do you insist that altruism can only exist through Christianity?
I am not just assuming that I am one of the elect. I look at the evidence.
It's funny you should mention that, because Mark 16:17-18 gives a very clear scientific test for belief. You should be able to (a) cast out demons, (b) speak in new tongues, (c) pick up serpents, (d) drink any deadly poison and not be harmed, and (e) heal the sick by laying your hands upon them. Can't stomach bleach? Then you're not one of the elect.
This is a fair point. Jesus also said if you love me, then you will obey my commandments. So it appears that the relationship between loving God and loving others is biconditional.
Again, does not follow. "if you love me, then you will obey my commandments" does not imply "if you obey my commandments, then you love me". And just looking at the evidence, the claim is nonsensical. Billions of people love each other and do not believe in the Christian God. Furthermore, the frequency with which the apostles repeat the message that if you don't love your neighbor, you don't love God suggests that this was a message some early Christians were having trouble with - as, indeed, many Christians do today. It is extremely dangerous to reason, as you seem to be doing, "I have faith in God, therefore I must love others, therefore all my actions towards others must be loving." It goes the other way: "All my actions are loving, therefore I love others, therefore I have faith in God."
"Whoever loves has been born of God..." compare that to John 5:21. When they are quickened they are born of God. And those who are born of God love God and love others. They are given a faith not of their own, and those are the Christians, the people who please God.
Are you saying that there are some people in whose birth God does not play a part? Because I'm pretty sure that's contrary to Christian doctrine pretty much everywhere. And John 5:21 is talking about resurrection, not birth - Jesus is saying that he can raise the dead when he wants to.
I suppose it all depends on what "orthodox" means. When I say the word orthodox I mean the historic Christian faith. I believe the reformed faith has a very good case when you look at the church fathers.
If you're looking for the denomination that most closely resembles Christ's own intentions, I'm pretty sure Quakerism has that distinction. They're the only ones in my knowledge who actually consistently put love over all else. (Though they're also the dry ones, so sorry about that, Highroller.)
And others didn't. That's the problem with Catholicism: trying to form a coherent theology from disparate writings is difficult. Protestantism was founded to avoid this problem - it's the whole point of the sola scriptura doctrine. As a Protestant, you should not care at all what the church fathers thought.
As for slavery, I recognize it as inherently oppressive, and the Bible does too. Government can be oppressive too, but the Bible still defends the right of governments to exist and for people to submit to the authority of those governments. Slavery is the same deal. It is oppressive, but Christians are still commanded to submit to their masters if slavery still exists I'm their current society.
...which is not an orthodox view in Christendom. The African-American community in particular, many of whom are Baptists like yourself, has come to a very different understanding of what the Bible commands of slaves.
Governments can be oppressive. We should consent to be governed only by those that aren't. (As an American, this is a principle you should be familiar with.) Slavery is oppressive. There is no form of slavery that isn't, and therefore no form of slavery that can be consented to.
He has confessed without shame that he believes heresies.
It is your judgment that he believes heresies. He has confessed without shame that he believes in Jesus Christ. The Bible is pretty clear about what that means.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
This thread would be more aptly titled "Jeffrey Dahmer's Christianity." The quote is from a hatemongering Christian. The parable about loving thy neighbor too often falls on deaf ears and is replaced by intolerance for those who believe differently.
"If a person doesn't think there is a God to be accountable to, then what's the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges?" -Jeffrey Dahmer
I've read rhetoric like this 100 times over the years and 100% of the time it came from Christians. I've never met an atheist that thinks like this, and I'm sure I never will. Dahmer is demonizing atheism instead of being accountable for his actions. No surprise there.
Dahmer's question is a telling insight to Christian morality. If there is a God to be accountable to, is it moral to modify your behavior in order to avoid punishment and/or receive reward from Him? Of course not - that's not a moral person, that's a bad dog on a leash. The theist that does good for selfish reasons always frowns upon the atheist that does good because it is the right thing to do.
If Jeffrey Dahmer was still alive today how would you answer his question?
I'd say that since I'm an atheist, my worldview promotes respect for the dignity and worth of others based on the human experience, not religious dogma. I treat others the way I would like to be treated.
The reason I don't murder and steal is because I have an internal moral compass telling me doing so is wrong. It's not from fear of God, because there is no such thing. It's not from fear of imprisonment. It's because it is just simply flat wrong.
Now, there are things at the margins that I would probably do if not for fear of punishment, or may actually do because of the expectation that punishment is unlikely - we have all//mostly driven over the speed limit on occasion, one would imagine.
Similarly, if I were still christian, there are probably things I would do out of...well not fear of punishment, but out of external agencies telling me it is wrong, rather than internal reasons.
But I have little to no difficulty refraining from being a child murdering necrophilliac psychopath. For those christians who have said the only thing that stops them is god: You terrify me. (Also, you're going to hell, or would be if it existed, as I'm pretty sure the bible says thinking about wanting to do it is roughly as bad as doing it, and I'm quite sure you've done that if all that stops you actually doing it is god, your religious nutbags)
I'd say that since I'm an atheist, my worldview promotes respect for the dignity and worth of others based on the human experience, not religious dogma. I treat others the way I would like to be treated.
This sentiment was decidedly lacking in 20th century Russia or 18th century France. If we are going to talk about your wordl view promotes maybe we should start there.
This sentiment was decidedly lacking in 20th century Russia or 18th century France. If we are going to talk about your wordl view promotes maybe we should start there.
