A Saudi judge in Jeddah has again given the world a taste of law under the country’s medieval Sharia system. A 23-year-old pregnant woman who complained about being gang raped has been found guilty of adultery (even though she is not married) and ordered that she serve one year in jail and receive 100 lashes.
The woman said that she accepted a ride from a man who took her to a house in Jeddah where she was gang rape by him and his four friends all night. In an act of mercy, the Saudis will allow her to have the baby first and then flog her.
The woman’s “crime” was revealed at the hospital when she sought an abortion.
Saudi Arabia has repeatedly punished rape victims under Sharia law, here and here..
In a fascinating interview, one reporters explored the view of some Saudi men that it is perfectly appropriate to rape a woman traveling alone or with a non-family member.
Rape victims have been stoned to death or jailed in other countries following Sharia.
Even in more modern nations like Turkey, rape victims can face “honor killings” by family members.
For the full story, click here.
Brought to you by the same people who brought you 9/11.
Saudi Arabia. Marching boldly into the 12th Century. And trying to drag the rest of the world with it.
Is there ANY doubt who the REAL enemy is?
Not if you’ve been paying attention.
Semi-related.
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=362
Check out some of our supposed allies.
I came across this early this morning (the advantage of insomnia?). It might help you evaluate and discover new international news sources that don’t have an interest in perpetuating a Neocon or lobbyist/corporotist driven agenda like FOX or CNN and MSNBC, but are instead interested in the news (who, what, where, when, how – “why” is NOT news but opinion). You’ll still have to sort though personal editorial biases, but you have to do that for domestic news anyway like FOX or The Huffington Post. But I digress.
If you are looking for new free press outlets (or a tool for evaluating current sources), this report may help guide you.
Buddha,
This is another example of the danger lurking right smack dab in the middle of our good friend, Saudi Arabia. I guess it doesn’t pay to be innocent of a crime as nasty as a rape. Their handling of it is actually worse than Gov. Palin requiring rape victims to pay for their rape kits in Alaska. I hope that people will realize that it was Saudi’s who attacked us on 9/11 and a Saudi who masterminded it and is still at large. This example of justice is what happens when you mix religion with government. The innocent people lose. Especially the women.
I heard the Saudis control much of our debt. The terms for repayment appear to include acceptance of Shari law. We need to dissociate from these people, not ask them for money.
I’ve been decrying the Saudi’s for years, but it is so much blowing in the wind due to their control of our economy and MSM. Beyond the insanity of their Wahabist outlook is the stark fact that their Sharia Law only applies to those without royal lineage and the piousness of their royalty is only for public consumption. I bet there is more good scotch in Riyadh, than in San Francisco and don’t get me started on the quality of their Hash.
>found guilty of adultery (even though she is not married)
Depending on the culture, ‘adultery’ is any sexual relationship outside of marriage. That is, all marrieds having sex with someone other than the spouse are adulterers, but not all adulterers are married.
HEY! You kids get your heads back in the sand right this minute! Watch American Idol or the 24 hour wall to wall Caylee Anthony coverage. What are you trying to do? Do you think anyone likes to hear you point out how wretched and backward the whole system is in some other country halfway around the world? Just because over half the population is being oppressed and treated like chattel? Can’t you focus on something important for once?
Man is an animal to man.
Just to play the devil’s advocate for a bit, I have a question:
If it is possibly generally accepted by Saudi men that raping a solitary female is okay, then who has the moral high-ground to tell them that a culturally accepted act is wrong? Why and what would you base your judgment on?
Clint,
Your argument on the cultural acceptability of an act has actually been used a lot in the last 50 years, sometimes with some merit. After all who are we to cast aspersions on others cultural values?
However, there comes a line, not necessarily clearly delineated, when cultural values are necessarily judged by wider standards. Genocide, for instance may come about because of the clash of two cultures in one country. The majority culture may firmly believe that the extermination of the minority culture is a correct path.
Cliterectomy, as performed in certain cultures is an acceptable value, yet by worldwide standards it is a horror. Revenge killing is a cultural norm in many places, but most others consider it barbaric.
Much as I’d like,there is no clear standard for this line between the acceptance of a culture’s uniqueness and the interdiction’s of its perceived cruelties. At this time these things must be decided on a case by case basis, following standards of general usage and morality. Laws against murder for instance are generally accepted worldwide as needed by society. Perhaps some time long in the future, we humans will evolve to a point where we recognize our common heritage and develop shared values. That doesn’t seem likely to happen though for an extremely long time.
“If it is possibly generally accepted by Saudi men that raping a solitary female is okay, then who has the moral high-ground to tell them that a culturally accepted act is wrong? Why and what would you base your judgment on?”
**********
The moral high ground is precisely that such activities offend the sensibilities of decent people the world over. By implication you seem to suggest that religion (and specifically, Christianity) is the basis for determining objective morality as imposed from above, but nearly every other human value system we know about decries this type of behavior. We also know that primates have heightened sense of morality and justice as opposed to our less evolved cousins. Even infants with no formal exposure to moral precepts or religious dogma display empathy and concern for the well-being of other forms of life. The simple fact may be that the moral high-ground may actually be found in our mitochondria and that we may be seized of it directly in our DNA.
Clint,
That assumes that a when the powerful in a culture say something is okay, that makes it so. Isn’t that obvious BS?
Do you really have to stretch to find “moral high ground” when it comes to hurting and harming people?
Here’s my basis for judgment: I can imagine what it might be like to be raped, gang raped, end up pregnant. And then after facing that, I can imagine what it would be like to be blamed and sentenced to an incredibly severe punishment involving horrible pain and probable disfigurement.
It somehow seems a little wrong to me. Call it a gut feeling, call it conscience. Isn’t that the basis for all moral judgment? Or is an evil law designed to give power to male ego a better basis just because it’s written into law?
So when an entire nation supports the genocide of a specific group of people (Germany, Darfur), a more morally superior nation or group of nations (such as one that largely supports the death of half of every black child conceived) must step in? Where is the objectivity? Gut instincts/consciences are not always accurate.
Mespo:
I didn’t mention Jesus yet, stop skipping ahead.
In those cases the conscience was working with facts that had been skewed. Governments manipulate their people. What’s a morally superior nation? One with better weapons? Or one with people who care enough to fight for free exchange of ideas?
In other threads I have argued that the removal of Sadaam was a good thing because he is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and have been told that what happened internally in Iraq was none of our business. I dont understand based on that rational how this would be any of our business.
Clint:
“Mespo:
I didn’t mention Jesus yet, stop skipping ahead.”
***********
I know you always do though.
Clint,
I am going to skip ahead, and as a once-baptized devout Southern Baptist, I wonder if ol’ Clint is agonna’ bring up abortion as one of those groups subjected to “genocide of a specific group of people” because that is one of the prominent “h*** fire and brimstone” religious arguments against abortion.
Clint,
Men are only part of the population and even they, do not all believe raping a woman who is alone is O.K. There are men and women in S.A. who don’t think this is a moral stance. If a group in power is allowed to harm a group that doesn’t have power, there isn’t a moral argument behind those actions. This is the expression of the heavy fist of power, nothing more. Always look at the overall power relationship first. Once you see that clearly the morality of an action will become much more clear. I certainly also echo the thoughts of others who wrote above.
