Christianity stands against a functional society

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Generally when I and other people disagree, I am right, and they are wrong.

Certainly I see no reason to change my mind on this issue by you just asserting that I am wrong.

In this case, my objection to Christian reinterpretations is that they do not take the stated text seriously.

I don't have to. You misunderstood the context of what I said. I was presenting issues. I was not saying "Christianity supports use of force to convert people". I don't think it does. However, I am pointing out the issue so that people see the obvious problem, and so there isn't effort exploring an already explored set of possibilities.

Well.... actually, they are. Game theory has to do with self-interest. Self-interest and greed don't have this black and white line dividing them unless one wants to proclaim it as really out there.

Fine. Look at what religion has done for the Islamic countries. Egypt is a paradise on Earth and women have few or no rights in the Islamic domains (there are a few exceptions, however). Religion has been a bad thing for mankind.; It has brought war, division, hatred, tyrrany, superstition and death where it is dominant. God did not invent religion. The Devil did.

ruveyn

'Even further, "extreme interpretations" don't blunt. Blunting is reducing the harshness. I am not reducing anything.'

Of course they do. You take a thing of beauty take it to a wrong conclusion and of course the meaning is lost (aka blunted).

Firstly why would you seek to validate your world view through an attack on Christianity? We live in a world where the faith in God is the only defense we have against the rule of the strong.

I will not argue, that one cannot be both moral and faithless, that is for another time. But when there is no universal standard, the standard of morality can go one way. Firstly, in a world with no religious universalism, then morality is a matter of will, not of expectation. In our society we have both weak and strong individuals. Therefor morality will become the possession of the strong. In that world, the powerful define what is right and what is wrong.

In all situations where religion has been extinguished, morality inevitably moves in this direction. Soviet Russia, Communist (now nationalist) China, Vietnam, Ancient Rome and Western Europe. Wherever one cares to look, the decline of religion and its place in society inevitably leads to the strengthening (EDIT: corrected spelling error) of the power elite. If you want to learn more about this, please read 'The Rage Against God' by Peter Hitchens. How then can religion be opposed to a civil society?

I will keep this short and to the point. The extreme lack of understanding you have of the Bible is exposed by your lack of ability to distinguish who it is Jesus, Mattew or Paul are talking to or about in their parables. I have already criticized, amply, your inability to understand what they are talking about, so lets now focus on who.

For instance when you quote Mathew 19:23-24, you are deducing a criticism of the rich as a class when Jesus is talking to the individual.

Then when you discuss Col. 3:22, you make the same mistake, in these passages Jesus is talking to the individual, he is not discussing government. He is making no judgement in relation to the practice of slavery but is invoking the lesson of Joseph, who despite being sold into slavery (unjustly), he makes a success of himself and rises to a position of great power.

Your arguments frequently confuse when the author is talking to the individual and when he his talking about society. You take quotes to the individual and apply them to government and then take ones aimed at government and claim they are incomparable to the individual. You are comparing apples to oranges and then reacting in surprise when you manage to state that they are not the same. The only thing you have proved is that on every level, you have missed the point.

We do take it seriously. Taking it seriously =/= taking it literally.

You're certainly right that I misunderstood your point here. I didn't see what you were driving at then, and now, after you've explained it, I still don't see what you were trying to say.

Rational self-interest and greed are different. "Love thy neighbor as thyself" tells you to love your neighbor, but it also assumes that you love yourself, and doesn't tell you to stop doing that. If you are loving yourself to the exclusion of your neighbor, it does tell you to stop doing that.

It is a perfect message, carried in human hands. I can therefor understand how someone can come to the conclusion, having seen the men and then decide to hate the message also. That person, however, would be missing the point entirely.

Well, first, DentArthurDent created a post about how Jesus was not a true prophet. This caused Master_Pedant to hold that an earlier election of the most strident atheist was flawed. Because of this, I felt compelled to defend my title, and make a further and deeper attack, so that way I could display why I should keep my title. That's the why. It really has nothing to do with Christianity.