Seriously, bakgat? Do you seriously want to commit to the proposition that religious beliefs ought to be evaluated by the historical atrocities that can be associated with them? It will not go well for you. It never has before. I think that's what really astonishes me here - you keep taking these same cheap shots even though they blow up in your face every time. You just never learn.
But for the record: if you were truly concerned about historical indications of what a worldview promotes, you would have to be utterly deranged to remain a Christian. I could obviously mention the Crusades, the Inquisition, or the Thirty Years' War as acts of mass murder done directly in the name of the religion. But the acts you allude to were not done directly in the name of atheism, but only committed by men who happened to profess atheism, so I do not feel I need to be so limited in my examples either. Therefore, I lay at your feet not just the Crusades or the Inquisition or tbe Thirty Years' War or the pogroms (oh, there's another one), but rather the entire history of the world from the dawn of human civilization. Every war, every murder, every crime that you do not blame on atheism was committed by a person or people who believed in the existence of a divinity. And let me assure you, there are a lot more of them. So what conclusions ought we to draw about what the religious worldview promotes?
I do not make this argument on my own, for it is a stupid and petty argument intended to score points rather than determine the truth. I make it in the vain hope that you will finally realize how stupid and petty it is, and stop repeating it.
A mathematically true statement, but its connection to the debate is not apparent to me.
It does not follow from the proposition that Hell is infinite that it has an objective rational weight of infinity.
I think you're saying that Dahmer could subjectively determine hell isn't so bad after all. In other words, he could decide that hell isn't infinitely bad, and therefore conclude that the sick thrill he gets from killing is worth the penalty of hell.
You've read the Old Testament. I think God deserves more credit as a vindictive torturer than you're giving him. If an omnipotent God exists, I think we can imbue him with the power to make hell subjectively intolerable to everyone. Either hell represents infinite harm or at a minimum it represents such an enormous finite harm that no one could rationally value any finite earthly benefit as worth enduring hell for.
If that's true, then Dahmer could not rationally choose to commit murder knowing the penalty is eternity in hell. This provides an objectively sound argument for why he shouldn't kill.
If you had any genuine concern or compassion for your neighbor, you wouldn't be asking, "Why should I care about other people?" You would, by virtue of having genuine concern and/or compassion for your neighbor, already care about other people. You wouldn't have to ask why you wouldn't behave like a psychopath. You would — by virtue of having love, empathy, sympathy, and compassion for others — not behave like a psychopath.
You wouldn't need God to tell you to care about them in order to care about them because you would already care about them. And indeed, if the only reason you care about your neighbors is because you feel forced to because God commanded it, then you cannot be said to actually love or care about them.
Doesn't this line of reasoning render the commandment to "love thy neighbor" a nullity or a catch-22?
If I already love my neighbor without being commanded then there's no point in commanding it. "Breathe" and "eat food" aren't in the 10 commandments, even though they're clearly very important things, because people do these things automatically. If someone already does something there's no point in commanding them to do it.
If I don't already love my neighbor, but I read the commandment and think "God says I should love my neighbor, I better do what God says" then by your logic I'm not really loving my neighbor because I'm just doing it because God says so. "[I]f the only reason you care about your neighbors is because you feel forced to because God commanded it, then you cannot be said to actually love or care about them." By your reasoning it's impossible for someone who isn't already following this commandment to read it and start genuinely obeying it.
So why does this commandment exist?
I think the most reasonable theological explanation is that everyone loves their neighbor less than they should. Even the most loving and giving people in the world have lapses where they don't feel like loving a particular person at a particular time. I think the commandment is saying "you need to show love to your neighbors even when you don't naturally want to." The commandment is very much directed at people who lack "love, empathy, sympathy, and compassion for others" whether it's just a momentary lapse or a chronic problem. The virtue comes from loving others even when you don't feel like it. That takes effort and dedication. There's no effort required to love someone when you "already care about them" and already desire to show them love.
Doesn't this line of reasoning render the commandment to "love thy neighbor" a nullity or a catch-22?
If I already love my neighbor without being commanded then there's no point in commanding it. "Breathe" and "eat food" aren't in the 10 commandments, even though they're clearly very important things, because people do these things automatically. If someone already does something there's no point in commanding them to do it.
If I don't already love my neighbor, but I read the commandment and think "God says I should love my neighbor, I better do what God says" then by your logic I'm not really loving my neighbor because I'm just doing it because God says so. "[I]f the only reason you care about your neighbors is because you feel forced to because God commanded it, then you cannot be said to actually love or care about them."
Imagine if a child steals something of yours, then later returns it and says he's very sorry. Is that child only doing so because his parent told him to, or is he doing so out of a genuine sense of wrongdoing and desire to make amends?
Do you recognize that there is a difference between these?
By your reasoning it's impossible for someone who isn't already following this commandment to read it and start genuinely obeying it.
No, that's the exact opposite of what I'm saying. It is entirely possible to care about one's neighbors for a reason other than because one feels forced to do so; namely, because it's the right thing to do.
cloudman is claiming that he loves his neighbor as himself, but if God weren't around to command him to love his neighbor as himself, then he would become a psychopath because he couldn't possibly think of any reason why he shouldn't. That demonstrates that he does not actually love his neighbor as himself, because if he actually loved his neighbor as himself, that love — and the concern for the care and well-being that comes with it — would be the reason why he wouldn't.
If a person is only loving his neighbor because he feels he is ordered by God to, to the point where he won't if there is no God to do so, then he does not love his neighbor as himself. He's just faking the trappings of love.