Saudi Justice, Oxymoronic?
Clint,
Excuse me, I didn’t see the anti-abortion set up coming. Fine let’s discuss it. My particular religion, which gave birth to yours, did not recognize abortion as murder. The soul enters the person when God gives it its’ first breath of life. Jesus, an undoubted Jewish Rabbi, said nothing about abortion. He did say he was opposed to divorce but many of you supposed Christians ignore that as you pick and choose what morality to construct. Factually, the entire anti-abortion argument has only been going on for the last 300 years of Christianity, a 2,000 year old religion. However, the bottom line is where do you anti-abortion people get off dictating your religious beliefs to my daughters, who don’t share your religious belief and see your morality as specious?
We Jews and the Islamic Peoples do not eat pork, or shellfish, nor drink milk with meat. Jesus himself adhered to these strictures are you suggesting that if either group attains political power we have a right to dictate to the Christians what they eat. After all to us eating pork is an abomination.
To really cut to the chase though and rip the mask of hypocrisy off the faces of you anti-abortion types, this is not about certain fundamentalist Christian’s love for life, it is about fundamentalist misogyny and determination to punish women for having unmarried sex. It also is about the fortunes of some of your leading TV Pastors, whose piety is more about their checkbooks than glorifying God. They found what they felt was a winning issue to push their misogynistic agenda and stir up the troops like you. They even found a catchy name “Right to Life” that also represents blatant hypocrisy.
It is hypocrisy because you all wind up supporting Republican’s who have no interest in doing anything about a child’s life after it’s born. It is hypocrisy because you all supported people who murdered hundreds of thousands of Iraqi’s, maimed thousands of American troops and killed thousands of other of our troops, in a made up war to enrich the oil people.
We finally know that it’s total hypocrisy though, because you all are against birth control and sex education, which alone would reduce the abortion rate and fight AIDS. Your true aim is to punish women for having sex without marriage. In your movement and in your attempt to contravene our constitutional separation of church and state, you have harmed this nation immeasurably and are in the end total hypocrites.
chris,
I’ll say it again.
IRAQ DID NOT ATTACK US ON 9/11, SAUDI ARABIA DID.
That’s the difference.
My point is that when I brought up the fact that Sadaam was responsible for the deaths of innocent Iraqi lives I was told what happened internally in Iraq was none of our business. The truth is that this type of behavior is unacceptable no matter what country imposes these types of punishments on its people. You cant just pick and choose what countries internal workings are and aren’t our business.
Clint,
Congratulations to you and your new bride.
(I just saw your website)
I think you can have moral absolutes. And some cultures are morally superior to others.
As a basis I would use the concept of individual freedom, what ever makes you less free is a bad thing and what ever makes you more free is a good thing. So based on that the young lady has had her personal rights abused on all levels. By individuals and the state and all by force.
Based on this I think we can say that most countries are morally superior to SA. And I would go on to say that any culture that is fundamentally for individual freedom is morally superior to one that does not allow personal freedom. As far as whether they like a certain food or dress or hairstyle is immaterial, a hot dog and a samosa are morally neutral. (although I think a samosa goes better with beer)
Clint, I ask you if you outlaw abortion what prevents another group from making abortion required? In the case of the mother with 14 children there are questions about whether she can care for these children. The tax payers are supporting her, in some peoples mind she should have been made to have an abortion.
I personally think it is wrong and I would not want my wife forced to have one because we had 2 children already. What the state gives the state can take away. I think the strategy for reducing abortion is education not force.
chris,
Yes, you can pick and chose. That’s part of the basic art of statesmanship. The threshold is attack, plain and simple. If another country is not acting as an aggressor to us or an ally, their internal policy is simply not our business (absent genocide, but that is an entirely different topic). A country’s internal affairs become our business the day they attack us, directly or by proxy, and ONLY on that day. Anything else is against self-determination and that is a key component of sovereignty. The U.S. is not the world police. That’s supposed to be the job of international cooperative agencies like the U.N. and localized treaty groups like NATO. America’s job is to mind America’s business. Not to go to war because someone feels threatened in some vague ideological way, but because we were attacked in the physical sense of life and property destroyed – nothing more, nothing less. The idea that we “needed to invade Iraq” because they were “a threat to democracy” is pure Neocon kool-aid. It’s bullshit designed to make the fearful to fall in line behind their lies for profit. You’re basically saying an idea is more of a threat worthy of response than an actual physical attack. That’s childish. “Bobby likes Superman! Everyone knows Batman rules! Get him!” The objective reality is that, despot or not, Iraq was a non-theocratic stabilizing counter-balance to the ambitions of Iran and Iraq. It was before it was illegally invaded anyway. Now it’s just broken. Broken in such a way as to be a recruiting tool for our real enemies. On this particular topic, it seems you have drank a gallon of the Neocon poison. You’re a jingoist at worst and a dupe at best, but every time you make this argument, you sound ignorant about the basic concepts of sovereign states and their responsibilities.
“Iran and Saudi Arabia.”
Chris:
read this article and let me know what you think. It talks about some of the issues Buddha has brought up in the post above and also some other ideas.
http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2006-spring/just-war-theory.asp
You and Buddha might like this one:
https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2007-summer/neoconservative-foreign-policy.asp
The common theme in most of these “cultural” differences that occur in Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Taliban Afghanistan, the US when it comes to pregnacy issues, (and others) is the repression of women. Most religions, not all, put women in a lower caste than that of men. Until you equalize the sexes in these religions/cultures, nothing will change for the better.
I’m not on the topic of abortion, I’m on the topic of moral absolutes and who has the right to determine if a culturally acceptable act is right or wrong.
Mike,
I just got started and only made a slight reference to abortion (as an example of a culturally-accepted act that is opposed by other groups) and you have already determined that I’m a hypocrite.
Bron98,
Thanks for answering the question. But, what if two countries have opposing moral absolutes? Who is right, why, and why should your feelings be the standard for others?
Fed,
My goal in the dialogue is not to rail against those who are pro-abortion. If I wanted to preach hell to all who deserved it, then I’d have to preach it first to myself. Thanks for congratulating me!
Jill,
Starting from the overall power structure is the baseline for determining if a culturally-accepted act is wrong? Some would say that might is always right. If a female’s religious convictions involve her husband having the right to beat her, then are you or I of any authority to say she is wrong to believe that is acceptable behavior? I hope I understood what you were saying.
Clint:
how can you argue with individual rights? I think the US is morally superior to say China or Rhodesia under Mugabe or any host of other countries that are repressive to individual freedom.
Humans as rational beings have rights based on that or if you prefer the origin of rights as given in the Declaration of Independence. I actually think that rights are inherent in being human and not granted by a Creator. If the Creator grants he can also take away.
Bron98,
I am not necessarily disagreeing with you that the U.S. is “morally superior” to China. I am only questioning why your opinion on human rights trumps someone else’s opinion (say Mugabe’s). If humanity is the ultimate authority on its own human rights then you’ll have plenty of conflicting opinions as to what is right and wrong.
Bron,
Thanks for the link. I did indeed like it.
I liked it as an example of apologist propaganda.
“a more morally superior nation or group of nations (such as one that largely supports the death of half of every black child conceived) must step in?”