Well, first, DentArthurDent created a post about how Jesus was not a true prophet. This caused Master_Pedant to hold that an earlier election of the most strident atheist was flawed. Because of this, I felt compelled to defend my title, and make a further and deeper attack, so that way I could display why I should keep my title. That's the why. It really has nothing to do with Christianity.

Even further, um... "faith in God" isn't anything if God doesn't exist. I find it rather hilarious that "faith in God" is often promoted by "the strong" and the status quo in areas full of the strong, while the weak often have no faith in the Christian God, or a lack of understanding of the nature of this God.

The value of a region inst necessarily what it gives (from a social not spiritual perspective), but what it denies. In a world where God and moral truth is held by the people, then the government is denied the capacity to act in this manner.


91, I don't understand your argument.

1) Most societies have not been Christian. (and "religion" is too vague of a term for me to even begin to take it seriously, unless you break it down by components)
2) Even "Christian" societies have not been Christian.
3) A common standard within a society can be created through social myths without the use of a real religion.
4) Morality already has tended to be a "possession of the strong", period. It is not as if European nobility was so deeply Christian, but the moral order bent around their desires, along with the desire of the priests of the age. Even further, it is not as if America, both North and South, became Christian because of humility, but rather weaponry. Even within the US, we've seen this, as early America had Christianity promoted so that way the middle class would become harder working and drink less. And to this day, Christianity is used as a weapon in cultural politics.

Frankly, I would rather we take the mask off. The strong will triumph over the weak. Christianity has not and will not stop this. And unmasking the charade will allow for this natural order to be more rational. There is no sense in having a Christian mask on these issues, but rather we are better off with a world that believes in self-pride, grasping for worldly improvement, and that is willing to put actual virtues ahead of dogmas.

If your world view supports this conclusion as being forgone, then it already stands in greater opposition to a civil society than the one you are arguing against.


Umm.... a lot of Western Europe doesn't have real problems. The worst nation is probably France, and the issue there is institutions and culture. Even further, given that most of your nations are communist, we have a major issue in using them. Is it atheism, or communism that is explaining the problems? I'd argue communism on the basis of past argumentation on the effort of economists against the economic rationality of a communist system. Basically, there are insurmountable institutional and information problems that will necessarily lead to a degenerate system in this kind of circumstance. Finally, Ancient Rome was never atheist, and its decline came around the rise of Christianity. I would say that the rise of Christianity was more of a symptom than a cause, but I am not an expert. The glory days of Rome were when it espoused more pagan values.

I really don't care to read anything by either of the Hitchens brothers. Both of them are public intellectuals at best, and public intellectuals usually are only pseudo-intellectuals. I don't feel as if I have much to learn from either of their nonsense.

Intellectual snobbery does not make an argument invalid. Western Europe has lost the capacity to tell anyone that they are wrong. You may be a moral atheist but there are far more practical atheists out there than you putting your dogma on the pavement. Those who have rejected any authority high than their own person understanding place the definition of morality with the individual. When it becomes a matter for the individual then those who have less character will apply their own morality without the social pressure that used to exist in society telling them to stop. We have undermined the ability of the group to tell individual that they are wrong without resorting to the state. You would know this, you live in the world, where schools have to teach values and police are supposed to keep kids indoors. When you abdicate morality to the law and state institutions then all your left with a state that must become big brother. The fastest way to do this, is to attack the role of religion in civil society.

You yourself make the point that religion was used by the early Americans to encourage people to drink less and work more. You have already conceded the destruction of your own argument.


Criticized? You mostly just expressed disagreement.

Thats because you obviously didn't read it.


Jesus was in particular talking about a class of individuals, and about the moral issues with that class of individuals. I don't see how your point really is getting you anywhere, as Jesus wasn't talking to rich people in that passage. He had stopped talking to a rich person to tell his disciples, who were generally not rich at all, that being rich is a problem. This suggests that he isn't talking about a single rich person, but rather the quality of being rich, claiming it is somewhat negative. This is very much tied to my point.

In this statement Jesus is talking about the individual, not the class. You fail to make that distinction and its no wonder why you end up taking it to the wrong conclusion.