The truly moral person does things not because someone has to make him do so, not because of lure of reward or fear of punishment, but because it is the morally correct thing to do. Thus, the person would continue to do the morally righteous thing even when that person has no one forcing him to do so, has no lure of reward, and no fear of punishment.
So why does this commandment exist?
That's a question that has been debated over pretty much since there were Jews.
The truly moral person does things not because someone has to make him do so, not because of lure of reward or fear of punishment, but because it is the morally correct thing to do. Thus, the person would continue to do the morally righteous thing even when that person has no one forcing him to do so, has no lure of reward, and no fear of punishment.
I really think this is the argument in a nutshell.
So why does this commandment exist?
That's a question that has been debated over pretty much since there were Jews.
Uh... I think everyone is taking this commandment thing a little too literally. First of all, it's not actually a 'commandment' in the 10 commandments sense. In context, it came about when Jesus was responding to the Pharisees's (trick) question of 'what is the greatest commandment of the law'. They were trying to trap Jesus politically, in the context of this section, and Jesus' response was basically 'Just love one another, dudes' - a classic political evasion. Jesus had 'silenced' the Sadducees, which the Pharisee's had broad cultural and dogmatic divisions with over the Prophets. Basically he was saying loving God and one another trumps petty dogmatic disputes.
I think you're saying that Dahmer could subjectively determine hell isn't so bad after all. In other words, he could decide that hell isn't infinitely bad, and therefore conclude that the sick thrill he gets from killing is worth the penalty of hell.
You've read the Old Testament. I think God deserves more credit as a vindictive torturer than you're giving him. If an omnipotent God exists, I think we can imbue him with the power to make hell subjectively intolerable to everyone. Either hell represents infinite harm or at a minimum it represents such an enormous finite harm that no one could rationally value any finite earthly benefit as worth enduring hell for.
If that's true, then Dahmer could not rationally choose to commit murder knowing the penalty is eternity in hell. This provides an objectively sound argument for why he shouldn't kill.
You say "no one could rationally value", but evaluation necessarily precedes rationality. You determine what you value, then rationality tells you how to achieve it. You can't use rationality to determine what you ought to value. So to say it would be irrational for Dahmer to discount the value of Hell is to put the cart before the horse. As a matter of fact, Dahmer probably does value "not feeling pain" quite a bit, so the prospect of Hell carries enormous disutility. But that's not an objective rational conclusion; it's derived from his subjective aversion to pain. Now, you can say that God makes Hell whatever you're averse to, so if you're not averse to pain he makes it something else, but that still presumes that you're averse to something, which again is not necessarily true. Or maybe Hell is just an opportunity cost - going to Hell means missing out on all the positive utility in Heaven. But then, if what you value is sadistic murder, then Heaven means being allowed to commit sadistic murders for all eternity, which I'll grant would provide incentive not to commit sadistic murders in life but overall does not seem like an improvement on the situation. And all of this afterlife consideration is ignoring the possibility that Dahmer is simply performing heavy - perhaps total - future discounting. Maybe in his evaluation system, any amount of utility now oughtweighs any amount of disutility later. And although this seems strange to us, who value the future somewhat, it is hard to argue that such an evaluation system is objectively irrational.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
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And I imagine it was his callous disregard of that fact, the callous disregard of others that defines a psychopath, that lead Dahmer to commit the rape, murder, and dismemberment of 17 males, some of them children, at times engaging in necrophilia and cannibalism.
Why?
Further, let's talk about something here. The whole point of Christianity revolves around two central commandments: You shall love your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your mind; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Now the problem with what you're saying is obvious: you profess to be Christian, and yet you're saying that without God, the only thing you can think to do is become completely selfish and self-absorbed, to the point where you legitimately have no idea why you wouldn't emulate the behavior of a serial killer if you found yourself in a universe without God.
So we can gather from this that you don't actually love your neighbor.
If you had any genuine concern or compassion for your neighbor, you wouldn't be asking, "Why should I care about other people?" You would, by virtue of having genuine concern and/or compassion for your neighbor, already care about other people. You wouldn't have to ask why you wouldn't behave like a psychopath. You would — by virtue of having love, empathy, sympathy, and compassion for others — not behave like a psychopath.
You wouldn't need God to tell you to care about them in order to care about them because you would already care about them. And indeed, if the only reason you care about your neighbors is because you feel forced to because God commanded it, then you cannot be said to actually love or care about them.
So really, you're not obeying God's commandments at all. You are, essentially, displaying the very selfishness you claim you would openly display if God were not a part of the picture.
There is no point. Might is indeed right. The strong have the right to take and the weak have the right to perish. We live a life in vain until the day we inevitably return to the primordial ooze from whence we came. No Meaning No purpose No right or wrong. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference. The hope fulled ideals of the secular humanist notwithstanding this is the consequence of a naturalistic world view. Nietzsche was right.
The second most important commandment rests on the foundation of the first. If God does not exist, then the first becomes trivial, and the reason for obeying the second commandment, because of one's love for God, goes away. It is by seeing God's love for me that I know how to love my neighbor. It is out of a thankful heart, one that is thankful for everything that God has done for me, that I love my neighbor. It is God's kindness that brings people to repentance. If God did not exist, then his kindness to bring me to repentance would not exist, and I would have no reason to love my neighbor.
Saddening.
Complete garbage.
One who loves does not require reasons to love. One who loves does not require prerequisites to love.
If one requires reasons to love a person, one does not love that person. If one puts prerequisites toward loving a person, one does not love that person.