“Mike,
I just got started and only made a slight reference to abortion”
Clint,
That wasn’t a slight reference, that was a sly reference, thrown in with the intent to try to bait a logical trap further down the line.
“Mespo:
I didn’t mention Jesus yet, stop skipping ahead.”
Where you come from and where you are going is obvious, Clint, why not cut to the chase because we’re not a dumb group here. You come on like “Jews for Jesus” people who tell ignorant Jewish people that Christianity is just like Judaism and anyway “Yeshuah” was also Jewish. If you want to argue your religious beliefs as they relate to government, I’m game. However, if you’re into pulling the same rhetorical tricks that con the innocent and unaware, then you’re just boring and I leave you to your beliefs and wish you well.
Fundamentalist Islamic beliefs can only be adequately described as ignorance and Stone Age mysticism. How else do you explain a Saudi think tanker who believes that women only need to let men suckle at their breasts if they want to be allowed to co mingle?
http://thebfdblog.com/2007/05/30/belief-systems-from-a-virtual-stone-age/
BF,
I’m with you, but would expand the insanity to all religious fundamentalism. I’m far from anti-religious, but any system that believes that only IT has the truth, or that IT knows God’s purpose, is both ignorant and blasphemous. BTW Liked your website. Being text illiterate I got some pleasure from doing BTW, but I really did like your website.
Thanks for the compliment, Mike. I’m with you on all religious fundamentalism: http://thebfdblog.com/2008/12/31/underming-the-first-amendment-by-creeping-christian-prostelyzation/
Clint:
what is wrong with individual freedom? See the above from MikeS and Big Fella. Religious fundamentalism would certainly lead to a reduction in liberty. I am not saying you dont need laws to protect the individual from the masses or government. I dont read playboy and I dont smoke dope and I dont run around on my wife but no one is telling me I cant which is as it should be.
Humans have rights that are inherent to our nature as rational beings. You cannot force a man to do something other than at the point of a gun if he does not want to do it.
Bron98:
“I dont read playboy and I dont smoke dope and I dont run around on my wife but no one is telling me I cant which is as it should be.”
**********
Enforced virtue is no virtue at all.
Mike,
“any system that believes that only IT has the truth, or that IT knows God’s purpose, is both ignorant and blasphemous.”
But, somehow you do believe that that is the truth. Believing that no one has the truth is still, by implication, a belief that you do.
I don’t think any of you are dumb. I think that most (if not all) of you are far more intelligent than me. I haven’t even finished college and may never have an opportunity to do so. It seems that your presuppositions about my beliefs have ruled your dialogue with me. Do I think you are wrong in many ways…yes. But, you feel the same towards me.
Mespo,
“Enforced virtue is no virtue at all.”
Unless it is self-enforced for the purpose of self-justification. “For by works of the law (being moral), no human being will be justified in [God's] sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin” -Romans 3:20
Enforced virtue (God’s law) only ends up revealing that we have no virtue at all.
Clint
Scrap right and wrong. Substitute, choices that lead to more choices.
Personal energy management.
Clint
“Sin” translated from Greek, when the archers “missed the mark.”
Just load another arrow, and take another whack at it.
CCD,
“Personal energy management” That’s a new one for me. I wonder if that would comfort some families in Darfur.
“Missed the mark”
Already have, and I missed just like you.
Clint
You know it, “We reap what we’ve sown” it can’t be any other way.
Unless grace enters into it.
I have considered how very badly Souls have wanted to incarnate here.
I truthfully don’t know other than to think, “If you want to know how your past lives were lived just look at your current life.” “If you want know how your future lives will be just look at your current actions.”
Honestly Clint you and I are aiming at different targets. Variety is the spice of life.
Clint,
The facts of human nature are this – anyone who says they have all the answers is a charlatan out to control you or the victim of a charlatan who is out to control you. To salve any argument you may have that I don’t know what I’m talking about, you should know I have a Pentecostal mega-church in the family. I know how it works from the inside out. In far more detail than I’d like.
Your statement that “Believing that no one has the truth is still, by implication, a belief that you do.” That’s semantic and childish. It’s the equivalent of “are too” “am not”. It’s belief over logic and fact and it’s mathematically untrue. Your false assumption is about truths and a state of perfect knowledge. That being said, not all Fundamentalists are as I am about to describe, but the majority of them I know are. And I know hundreds. My sample space is valid.
Belief in absolute truths are not the same as the belief in an externally dispensed “Divine” absolute truth. That’s the distinction. You can ferret out absolute truths with logic and ethics, a human endeavor, but as I’ve stated before perfect knowledge is not possible as a mathematical fact (see the works of Kurt Gödel). THAT can be proven with pencil and paper. You can disbelieve that all you like if you want to be considered delusional. If you want to argue that, go to a math blog. But anyone who says they have an exclusive lock on God’s thoughts and intentions is lying. Plain and simple. They lay claim to perfect knowledge. A God by definition is not constrained by the rules of the physical universe. We are in and of the material world. As humans, we would not have a proper frame of reference to understand a God by any name. It’d be like a fish trying to comprehend quantum mechanics. And before you say “He told them to write it and keeps them from changing His word”, that’s an appeal to authority and specious reasoning. It’s also wishful thinking considering it doesn’t take much scholarly work to show that the words of the various gospels have indeed changed over time. Either through mistranslation, direct edits like the King James version or by editorial selection.
The Fundamentalists assertion is that their version of the Christian God is the sole provider of not just absolute truths, but absolute truth. I can’t count the times I’ve heard them say the equivalent of “If you don’t believe as we do, then you’re going to Hell.” I even had an uncle tell me as a 13 y.o. that I was going to Hell. Out of the blue. No warning, no run up discussion. He was there to tell me I’d been judged. He isn’t the only one to try that either, not by a long shot. And you know what the Book says about judging others. Not persuade me of the validity of his positions, but using a threat. He wasn’t the only one to try that tactic either, not by a long shot. This is usually followed by a display of what this means to them – you’re NOT ONE OF US. You’re fair game for whatever shitty behavior they want to act out. From “we’re not going to talk to them or treat them with respect due a human” to “let’s go beat up some Niggers and Jews and Catholics, we’ll beat on some Muslims if we can find any”. I’ve seen the whole range. In person. Yeah, not even close to Jesus’ teachings. He was a live and let live kinda guy. What Fundamentalism is is pure ego and arrogance. The feeling that “We’re chosen”. “We’re special”? No, not really, unless you count ego worship as being special. The “chosen” mindset is rooted in “I”. Not the Bible as a tool and a guide to seek truths but as the granter of the divine equivalent of God Himself giving you a “gold star”. That’s a reward, “salvation”. Your life is somehow more valid than others because of your blind belief that you’re Sky Dad’s favorites and solely worthy of His reward. Entitled not only to be the sole recipients of His mercy, but the sole dispensers of His word. There’s a problem with that. That’s pure ego and as we’ve discussed many times the evils of the world can all be traced to ego. And lest you think I’m picking on Christians alone, you are not the only ones guilty of this error and fallacy. I point to the Jewish and Islamic counterparts in Fundamentalism as examples – the Zionists and the Wahabists.
Fundamentalist Christianity is also based in a lie.