I didn't say anything about government when addressing this passage. Rather I said that Christianity accepted human slavery. In this passage, it does accept human slavery, even telling Christians to accept their enslavement. Now, I suppose we can tie this back to Joseph, but nothing in the passage forces us to do so.


I actually don't see your criticisms as that valid. I get the feeling that you think you are saying something incredibly devastating, and that it really just ends up being of little to no relevance.

Maybe the issue your having is that your not listening.

EDIT: I responded to you within the quote as well

The value of a region inst necessarily what it gives (from a social not spiritual perspective), but what it denies. In a world where God and moral truth is held by the people, then the government is denied the capacity to act in this manner.

If your world view supports this conclusion as being forgone, then it already stands in greater opposition to a civil society than the one you are arguing against.

Intellectual snobbery does not make an argument invalid. Western Europe has lost the capacity to tell anyone that they are wrong. You may be a moral atheist but there are far more practical atheists out there than you putting your dogma on the pavement. Those who have rejected any authority high than their own person understanding place the definition of morality with the individual. When it becomes a matter for the individual then those who have less character will apply their own morality without the social pressure that used to exist in society telling them to stop. We have undermined the ability of the group to tell individual that they are wrong without resorting to the state. You would know this, you live in the world, where schools have to teach values and police are supposed to keep kids indoors. When you abdicate morality to the law and state institutions then all your left with a state that must become big brother. The fastest way to do this, is to attack the role of religion in civil society.

You yourself make the point that religion was used by the early Americans to encourage people to drink less and work more. You have already conceded the destruction of your own argument.

Thats because you obviously didn't read it.

In this statement Jesus is talking about the individual, not the class. You fail to make that distinction and its no wonder why you end up taking it to the wrong conclusion.

Dys- is the prefix that ought to be adjoined to the word "functional" in the title of this thread. Dysfunctional is what a society with cultural relativism for ethics is.

Your argument is flawed at its most basic level. No matter how many time I demonstrate to you the value of religion in society it just does not seem that its getting through. Probably because you have started with an intention to pick a fight with religion and just filled in the blanks with random thoughts from there.

Do you honestly expect me to take your handful of misquoted passages from the Bible, watch you rip them from context and display them as truth? Do you think that this adds up to a coherent argument against the value of region in society? At most your basic argument is against the doctrine of compassion (you argue that it is self-destruction, clear evidence that you missed the point). Jesus states when he is talking to the individual that this person has obligations to his fellow man. His contention that the rich are less likely to follow a cause is logically sound; since the rich have more to give up. This does not mean he stands opposed to the rich at the level of government. This is silly.

At most you have attempted argued that the Bible is contrary to the development of a civil society. If you have intended to do this you have exceeded the reach of your source material. On this I must disagree too; the Bible is not one book from which you can derive a system of modern government. It is many books, from which you can derive different lessons. Attempting to draw lessons on what constitutes a civil society from Pauls letter to the Colossians is silly. It was written by a man in prison to a Church in Asia-Minor that was being oppressed. It is worth noting that they were being oppressed by the Greeks and the Romans at the time.

If you wish to derive from your argument that Christianity is therefor against the development of a civil society you cannot, since simply quoting the Bible out of context does not make anything resembling a cohesive argument. The simplest argument that refutes you point is that the most civil society, when judged in relation to science and political freedom; is the Christian society of the western tradition. You are living in the rebuttal to your own argument.

As I also stated previously, it does not take long for people in your position to start postulating positions that are totalitarian in nature, in fact you did it in your first post. You have argued such counter-intuitive position that it barely stands up to the slightest amount of reality.

You argue:

"In the end, Christianity is not only wrong, but it is wrong for the foundational principles of society. In order to defend our way of life, Christianity must be rejected as the hippie-cult that it is, and instead replaced with a culture that reflects the glorious Western tradition of rationality and enlightenment descended from the Greeks and Romans, rather than this self-destructive path."

So what are you proposing. To defend a society built on the right to freedom of religion and expression by overturning both and banning Christianity, which being the majority of people in both my country and yours would also mean their basic political repression.