One who loves does not seek justification for love. Love justifies itself.
Therefore, you, who demand reasons and prerequisites and justifications for love, do not love your neighbor. He who does not love his neighbor does not keep God's commandments.
One who loves his neighbor as himself regards his neighbor as a gift, a blessing, and would continue to value such a blessing regardless of who sent it, whether the sender be God or a happy accident.
Two things:
1) You didn't understand my post. That is made 100% clear by your response. Do you understand what the word "Thankfulness" means? That is the word that I used in my post. It is a word that has nothing to do with earning rewards. It is a response to something that has already been freely given by God's grace. Thankfulness is also something that is not characteristic of someone who fears punishment.
2) You characterized my post as "complete garbage." Your views on things are typically pretty heretical, so the fact that you find Christian orthodoxy to be "complete garbage" is quite unsurprising. The day will come when God judges between us, and we'll find out who really is grounded in the truth of God's Word.
I did not realise that the reason or source of a concern somehow invalidates it
If I am thankful for a gift given to me, but upon finding out it was not given to me by the person I thought it was, I respond with, "Why should I give a crap about this gift?" and discard it as something of no worth, was I thankful for the gift? Of course not.
Yet, you argue that you are thankful for your neighbor, despite saying that if there is no God, you would promptly regard all neighbors as being of no worth and promptly become selfish and self-centered?
Then you do not love your neighbor. Simple as that.
Yes.
*Shrug* So is believing slavery is wrong. So is believing the earth wasn't created in six days. So is believing that insects have six legs. So is believing that Jesus did not return in glory to judge the living and the dead with the Kingdom of God in all of God's heavenly glory during the first century.
I seek out the truth, for that is where God leads. One who seeks out the truth does not lie to himself, enslaving himself to useless dogmas.
You are welcome to explain to God why it is correct to take moral lessons from sociopathic rapist necrophiliac cannibal pedophile serial killers if he weren't around to explicitly tell you not to.
The irony here is that the atheists in this thread as closer to the Kingdom of Heaven than you are. They don't believe in God and yet in spite of this promote the love of their neighbor. They follow the commandment without even recognizing God. Yet you believe in God's existence and still promote contempt of your neighbor. You are quick to profess words of love of God, yet treat your neighbor as being of no worth. Of which of these is closer to Jesus? Which of these is the Good Samaritan, who was not a Jew yet loved his neighbor when the priest and the Levite did not? There is no question!
If the only reason you're doing something is because someone more powerful is telling you to, you're doing it out of fear of punishment. Not out of actual desire. This is evidenced by you saying that you would not do it were God nonexistent — in other words, without fear of punishment.
Thus, you cannot truly said to love your neighbor. One who loves his neighbor would behave benevolently regardless of any promise of reward, and indeed would behave benevolently in spite of threat of punishment.
As I told cloudman about Rand above, Nietzsche actually proposes a definite ethos, aleit an unorthodox one. If you think Nietzsche is right, you think there is a definite right and wrong, and you think that there is a purpose to life. What he says those things are is very different from what most people think, but they're there. Furthermore, you think (crudely) that "might makes right" even if God exists. Nietzsche's beliefs are not contingent on the truth of atheism - in fact, his condemnation of organized religion is all the stronger if there is a God.
No, what you're saying actually echoes not Nietzsche so much as... the Bible. "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity", "Dust we are, and to dust we shall return", etc.
But let's pretend Nietzsche's argument says what you think it does. You still don't have any argument in his favor. You keep telling secular humanists what conclusions we ought to draw and what we ought to believe, but I never see any logic to back it up. The simple fact is that you're lashing out at positions you plainly do not understand. Do you have any rebuttal to - let's take an easy one - Kant's secular argument for deontological ethics based on the existence of a categorical imperative? Because if you don't, all this holier-than-thou moralizing is just wind.
"Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13:8-13)
Your own book appears to disagree with you. But set that aside. Feeling gratitude towards God is still a completely subjective reason to behave morally. Let's say Dahmer does not feel gratitude towards God. Good luck convincing him that he should. Yet again, the existence of God does not solve the subjectivism problem.
Then you don't fear punishment? Because the Bible is pretty clear that you should. "So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you." (Romans 11:20-21)
Highroller is quite unorthodox in many ways, but so too are you. And on this point Highroller happens to be on the side of the orthodoxy: the Roman, Greek, and most major Protestant denominations all agree that a good action which is not performed for its own sake is not truly good. If you poll priests and pastors whether we ought to act good to each other even if there is no God, the answer will be an overwhelming "Yes".
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Accusing someone of being disingenuous is pretty good way to road block any kind of meaningful discussion. I won't even get into which commands of Christ that breaks.
Having said that love is not defined by what man thinks is love. According to scripture rebuking can be love, if a Christian rebukes his brother. So if you are rebuked by a brother and you repent of your heresy, which is damnable heresy, then the brother who rebuked has done a good work and loved his brother by bringing him to repentance. If a man is not a Christian, and deceivingly believes that he is a Christian then the most unloving thing one can do is tell that man that he is a brother and a Christian. I will not comfort a heretic by telling him that he is a brother and a child of God. I will tell a heretic that he is on his way to hell unless if he repents and trusts in Christ, His Word, and His gospel. To do anything else would be unloving towards someone that is in danger of spending eternity in the lake of fire where people are tormented forever and ever without rest day or night.
If calling people out on being disingenuous is contrary to Christ, then Christ is contrary to Christ. That's what he did throughout his ministry.