As a Fundamentalist, the Bible is the literal “Word of God”. That comes from a place of extreme arrogance and historical inaccuracy. The arrogance is illustrated above. The historical inaccuracy is that the Bible was not written by God as the Fundamentalist stance states. It was written by men, many of whom never met Jesus and had third or fourth hand knowledge at best. Much of it was written well after the Jesus’ life. In fact, the authorship of the Revelation of John has been perpetually questioned as possibly having more than one writer, not a single source, and it didn’t show up until at least a generation after Jesus was dead. Hardly fresh or reliable as evidence of Jesus’ teachings, but instead relies on John’s assertion that the message was delivered by an angel specifically to him. In essence, the appeal to authority and the his being “chosen” again. The New Testament was assembled by men out of many gospels that are out there, all of which were written by men. Look into the Council of Nicea, particularly the Second Council. God isn’t even the editor of the Bible, much the the author. The prejudices and political agendas of those who sat on the Council shows clearly in their selection of gospels and their infighting is documented. Here’s a hint: much of it didn’t have to with Heavenly concerns like preserving the core tenets of Jesus (although that was a topic that floated around Revelation), but Earthly concerns like consolidating Papal power. And your beloved “Book of Revelation”? Most didn’t wanted included in the New Testament because it was counter to the idea of a just and loving God as espoused by Jesus. As an artistic metaphor for the dangers of evil/ego worship and perseverance under repression, it’s fine, but as a theological document to base your world view on, it’s insane. And to use it to divine the future? That’s even crazier. It’s self-destructive. It’s called “self-fulfilling prophecy” when you act on it as fact instead of metaphor, which by the way, it was. Early Christians knew that not just John, but the other apocrypha out at the time (and there are MANY more than one) were metaphors for the struggle to maintain belief under persecution. At that time, it was the Christians on the receiving end of the persecution stick in Asia. The contemporary Christians of the time knew this. Many of the objections to John’s little tale historically as to it being included in the New Testament are based on the possible misuse and abuse of the metaphor. It’s not a new argument. They were having it at Nicea and have been ever since. Thomas Jefferson excluded it from the Bible he edited for many of these reasons and it’s excluded in other versions of the Bible as well. Well, when you construe a metaphor to be a map for a plan of action directly given to you by God Himself, that’s both abusive Jesus’ teachings as we can ween from those gospels written by those close enough to Him to get at least parts of the message correct. And a little insane. Welcome to Fundamentalism. It creates false values that are totally contrary to the core of Jesus’ message that “God is Love.” It’s oxymoronic that we are all God’s children and he loves us all, but some more so than others, and the rest are all going to die in torment and spend eternity suffering. It has no internal consistency. An all loving God is not exclusionary or a torturer. Otherwise, He’s not all loving, is He? That version of God sounds like a spiteful little shit killing the ants in his ant farm because they didn’t build the tunnels to His specs.
On top of that, you are all just as guilty of trying to gain converts through coercion as the most militant of Muslims or Zionists. As mespo pointed out early, enforced virtue is no virtue. Yeah, you can call it proselytization all you want. If someone doesn’t want to hear your message, none of you have a problem trying to force the issue in my experience. Again with the ego. You want to use Christ’s teachings as a guide living a better life, I’m all for it. He was a wise teacher and a good man. But when you misuse the parts of the Bible that are known to not be the direct teachings of Jesus as a weapon or a justification for bad actions, you really missed the point of what Jesus said just as much as you missed the nature of the Book of Revelation.
Fundamentalism is the route for those willing to give up their free will, a gift from God in almost every religious tradition, to the will of other men who misuse the Book. At it’s worst, it’s done for pure profit like that asshat Robert Tilton. At best, it’s cynical in that I’ve talked to Pentecostal preachers, away from the flock and in debates much like this and heard more than one say something like this. “Yes, I know it’s conflicted, but my job to make them feel safe and guided. I know I’m babysitting a lot of people who are basically dysfunctional and lost at some level.” That last sentence by the way is a DIRECT quote. How’s that for arrogance and ego?
Your assumptions about the nature of truth and the history of the Bible are built on a foundation of lies, misrepresentation and misinterpretation. It makes you pawns, not free thinkers who embrace love as the standard, but users of exclusion. A tool that divides, not joins. Jesus was a carpenter, not a fence.
I endorse your right to believe as you wish – up to the point you want to force those beliefs on others or cause harm, but it is unwise to speak of open mindedness when your position is clearly based in something else entirely.
Your assumption is a corner on perfect knowledge, a mathematical impossibility. The assertion that no one has perfect knowledge has no assumption, but is instead based on mathematical fact. Disbelieve math at your own risk. Gravity can kill you whether you believe in it or not.
And on a personal note, congratulations on your recent marriage. I wish you and your wife nothing but happiness. Don’t take any of the above as a personal attack, but as a refutation of your assertion. If you think that was my war face, you need to read some of my past exchanges with Bron. You actually seem far more reasoned than many and certainly less aggressive. But on perfect knowledge, you are – pardon the pun – fundamentally mistaken.
BIL
Nice wow, that’s why I keep coming back to drink at this cyber saloon.
I stopped aiming. Someone hit the proverbial target on my behalf. Variety is great when it comes to things short of eternal value. Contradictory truths mean either one or both are wrong. But that’s a bit politically incorrect given our nation’s religious plurality.
CCD,
Thank you. One lives to be of service.
Clint
You stopped aiming where you pick and choose to put your personal energy?
I don’t know about eternal value. What’s vital to me is the present.
What am I creating right now. Good luck with right and wrong, that doesn’t work for me. It will fail you at some point.
Buddha,
Jesus was far from a good teacher/man if he was remotely inaccurate in his claim to be the only way to God. That is the height of arrogance. I don’t have perfect knowledge whatsoever. But if I claim that Jesus isn’t necessarily who He said He was, then I really have no business accepting any of his teachings. Perfect knowledge cannot be attained, but enough knowledge can.
Thank you for congratulating me. I appreciate the kind words. I’m not aggressive because God usually humbles me when I am and makes me look like a complete idiot. Thanks for the civility.
CCD,
“What’s vital to me is the present.”
Then eat drink and be merry. I hope you never have to comfort a rape victim with “right and wrong” not working for you.
Clint
Should I ever create that scenario I’m equipped. The language is universal, “love”, and all that it encompasses, compassion, forgiveness, tolerance.
I sincerely invite you to keep coming back.
The mature folks who contribute here speak the universal language fluently. Peace
I should also point out that Jesus probably didn’t consider himself THE son of God, but A son of God. In fact, his deification was done against his express wishes. Again, words have been twisted to Earthly agendas.
“I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father, but by me.” Jesus is not saying worship him, but that his example is the way to find God. It is often distorted by those who wish to demonize “the other”.
How did Jesus worship? He did so from within. Hmmm . . . now where have I heard that before? cough cough Buddha cough cough. “When you see my life and how I communicate with the Heavenly Father, you should know how you too need to communicate with Spirit.” Jesus plainly said, “The Kingdom of God is within you.”
Those are the words of A son of God, not THE. Articles can be important.
Buddha,
So there I was digesting lunch, reading a book and then ready to get back on line to address Clint’s comments to me and what happens? You address them in a breathtaking tour de force that not only encompasses the points I was making, but expands upon them exponentially to the point that the topic was sliced, diced and sewed up. The only nitpick I had was that not all Zionists are not fundamentalists and not all Jewish fundamentalists are Zionists. See the Satmar Hassidim and there brother organization the Naturei Cartei. Other than that minor point there was nowhere that I disagreed with either your logic or your history.