*Yawn* I will note that nowhere here is a meaningful counter-argument to the ever-expanding list of flaws pointed out about your posts.
Oh, and let's talk about orthodoxy for a second here. Orthodoxy according to WHOM? I asked you a long while ago which denomination of Christianity you subscribed to and you never answered. Because that's the thing, isn't it? There are plenty of people proclaiming themselves orthodox and the rest heretics. The Catholic Church proclaims itself the true Church. But then so does the Eastern Orthodox. Then we have numerous other churches with Orthodox in their name. Then we have the Protestants who believe all of those churches are misguided, and within Protestantism there are numerous denominations all with their own organizations. Then there are the Mormons, whom everyone else distances themselves from. Then there are the Gnostic Christians, who are weird, and that's really all that needs to be said about them.
So which one are you? If you're going to claim that I'm committing heresy, why don't you tell me WHOSE heresy I'm committing?
Your point here is mostly correct, I think. I'm just referring to the Randian maxim that selfishness is the ultimate virtue. I don't know the ins and outs of the rest of her philosophy, but Jeffrey Dahmer's quote seems to capture that maxim as being the consequence of the non-existence of God. I'd say based on that maxim Dahmer's actions would be wrong for other people, but not necessarily wrong for Jeffrey Dahmer. If all the evil that Jeffrey Dahmer committed made him happy, then I don't see how Rand could condemn what Jeffrey Dahmer did. I think Rand would just deny that Dahmer's actions were in his own personal self-interest, but she'd defend Dahmer's right to do the selfish thing in every circumstance.
The book also makes that statement within a certain context. That context involves the existence of The Trinitarian God of the Bible. The book makes no guarantee that that promise is true if God does not exist. The certainty of the promises of God rest on the guarantor of those promises. If the guarantor is an imaginary figure, then the promises themselves are mythological and no different than any of the promises we read from Zeus, Thor, Apollo, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
As a Christian, I do not fear God's wrath. Where I get that from is John 10 where Jesus says that no one can pluck the elect out of His Father's hand. And then there is also the passage in Hebrews that speaks to the fact that God disciplines His children like a father disciplines his sons. Divine discipline is necessary in the process of sanctification, so I do not fear that either as it is something that God does for the good of the saints.
The context of Romans 11 is laid out in Romans 9 and 10, and Paul is seeking to answer the question of why did Israel not believe. His argument is that Israel did not believe because it served God's purpose in election and predestination. And the way that Romans 11:20-21 plays into that argument is this: Election is on the basis of God's grace alone, and if you become conceited thinking that you were elected because you were better than the Israelites, then you are believing a false gospel (read Galatians 1) and God cut off Israel because they did not believe the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Whatever word is translated "fear" in Romans 11, it is contrasted with pride. I have in my studies heard that the word translated as fear carries with it the connotation of reverence or awe, which seems like it would be the antithesis of pride, but I'll have to get my concordances out and check on that one when I get a chance.
Biblically speaking without faith a person cannot please God. So I find that the Bible is consistent with my position that adherence to the second greatest commandment is impossible without adherence to the first commandment. They are connected.
Also, which of my beliefs would you consider unorthodox?
I was not being disingenuous. For you to claim so is to bear false witness against me, and to bear false witness against me while claiming the name of Christ is to take God's name in vain.
Jesus, being God in human flesh, knew the hearts of men and could see right into a man's heart. You are not Jesus, and you don't know me. I was being genuine even if that contradicts the portrait you've already painted of me in your imagination.
I'm just a Reformed Baptist. For the most part the 1689 London Baptist Confession is a pretty good starting point if you want to get a doctrinal statement out of me. I disagree with minute details here or there, but I'd consider that to be an Orthodox Confession of Faith among others like the Westminster Confession of Faith.
Your book doesn't appear to agree with you here either -
"Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother." (Romans 14:13)
"Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge." (James 4:11)
- but never mind that. Has it ever occurred to you that you might be the one being rebuked here?
"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world." (1 John 4:1)
You would be incorrect. Ayn Rand says that sacrificing others for your own interest is precisely as abhorrent as sacrificing yourself for others' interest - that you must respect others' self-interest just as you expect others to respect yours. It is a reciprocal ethos. And she's not exactly obscure about this. She puts it right there in John Galt's big line from Atlas Shrugged: "I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
In short, Rand's Objectivism is precisely the kind of secular morality that you want us to believe is impossible without God.
It's strange: it's like you've heard about contextual arguments, but have no idea how to actually make one yourself. For the record, a contextual argument generally uses specific other passages in the text to shed light on the meaning of a passage in question. For example, that video you linked in the other thread about 2 Peter 3 - whatever its other flaws - made a contextual argument correctly when it asked what was meant by "dear friends" and looked elsewhere in the book to find out. You have done this... not at all.
Now, when I admonish you with your own scripture, it's a safe bet that I'm doing so from your point of view (that the Bible has truth value) rather than mine (that the Bible has only literary value). The existence of God here isn't "context" except in the broadest sense - it's just a background assumption. Assuming that God exists and inspired the words of the Bible, he seems to want you to believe that love is greater than hope or faith. But you are saying that love is secondary to faith. So you are disagreeing with God.
From my point of view, I have no problem with people disagreeing with what a fictional character says. But from your point of view, from the "context" that God exists, that's a huge problem. So my argument here doesn't doesn't ignore this "context" - it is based upon it.
Funny how you assume you're one of the elect. That's pretty much exactly what Paul is saying you shouldn't do. Paul is saying that if even God's chosen people weren't automatically "elect", nobody else should feel safe in their status either.