However, I do owe Clint an explanation of where I’m coming from because i think that he seems a good person to have around adn as a romantic I tear up for newlyweds.
“Mike,
“any system that believes that only IT has the truth, or that IT knows God’s purpose, is both ignorant and blasphemous.”
But, somehow you do believe that that is the truth. Believing that no one has the truth is still, by implication, a belief that you do.I don’t think any of you are dumb. I think that most (if not all) of you are far more intelligent than me. I haven’t even finished college and may never have an opportunity to do so. It seems that your presuppositions about my beliefs have ruled your dialogue with me. Do I think you are wrong in many ways…yes. But, you feel the same towards me.”
Clint,
Good luck on your marriage and I wish you a long, fruitful and happy life together. We Jews believe that in marriage, one discovers our other half and thus find completion. I hope that comes true for you.
As for the first part of your statement I wasn’t saying that I don’t believe in anything, or that I don’t believe in things that I hold to be true. What I meant was that while personally I have many things I believe in quite strongly, I do so also with the understanding that I could be wrong. The problem that I have with fundamentalists, or with those who follow any “isms,” is their inability to acknowledge that anything in their belief could be wrong. I find that kind of absolutist belief to be both ignorant and blasphemous religiously.
I believe this because if one accepts the concept of a creator of this entire universe, one has to understand that a being such as that is way beyond our understanding. How can that be otherwise? How can we confidently state the Creator’s purposes, when we are dealing with a force beyond human comprehension? How could any finite book fully explain the infinite? Even if you believe that the various holy books were created as God’s message to us humans, the Creator would really have to quite severely shorten the message so it could be comprehended by frail, fallible beings such as we.
Given that, anyone human that state’s he/she “knows” God’s will is arrogant, fraudulent and a blasphemer. The 3 Prophets of Judaism, Christianity and Islam all claimed that God spoke through them, not that they necessarily understood God. They knew that it would be blasphemy for them to state otherwise and revered God too much to do so. Yet today we have frauds that claim God speaks through them and tells them to tell us what to do. What is most interesting about these latter day prophets is that much of what they state as God’s word contravenes what the various holy books of their faith expostulate.
Finally, whether or not you finished College is no determinant of how intelligent you are. My father dropped out of school in the 9th Grade and yet he was one of the smartest, well read men I ever met and that’s not a sons’ hero worship. Perhaps too I have had an incorrect, pre-conceived notion of where you are coming from and I apologize for judging you on scant evidence. Please keep returning because all non-Troll points of view are welcome. Intelligence, by the way, is more a factor of a person being open to new thoughts and ideas, even if after mulling them over conceptually they reject them based on sound reasoning.
Buddha,
“not all Zionists are fundamentalists and not all Jewish fundamentalists are Zionists”
I had too many not’s in there and created a double negative.
Mike S.,
Your clarification is duly noted and true. Thank you, sir. I am glad you enjoyed the post.
“The mature folks who contribute here speak the universal language (love) fluently.”
—–
Really? Here’s a taste of my Energy Mgmt:
Not all politicians are slime
Not all of the wealthy are elitist
Not all who enjoy success are crooks
Not all religious practice is, by definition, fanatical
Not all troubled children were sexually abused
Not all women are victims AND
…not ALL men are jerks
Happy Valentines!
Buddha,
**”Jesus probably didn’t consider himself THE son of God, but A son of God.”
Jesus is not saying worship him, but that his example is the way to find God. It is often distorted by those who wish to demonize “the other”.**
Jesus’ words are quite contradictory to your understanding of Him. It is not “following his example” that allows us to find God, it is putting our trust in what He did on the Cross.
Jesus said, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life….whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God….whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
He says that He is God’s only Son.
He states that access to God can only be found solely through Him.
His intended meaning makes his view of access to God very narrow. A good teacher doesn’t say these things unless they are perfectly true.
Mike,
Thank you for the encouragement. I do enjoy understanding others’ points of view and friendly dialogue.
If the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has chosen to reveal Himself in a specific way, don’t you feel that we should accept Him exactly the way He has shown? One cannot know God unless God wants to be known in a specific way. Either Isaac or Ishmael was taken to Mt Moriah to be sacrificed. Moses said it was Isaac, Muhammed said it was Ishmael. Either one is right or both are wrong.
Clint,
Dogma doesn’t defeat my statements. You believe what you want. I have history and logic. What I said is true whether you believe it or not. And I have a lot more theologians in my camp than are in the Fundie camp. Hundreds of years worth. Denial is part of the problem with Fundamentalism. If something comes up that contradicts what you’ve been TOLD is the ONLY world view, the typical reaction is reflexive knee-jerk “your wrong, I’m right” statements like you just made. Your example was bad, for one thing. You need to learn what a parable is and how it relates to teaching. Jesus was a teacher and he relied on parables as was common practice in his day and place. Had he been Greek, he’d have used the Socratic method. Parables work on simile, analogy and metaphor being stretched across a fictive framework. A story to illustrate a point directly but usually indirectly as constrained by the simile and metaphoric forms. You’re literalism is showing. I’ve already demonstrated that a literal interpretation of the Bible is a fallacy. I’m not going to repeat myself because it contradicts your “belief” or your misunderstanding of Jesus’ methods and lack of acceptance about the Bible’s history. If you expect capitulation and conversion, you’ll be waiting a long, long time. It’s not my job to undo the bad ideas that have crept into your head, I’ll gladly point the way, but like all things, the heavy mental lifting has to be your effort. But if you just want to try and browbeat dogma about Jesus being THE son of God so you can retain a sense of being “chosen”, you might want to back off that. Say you disagree and let it drop. Retain your illusion of specialness if your ego requires it, but it’s doing you and the rest of the world no favor. Mike and I have both approached this in a logical and historically accurate manner, yet you still tow the line. Rigid thinking. Believe what you want, but a flawed basis for argument won’t fly in here. I’ve seen them fail time and again. It’s not a winning position in a room full of people trained to argue from fact.
Patty
You’re recipes are brilliant.
Clint
Wild guess but are you from Texas?
I can now smell the Saudi fear. This is indeed a lovely present.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7890211.stm
Buddha,
Jesus taught in parables to illustrate his explicit teachings–not to give us mystical philanthropic sayings to mix with our own worldviews. Jesus did not come to this world to be another Confucius. He came to be slaughtered for the sins of idiots like me…and philosophers like you–and to teach us to trust in Him as sufficient to rescue.
I don’t claim to be superior to your religion, but I do claim that the person of Jesus, as described in Scripture, is superior to all things. That’s pretty offensive. At least it was to me.
CCD,
If your “wild guess” was derived from the “About Me” section of my website, then I’d say that it wasn’t that wild at all.
blah blah blah Clint.
Good to see you are a Texan to the bone.
Buddha,
The obvious sidestep and slight prejudiced comment from a philosopher such as yourself give me the mental image of a caged deer. Thanks for the dialogue.
Oh, you’re welcome. But let’s be clear.
For the record, I haven’t side stepped jack shit, sport.
Imagine what you like. Imagination and fantasy are what you seem to be good at. I’ve addressed your points, you persist in your “belief”, I told you the heavy lifting would be yours but you are clearly not interested in learning, so why should I bother? Again, your rigid thinking not only did you a disservice, it misinformed you about your “argument” and it’s effectiveness.
You believe Jesus is THE son of God and I provided evidence in His own words to back that he was A son of God despite holding out Himself as an exemplar and the use of parable and stating the the Heavenly Father was the one deserving worship, not the man Jesus. Jesus, as a man, knew he was unimportant in himself but important as an example – or do you think a man attributed with miraculous powers would allow himself to be crucified, Invisible Sky Dad’s orders or not? Before you answer “God told him to” I’ll point out that is your DOGMATIC BELIEF, NOT FACT. AGAIN, YOUR BELIEF DOES NOT MAKE FACT. Your ignorance and resistance to historical fact, logic and established theology is of only tangential concern. You present no fact, only misinterpreted scripture quotes – a danger and known historical abuse of the very book you “believe” is the literal word of God (despite the FACT that IT ISN’T). You have addressed NONE of my points with anything other than dogma. Rote repeating of “JESUS IS LORD!” equivalents. You are falling to some of the very errors I pointed out. I am a sign, but you walk your road. If it leads to a dead end, that was YOUR choice. Dead ends are often the easy paths. Free will is a gift. Waste it as you like, but your attempts to force your fantasy (and that is what it is, fantasy) upon others is small minded and rooted in your ego’s need to feel special. Far from disproving me, your further floundering with ineffective counter-arguments and resort to the ad homeniem (caged bear? please, your ego is showing) is only proving my point that YOUR ego is what you are servicing, not logic and fact. Like many subjects, you are probably too close to the problem to see it. You clearly lack an ability for abstraction. Your analysis is proven sub-standard, therefore, your opinion is moot unless you bring better and more persuasive analysis. Again, if your goal is conversion, you have as poor target selection as you do argument skills. How long did you read here before speaking? Did you actually think that tactic of hanging your lynch pins off Fundamentalist dogma would work? If so, that alone speaks volumes.
Bears aren’t tricked by dogma. They chew it up and spit it out like the poison meat it is. Maybe I should leave you to read past examples of what happens when someone pokes the bear. The evidence speaks for itself.
But in the sake of clarity, you have proven nothing and I have avoided nothing. The side-steps here are in your dance, sport, not mine. If I’m the bear, you’re not fighting, you’re dancing. I’ll let the readers judge who is most persuasive, because clearly, your judgment – a skill rooted in logic and ethics that is teachable – is impaired by your “belief”.
So unless you have better than “is so, is not” Fundamentalist dogma, you should listen instead of speaking or at least have the sense and good graces to walk away disappointed at not adding another unwilling person to your roles of “special people”. No one is special. NO ONE. Not you, not me, not the President, NO ONE. That’s an ego induced delusion, that feeling of “specialness”. Maybe it’s as my grandfather always taught that God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason, didn’t He? And it wasn’t to be a dogmatic contrarian. It was so you could listen more than you speak . . . and stereoscopic hearing is a survival trait for orientating predators but since science is usually out for your type, I’ll leave that as a lagniappe.
So bring the heat or ride the pine, but right now, you’re objectively losing the argument and losing badly. I’m sure you don’t “believe” that, but past pointing you to the evidence, I, unlike you, am uninterested in using force to change your mind. I didn’t force Bron to change his mind on certain topics, if you want an example, he did all that work on his own. And make no mistake, reliance on dogma is reliance on coercion. Dogma is rooted in the threat of “Do as I say or go to Hell”. A tool to service the ego’s of church officials. You are a fine example of coercion breeds coercion just like child abusers breed more child abusers. You’ve been fed a steady diet of it and it’s all you can apparently serve.
Persuade me you are right if I am so wrong. Use logic and fact against me. You know, REASON.
Force and threat, especially based on the intangible like “belief” or the concept of “Hell”, don’t work with me. Fear is something I have little of by nature, but I certainly don’t fear your arguments any more than I fear your myopic and conflicted view of God or any more than I fear your dogmatic responses. Which is “not at all” in case you didn’t catch that.
So side-step away, handsome, but you should look to see who is really dancing before you get off the wall to accuse someone of stealing your move. I’m probably a poor poor choice in dance partners. I don’t side step like that. You’re dancing. This bear doesn’t dance. This bear plays judo. That is not an ego based statement (I’m not too “good” to dance with you), but an evidentiary statement based on past performance.
In short, you should step up or step off, because right now your dance moves are looking like a bunch of drunk Germans doing The Chicken Dance at a wedding reception. No offense to drunken Chicken Dancing Germans. So persuade me using the proper tools, or don’t bother. It’ll only make you look worse.
If I was proving that “my religion is right and yours is wrong” then I’d focus more on logic–if possible. But, my emphasis is more on your understanding of Jesus–if you claim that He is a “good teacher” then you also must accept his “good teachings.” I’ve quoted Jesus’ explicit words and you have crafted them into mystical, unknowable sayings. It is far better to reject His sayings completely than to distort them for personal convenience.
Jesus speaks of accepting His words:
Jesus: “For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels?”
Jesus also spoke of “fear” and “hell”:
“And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him (God) who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
Would you consider these parables also? If so, please explain the metaphorical meaning that He is intending.
Parable.
Acting evil will destroy you. Since God is within you, it is therefore you destroying yourself. You have nothing to fear from others regarding your relationship with God, only yourself. The only thing to fear isn’t just fear itself, but your own lack of understanding of the nature of God within you.
Clint:
“Jesus taught in parables to illustrate his explicit teachings–not to give us mystical philanthropic sayings to mix with our own worldviews.”
****************
Sorry to chime in on your dialogue with Buddha, but this statement is literally wrong according to the Jesus of the Magic Book.
“The knowledge of the secrets of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. This is why I speak to them in parables, ‘Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand’” (Mat. 13:11,13).
mespo,
Nice quote. I’ll have to remember that one.
Mespo,
Very good. This is why I like dialogues like this. I never connected that verse with my dialogue with Buddha. I appreciate the correction but it doesn’t change the fact that parables illustrated his explicit teachings–though the meanings were hidden to the crowds at the time.
Take for instance, this conversation with the religious leaders:
“Destroy this temple, and in three days a I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.”
————
Note that he told a parable-I’ll raise this temple up in three days
The meaning was hidden- they thought he was talking about the temple in Jerusalem.
It illustrated his teaching that he would die and resurrect- When he rose from the dead, his disciples remembered this saying.
———–
There was a specific, intended meaning. He spoke with purpose and clarity to those open to truth. He did not give us self-esteem proverbs to twist for our own purposes.
————
Thanks Mespo, you keep me on my toes. What do you think of the historical reliability of the resurrection of Christ. No real scholar can deny that thousands of people at least thought that Christ had risen three days after he died. What does Mespo say?
Buddha,
So you agree with me finally and are ready to trust in Christ to save you from your sin? I feel that your words are implicitly saying that the Bible is true and you have been wrong for so many years.
Or, should I take your words at face value? It is the intended meaning of Jesus we should seek, not our personal translation.
No, I still think you’re marginally psychotic and terrible at proving your points.
How about this – since you didn’t understand the last parable I translated or Jesus’ own words about the use of parable.