Not just one of the elect, but a saint! Do I need to quote that long string of admonitions against pride again? Because it doesn't seem to have taken the first time around.
...in a way totally incompatible with particular salvation, let's note. But that's a problem for the other thread.
The word root is φόβος. As in "phobia". It carries with it the connotation of reverence or awe in the sense of great respect for something with the power to harm you - it is the feeling you get when you're dropped into a cage with a live tiger. The word is used in that passage, and also in this one -
"And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28)
- which makes the "fear of harm" meaning even more explicit. (Side note: are souls actually destroyed in Hell? I thought it was supposed to be an eternity.)
This is a simple non sequitur. Nobody is arguing that the Bible supports salvation without faith - the book is pretty clear about that. But it does not follow from "If you don't have faith, you won't be saved" to "If you don't love God, you can't love others". In fact, the message of the Bible seems strongly to be the other way around - "If you don't love others, you can't love God":
"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us." (1 John 4:7-12)
It's not "whoever knows God loves"; it's "whoever loves has been born of God and knows God". It's not "Anyone who does not know God does not love"; it's "Anyone who does not love does not know God". It's not "If God abides in us, we love one another"; it's "if we love one another, God abides in us".
In the New Testament, love is primary. It is not secondary to gratitude or fear or worshipfulness or anything else. It comes first; everything else follows. Paul stated explicitly that it is even greater than faith. If you think that faith is greater than love, you're disagreeing with Paul. Which, again, is fine with me but not with you.
For starters, any point on which you differ with the Roman Catholic Church, which is by far the largest Christian denomination on Earth, and in addition has the most robustly devoloped theology and (with Greek Orthodoxy) the best claim to continuity from the original Christianity. All Protestant denominations are heterodoxical. That's what it means to be Protestant: you're protesting the orthodoxy of Catholicism.
In particular, your Calvinism is a minority view. Your embrace of pride and open contempt for sinners is a minority view. Your defense of slavery and genocide are minority views. And again, your position in this thread on moral motivations is a minority view.
Do you honestly not realize that he can say exactly the same thing to you?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
It all depends on who is my brother. In this thread and others on mtgs I do not believe I have treated a brother in the way that is described in those passages.
Any person with any sort of background in the Bible knows that the Bible presupposes God's existence. Personally, I didn't think that needed an argument proving so, as it is common knowledge. It also seems like common sense that if a major presupposition of every argument made in the entire Bible is proven to be false that those arguments themselves take a major hit.
I am not just assuming that I am one of the elect. I look at the evidence. There are many people who face trials in their life and walk away from the faith. The fact that my faith has withstood trials is something that I can look back upon and see that God is continuing to work in my life. Paul's point is not that we can't know. Paul's point is to stay humble, and not get proud. Assurance of salvation and humility are two simultaneously possible realities. A humble person can have assurance and give God all the glory.
You are looking at the word through a Roman Catholic lens and not a Biblical one. All Christians are saints because we have all been perfected forever as Hebrews 10:14 says. So I use the word synonymously with the word "Christian," as in any lowly sinner who has been saved by the blood of Christ.
This is a fair point. Jesus also said if you love me, then you will obey my commandments. So it appears that the relationship between loving God and loving others is biconditional.
"Whoever loves has been born of God..." compare that to John 5:21. When they are quickened they are born of God. And those who are born of God love God and love others. They are given a faith not of their own, and those are the Christians, the people who please God.
There is a perfect 1:1 to ratio between those groups.
I suppose it all depends on what "orthodox" means. When I say the word orthodox I mean the historic Christian faith. I believe the reformed faith has a very good case when you look at the church fathers. Many of the church fathers believed in limited atonement. With so many of the early church fathers espousing the doctrines of Calvinism I think it is quite difficult to say it is not orthodox.
When it comes to responding to people who are openly mocking the Christian faith I don't think I am doing anything different than what Paul did in Acts 17 when he went out into the streets and argued with the pagans.
As for slavery, I recognize it as inherently oppressive, and the Bible does too. Government can be oppressive too, but the Bible still defends the right of governments to exist and for people to submit to the authority of those governments. Slavery is the same deal. It is oppressive, but Christians are still commanded to submit to their masters if slavery still exists I'm their current society.
It is different. He has confessed without shame that he believes heresies. If I take him at his word, then I must conclude that he is a heretic and not a believer. Now have I inferred anything else about his character? Correct me if I am wrong, but to my knowledge I don't think I have.
So what about it exactly? If a fear of going to jail keeps you from breaking the law what exactly is the problem? If it keeps enough people from breaking the law then maybe you would have a just society. I'm hope you get my analogy.
@ BS
I guess I will have to concede that it would have been better for the last sentence to be Moral Nihilism is right.
For some inscrutable reason, you have the audacity to claim sainthood, yet demonstrate none of the bravery attributed to saints. Saints are those who bear witness to their faith in the face of adversity, yet you are unwilling to even address challenges to your faith in an internet forum. Jesus died for his preaching; Paul suffered torture, risked death countless times, and endured imprisonment; many Christians suffered persecution and death; Augustine openly proclaimed his faith at a time when such a thing carried enormous risk; Francis gave up his wealth and privilege out of conviction for his ministry for the poor. Yet you, on an internet forum, in total anonymity, in a historical period in which Western society views Christianity as the norm and carries with it not only no risk to identify as Christian, but more risk to identify as not Christian — you compare yourself to saints while outright demonstrating yourself unwilling to even try to address the concerns against your arguments?