I’ll worry about my relationship with God and you worry about yours. You have nothing to fear from my relationship with God and I have nothing to fear from yours. Nothing to fear does not mean I’ll accept you trying to cram your ridiculous beliefs down my throat by force.
So go on, go crow to your fundie buddies about how you “bested” the heathens, despite not having proven a thing. It’s the fundamentalist MO – DENIAL. I’ve seen it a thousand times and you turned out just as I expected. You live a delusional life thinking you’re special if you like. In the end, you are helping to destroy society with your exclusionary nonsense and you aren’t doing yourself any favors by hiding from reality.
Clint:
why do you want to convert everyone? As somone who does believe in a creator although not in the way you believe, isnt it just plainly and simply up to the individual?
I think that Jesus died for everyone, not just Christians he put it out there, not because he wanted Christians to have sole access or for people to convert to Christianity but for the entire human race. I have Hindu friends and they are kind and good people. Are they denied a place?
I understand your translation of the “parables”. You are right, I have not proven anything. If I had, you would still not believe. I only sought to understand why you consider Jesus a good teacher and not recognize his teachings–which at times are very explicit and not metaphorical. I understand now. His teachings will never run counter to your worldview regardless of what he says.
Here’s one last parable:
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
Maybe the word “fundamentalist” was derived from this parable. May the God of Jesus have mercy on both of us. Thanks for the dialogue.
That clear enough for you, sport? I have to deal with enough of your kind of bullshit within my own family and quite frankly your persistent denials and assumption of the delusion of moral superiority based on a fairy tale are nearing the limits of my patience. Unlike the preacher I quoted above, it’s not my job to babysit mental defectives. I’d have gone into psychiatry if that’s what I wanted to do. My job is to minimize the damage your kind of poisonous thought does to the species. There are a certain percentage of people on the edge of falling into the fundamentalist pit that are not immune to evidence and reason. Hopefully they have been steered to a less damaging form of Christianity or to seek another path to the nature of God inside them that doesn’t require them to act like a smug unthinking thug for Jesus. You gave up free will so you could feel special. Free will is the singular greatest gift given to man under most religious traditions. Jesus will be real impressed when he returns to find you didn’t find the nature of the Heavenly Father within you by self-examination and reflection, but because some charlatan in a nice suit told you if you took his exclusionary belief in toto, no matter how conflicted or historically inaccurate, that you’d be “special” and “saved”. All you have done is limit your ability to see the divine in others because they are “different” because you are blinded by your own ego. You had help going blind, but you put those fingers in your own eyes in the end. I’ve proven your literalist interpretation of the Bible is based on a lie. Whereas you have only proven how deeply brainwashed you are. Nothing based in a lie ever comes to any good. I don’t hold it against you though. All men are created equal, even the ones with ridiculous beliefs, but they are not created with equal ability to reason or not be taken in by hucksters. You’ve shown that. To your credit, you appeared to be trying, you’re just not succeeding. My beef is with those who willingly and often knowingly led you down a path that’s unhealthy for society and a huge disservice to the millions of Christians before you just as it is a huge disservice to all people of conscience trying to bring the world together instead of driving it apart by dividing everyone into the categories of “saved” and “sinner”. You’ve proven you don’t know what “saved” actually means, so by default, your definition of “sinner” is equally faulty. So you go right on thinking I’m a sinner and not deserving of God’s love because I won’t tow your ego specific theological line. And I’ll just keep laughing at you.
Bron98,
Thanks for the sincere question.
There are plenty of nice people in the world. But the Bible says that “none is righteous, no, not one. No one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
When God looks down at the world, He sees no good people. It says in the Bible that “for our sake [God] made [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin; so that in [Jesus] we might become the righteousness of God.
God punished Jesus for my evil and treats me as though I lived His perfect life. He does the same for all who trust in that.
If I believe that and love others, I would not hesitate to tell people though it be offensive.
“I’ve proven your literalist interpretation of the Bible is based on a lie.”
I must have missed that rebuttal between all of your emotionally-charged insults.
If you want to believe that “hell” doesn’t mean hell and “no one comes to the Father except through me” doesn’t mean what it explicitly says…then go on Buddha. You may make me look foolish or ignorant but you will not stop me from desiring the best for you.
blah blah blah
You miss a lot of things, Clint.
And I’m done with you. Jesus himself could show up and tell you how wrong you are and you’d still insist you had the 411 on salvation. Zealots are as zealots do. Enjoy your small minded life.
And I’m still laughing.
Clint:
If my Hindu friends are excluded then I am excluded. They are closer to the Divine than I am and than most other Christians I know. They actually walk the walk. It is poverty that your religion would exclude these people solely because they do not acknowledge Jesus as their savior.
The bible is a users manual for the human race, with the major tenenant being Love others as you love yourself. Certainly no admonition for superiority.
Out of all the religions that I have looked at they all pretty much try and teach humans how to behave and lead a good life. And that is what Jesus did he tried to teach us how to lead a good life here on earth. Was it preporation for heaven maybe so, but it sure helps with life on earth too.
Clint,
I’d stepped out of this dialog because others were handling it well. Also too if you remember in my first response to you I felt you were dishonest because you clearly had an intent to start a religious debate, but were hanging back setting up your defense with rhetorical traps. Later on I tempered my feeling of your intellectual dishonesty because it is always good to have many points of view around. However, in reading your layest series of comments it becomes evident that you’re just another well meaning Christian doing your duty and trying to save non-believers from hell.
The Christian Missionaries accompanied the early imperialists and spread Christ’s word at the point of a gun, while their expedition leaders were plundering the natives. These supposed pious men were there to provide moral cover for the evil of men destroying and despoiling societies. They also got a piece of the action.
Today we still see the Christian Missionary bringing salvation to the ignorant and unsuspecting. They are in many guises be they Baptist Preachers, young Mormons on a mission, or those for whom I hold particular disdain “Jews for Jesus” types who spread the myth that Christianity is just a continuation of Jewish teaching to Jews with poor Jewish education or family tradition. What galls me most about the concept of Christian Missionary work, or that of Muslims for that matter, is their blasphemy that they possess the sole truth. Believing that the Creator of the Universe (if there is one) could be understood by humans is blasphemy in my mind. The concept of an “Awesome God” expounded in the Torah is just that, beyond our ability to understand. As I’ve stated in other comments, on other threads, the great Rabbi Hillel, who predated Jesus, when asked to sum up the meaning of the Torah said:
“That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.”
Those who read the Torah, or any holy book should take the Rabbi’s words in caution of their own lack of understanding.
Holy Books are not meant to be read as literalistic history.
Metaphors/parables express higher truths not specifics. Genesis was all metaphor, understood as such at the time of its’ creation and not a literal blueprint of creation. If you don’t see that then you’re missing the point. To Jews, for instance, the concept of “original sin” is non-Biblical. Jews believe that people are not born in sin and the world is not a loathsome place. The Jewish thrust is to make this world a paradise for all humans. Hell is a concept that is foreign to most Jewish teachers, as is heaven. It is a religion of good deeds in this world, rather than salvation in the next.
“If the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has chosen to reveal Himself in a specific way, don’t you feel that we should accept Him exactly the way He has shown? One cannot know God unless God wants to be known in a specific way. Either Isaac or Ishmael was taken to Mt Moriah to be sacrificed. Moses said it was Isaac, Muhammed said it was Ishmael. Either one is right or both are wrong.”