Then by what measure are you honest? Can you honestly claim that you seek to promote the truth and not your own ego? If so, then why do avoid the questions posed against you? If it is not unwillingness to admit that you are wrong, then what is it?
Is it the Bible's infallibility, or your own that you have such a hard time believing might not be real?
You are not being genuine, for you are lying to yourself. You claim knowledge when you clearly do not have the knowledge you claim. Moreover, when you are demonstrated to be false, you react with denial, instead of listening to reason. Thus, you are being disingenuous.
Yes, you may be authentically representing your beliefs, but that is of no consequence. True belief is meaningless if what one believes is not true.
And thus you are a heretic, by both the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Oh, you don't accept their authority? Why not? Why should we care what the Reformed Baptists find heretical and not what other denominations think?
(Besides, aren't Baptists the ones who refuse alcohol? Then I really have no use for their theology.)
You haven't done that. You've mocked other people for disagreeing with you, they've responded by pointing out problems with your arguments, and you've openly avoided responding to them. So do not compare yourself to Paul. Paul went out and confronted unbelievers in the open, risking death and ultimately being imprisoned for doing so. You are on an anonymous internet forum in a world where Christianity is the majority religion, and yet – despite absolutely no risk of harm to your own person — still refuse to face those who contradict you.
You've never read Philemon. You should read it, and thus absolve yourself from any misconceptions you might have about the Bible being anti-slavery.
Not to mention you might want to read the Old Testament as well.
Because any criminal can be dissuaded from committing a crime for fear of being caught. This is not what loving thy neighbor is.
One who truly loves his neighbor would not harm his neighbor even if given the opportunity to do so without punishment.
One who truly loves his neighbor would not require anyone dissuading him from harming his neighbor, for such a person would not wish harm against his neighbor out of love for his neighbor.
And it is beyond obvious that you're passing judgment on Highroller (and me).
Your "common sense" is fallacious. Falsifying a premise does not falsify the conclusion; you can have a true conclusion in spite of false premises. If I argue, "Whales are fish, all fish live in water, therefore whales live in water", and then I discover that whales are not fish, I have not thereby learned that whales do not live in water.
Or to go back to the Bible - the Bible states that there is a city called "Jerusalem". If the God premise were false, would the Jerusalem claim be false? When an atheist such as myself talks about Jerusalem, do you think, "How can he be talking about Jerusalem? He doesn't have faith in God and the truth of Scripture - he has no basis for believing there is such a city"? Or do you just accept that I have verified the existence of Jerusalem through means independent of religious faith?
So why then do you insist that altruism can only exist through Christianity?
It's funny you should mention that, because Mark 16:17-18 gives a very clear scientific test for belief. You should be able to (a) cast out demons, (b) speak in new tongues, (c) pick up serpents, (d) drink any deadly poison and not be harmed, and (e) heal the sick by laying your hands upon them. Can't stomach bleach? Then you're not one of the elect.
In other circles this is called "humblebragging".
Again, does not follow. "if you love me, then you will obey my commandments" does not imply "if you obey my commandments, then you love me". And just looking at the evidence, the claim is nonsensical. Billions of people love each other and do not believe in the Christian God. Furthermore, the frequency with which the apostles repeat the message that if you don't love your neighbor, you don't love God suggests that this was a message some early Christians were having trouble with - as, indeed, many Christians do today. It is extremely dangerous to reason, as you seem to be doing, "I have faith in God, therefore I must love others, therefore all my actions towards others must be loving." It goes the other way: "All my actions are loving, therefore I love others, therefore I have faith in God."
Are you saying that there are some people in whose birth God does not play a part? Because I'm pretty sure that's contrary to Christian doctrine pretty much everywhere. And John 5:21 is talking about resurrection, not birth - Jesus is saying that he can raise the dead when he wants to.
If you're looking for the denomination that most closely resembles Christ's own intentions, I'm pretty sure Quakerism has that distinction. They're the only ones in my knowledge who actually consistently put love over all else. (Though they're also the dry ones, so sorry about that, Highroller.)
And others didn't. That's the problem with Catholicism: trying to form a coherent theology from disparate writings is difficult. Protestantism was founded to avoid this problem - it's the whole point of the sola scriptura doctrine. As a Protestant, you should not care at all what the church fathers thought.
...which is not an orthodox view in Christendom. The African-American community in particular, many of whom are Baptists like yourself, has come to a very different understanding of what the Bible commands of slaves.
Governments can be oppressive. We should consent to be governed only by those that aren't. (As an American, this is a principle you should be familiar with.) Slavery is oppressive. There is no form of slavery that isn't, and therefore no form of slavery that can be consented to.
It is your judgment that he believes heresies. He has confessed without shame that he believes in Jesus Christ. The Bible is pretty clear about what that means.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I've read rhetoric like this 100 times over the years and 100% of the time it came from Christians. I've never met an atheist that thinks like this, and I'm sure I never will. Dahmer is demonizing atheism instead of being accountable for his actions. No surprise there.
Dahmer's question is a telling insight to Christian morality. If there is a God to be accountable to, is it moral to modify your behavior in order to avoid punishment and/or receive reward from Him? Of course not - that's not a moral person, that's a bad dog on a leash. The theist that does good for selfish reasons always frowns upon the atheist that does good because it is the right thing to do.
I'd say that since I'm an atheist, my worldview promotes respect for the dignity and worth of others based on the human experience, not religious dogma. I treat others the way I would like to be treated.
My G Yisan, the Bard of Death G deck.
My BUGWR Hermit druid BUGWR deck.
Now, there are things at the margins that I would probably do if not for fear of punishment, or may actually do because of the expectation that punishment is unlikely - we have all//mostly driven over the speed limit on occasion, one would imagine.
Similarly, if I were still christian, there are probably things I would do out of...well not fear of punishment, but out of external agencies telling me it is wrong, rather than internal reasons.
But I have little to no difficulty refraining from being a child murdering necrophilliac psychopath. For those christians who have said the only thing that stops them is god: You terrify me. (Also, you're going to hell, or would be if it existed, as I'm pretty sure the bible says thinking about wanting to do it is roughly as bad as doing it, and I'm quite sure you've done that if all that stops you actually doing it is god, your religious nutbags)
This sentiment was decidedly lacking in 20th century Russia or 18th century France. If we are going to talk about your wordl view promotes maybe we should start there.
But for the record: if you were truly concerned about historical indications of what a worldview promotes, you would have to be utterly deranged to remain a Christian. I could obviously mention the Crusades, the Inquisition, or the Thirty Years' War as acts of mass murder done directly in the name of the religion. But the acts you allude to were not done directly in the name of atheism, but only committed by men who happened to profess atheism, so I do not feel I need to be so limited in my examples either. Therefore, I lay at your feet not just the Crusades or the Inquisition or tbe Thirty Years' War or the pogroms (oh, there's another one), but rather the entire history of the world from the dawn of human civilization. Every war, every murder, every crime that you do not blame on atheism was committed by a person or people who believed in the existence of a divinity. And let me assure you, there are a lot more of them. So what conclusions ought we to draw about what the religious worldview promotes?
I do not make this argument on my own, for it is a stupid and petty argument intended to score points rather than determine the truth. I make it in the vain hope that you will finally realize how stupid and petty it is, and stop repeating it.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I think you're saying that Dahmer could subjectively determine hell isn't so bad after all. In other words, he could decide that hell isn't infinitely bad, and therefore conclude that the sick thrill he gets from killing is worth the penalty of hell.
You've read the Old Testament. I think God deserves more credit as a vindictive torturer than you're giving him. If an omnipotent God exists, I think we can imbue him with the power to make hell subjectively intolerable to everyone. Either hell represents infinite harm or at a minimum it represents such an enormous finite harm that no one could rationally value any finite earthly benefit as worth enduring hell for.
If that's true, then Dahmer could not rationally choose to commit murder knowing the penalty is eternity in hell. This provides an objectively sound argument for why he shouldn't kill.
Doesn't this line of reasoning render the commandment to "love thy neighbor" a nullity or a catch-22?
If I already love my neighbor without being commanded then there's no point in commanding it. "Breathe" and "eat food" aren't in the 10 commandments, even though they're clearly very important things, because people do these things automatically. If someone already does something there's no point in commanding them to do it.
If I don't already love my neighbor, but I read the commandment and think "God says I should love my neighbor, I better do what God says" then by your logic I'm not really loving my neighbor because I'm just doing it because God says so. "[I]f the only reason you care about your neighbors is because you feel forced to because God commanded it, then you cannot be said to actually love or care about them." By your reasoning it's impossible for someone who isn't already following this commandment to read it and start genuinely obeying it.
So why does this commandment exist?
I think the most reasonable theological explanation is that everyone loves their neighbor less than they should. Even the most loving and giving people in the world have lapses where they don't feel like loving a particular person at a particular time. I think the commandment is saying "you need to show love to your neighbors even when you don't naturally want to." The commandment is very much directed at people who lack "love, empathy, sympathy, and compassion for others" whether it's just a momentary lapse or a chronic problem. The virtue comes from loving others even when you don't feel like it. That takes effort and dedication. There's no effort required to love someone when you "already care about them" and already desire to show them love.
Do you recognize that there is a difference between these?
No, that's the exact opposite of what I'm saying. It is entirely possible to care about one's neighbors for a reason other than because one feels forced to do so; namely, because it's the right thing to do.
cloudman is claiming that he loves his neighbor as himself, but if God weren't around to command him to love his neighbor as himself, then he would become a psychopath because he couldn't possibly think of any reason why he shouldn't. That demonstrates that he does not actually love his neighbor as himself, because if he actually loved his neighbor as himself, that love — and the concern for the care and well-being that comes with it — would be the reason why he wouldn't.
If a person is only loving his neighbor because he feels he is ordered by God to, to the point where he won't if there is no God to do so, then he does not love his neighbor as himself. He's just faking the trappings of love.
The truly moral person does things not because someone has to make him do so, not because of lure of reward or fear of punishment, but because it is the morally correct thing to do. Thus, the person would continue to do the morally righteous thing even when that person has no one forcing him to do so, has no lure of reward, and no fear of punishment.
That's a question that has been debated over pretty much since there were Jews.
I really think this is the argument in a nutshell.
Uh... I think everyone is taking this commandment thing a little too literally. First of all, it's not actually a 'commandment' in the 10 commandments sense. In context, it came about when Jesus was responding to the Pharisees's (trick) question of 'what is the greatest commandment of the law'. They were trying to trap Jesus politically, in the context of this section, and Jesus' response was basically 'Just love one another, dudes' - a classic political evasion. Jesus had 'silenced' the Sadducees, which the Pharisee's had broad cultural and dogmatic divisions with over the Prophets. Basically he was saying loving God and one another trumps petty dogmatic disputes.
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candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.