A phone call came in an I accidentally posted the prior comment before I was done. Here’s the rest.
“Clint,
If the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has chosen to reveal Himself in a specific way, don’t you feel that we should accept Him exactly the way He has shown? One cannot know God unless God wants to be known in a specific way. Either Isaac or Ishmael was taken to Mt Moriah to be sacrificed. Moses said it was Isaac, Muhammed said it was Ishmael. Either one is right or both are wrong.”
Clint,
Here is the problem I have with your comment and with the general Christian attitude towards Judaism. An attitude that has unfortunately caused much agony for the Jewish Community through 1,684 years. I am dating the agony to the first Council of Nicaea 325CE. Christianity and Judaism are separate religions, with widely different theology and philosophy. From a Jewish theological perspective Christianity is an admixture of of Hellenistic and Gnostic philosophy, subsumed to the needs of a pagan Emperor who need Christian support and offered up power and wealth to seal the deal. The Romans hated the Jews because their frequent rebellions represented some of the greatest setbacks of the unending success of Roman Imperialism. In order to make Jesus, a probable Jewish revolutionary and Pharisee palatable, they had to severely edit your Gospels to make Jesus a pacifist and neutral towards Rome. In the process it was necessary to demonize the Jews as Christ Killers, make Pilate who the independent Roman records show was a monster palatable and appropriate our Torah with editing/translation/interpretation more palatable to their beliefs.
Now of course I’m just giving you the general Jewish point of view in trying to make you understand that to us God could never have revealed himself in the way you think he did. there is no such thing as Judeo-Christian belief, although as an oppressed minority for so many years many have had to help you all keep up the pretense. Judaism and Christianity are totally separate religions. If Christianity is right, then Judaism is wrong, or vice-versa.
As for the second part of your statement Abraham never took either son to Mt. Moriah to sacrifice one. It’s not literal Clint. It’s a metaphor that clearly shows God did not want to have human sacrifice, as was common throughout the world at the time. It was one of the things that separated an evolving Judaism from the surrounding horror of many of the then current religious practices.
Now please understand that I am a Deist that chooses to practice Jewish ritual. My philosophical thinking through the years has led me to believe that there is some sort of creative force in the Universe, but that it is impossible for us humans, in our current state of development, to understand its’ meaning. The concept of Heaven of Hell simply does not make any sense to me, yet I do accept the possibility of life after death and I’ll wait until that time comes to find out, or just cease to exist.
In the meantime I’ve tried to live my life based on Rabbi Hillel’s strictures and I think it’s a good base for all of humanity to live by. If some kind of judgment comes after death I am ready to meet the Judge, but hopefully not for many years.
I presented the above not as a dispute with Christianity, but to give you an understanding of the Jewish point of view and why we people with a history and philosophy that reaches back for perhaps 3,500 years resent the attitude that Christians have a lock on truth and that we’re somehow children to be educated by you.
I wish you well in your beliefs and my attitude on people is that basically if they live by “The Golden Rule,” as your religion puts it, then its’ fine with me and I wish all peace, love and good health. However, I do resent that you have been attempting to use this site to spread your “good news,” while lacking a full understanding of what you speak. Anything I’ve stated is available for easy googling and research. If you are as pious as you profess it might be helpful to really look into the history of what you say. Who knows it might even make you stronger in your belief. However, all too many of your ilk are afraid to do so, because you are afraid of what you’ll find. Then too, some people approach religious belief with a closed mind and the sad thing about that to me, is that I think one human purpose is to try to learn, to grow and to examine their philosophical/spiritual underpinnings.
MikeS:
I always thought the effete Jesus was a bunch of balogna, he was in my mind a tough hombre who had the courage to take on Rome and kick a little ass in the temple. When I figured that out it was actually freeing and I thought much better of Jesus than I had before. I dont know why Christians dont teach more about Jesus as radical/revolutionary. It is certainly an individual against the state scenario. Although it took hundreds of years the individual triumphed over the state
Aye, Jesus was a scrapper alright. That’s why the Romans feared him. Nice work again, Mike. Really, you may have missed your calling as a Rabbi. You’d have rocked the Temple.
Bron,
For Jesus to have a major following in his time he would have had to be a revolutionary against Rome and a Pharisee Rabbi to boot. The reason was that the Jews hated Rome and would not accommodate to Roman religious practices, especially deification of the Emperor. The portrayal of the Pharisees in the gospels as hypocrites was necessary to Constantine, since it was well-known that the Pharisees had led the numerous insurrections. The Sadducee’s were the sellouts of their time and hated by the people. The Roman’s in their hubris assumed that the High Priest was the religious leader of the Jews, just as in other religions and did not understand he was a ritual functionary and not a religious leader. Thus they couldn’t comprehend that having controlled the High Priest they were still faced with a religious revolt.
There are many books from scholars both Christian and Jewish that have concluded this. Jesus and the Apostles coming from Galilee for instance indicates this, because there was the hotbed of the Jewish revolts. There are many indications that Jesus revolutionary status was edited out at the various councils starting in 325CE. The sign on Jesus Cross for instance that he claimed to be king of the Jews indicates that he was crucified for insurrection. This is because to proclaim oneself King of the Jews was considered treason by the Romans. This is all very available stuff if one wants to educate themselves.
However, the problem with this for Fundamentalists is that they’ve based their dogma on a passive lamb led to the slaughter at the behest of God their Gospels are literal truth. Because of this history and historical facts must be ignored. The point that Buddha et. al have been making is that if you get past the dogma and religious belief there exists a message and perhaps way of living that has merit. Literalists can’t allow themselves to see this because it might shake their faith. That is why the must preach to others, instead of being content with living their own lives and letting others live theirs.
Thanks you guys for all the above; this is why I love this blog!
Bron,
**If my Hindu friends are excluded then I am excluded.**
We all are. Jesus called well-meaning, law-abiding Jewish people “evil.”
**And that is what Jesus did he tried to teach us how to lead a good life here on earth.**
Most people believe that without even knowing what He taught Bron.
Mike,
**However, the problem with this for Fundamentalists is that they’ve based their dogma on a passive lamb led to the slaughter**
Was Isaiah’s writings corrupted by Constantine also?:
3 He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
Buddha,
If the “debate” is won by sheer number of insults and personal declarations of victory, then you are the winner by a longshot. I came asking questions and I received my answer. Thanks again for the dialogue.
Mike,
Note also where “lamb led to the slaughter” came from….Isaiah again:
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
Clint,
You are correct that the “lamb” imagery originated in Isaiah, but you must agree that “Lamb of God,” referring to Jesus has been a recurrent Christian usage and theme. However, in your quote you inadvertently reinforced the points I’ve been making and I’ll explain why.
The Book of Isaiah is a book in the Jewish Torah attributed to an 8th Century BCE Jewish prophet. He lived in a time of great upheaval for the Jews, with Assyrian invasions, Hebrew kings poor judgment and at different times the occupation of Judah, Israel and Samaria, the three Jewish Kingdoms. Isaiah 7. probably referred to King Ahaz, who sold out the Assyrians and his kingdom Judah and was conquered because of it. Actually, the above is a rather simplified point to mainly present context. Isaiah was railing against the Jewish crisis in his own times and was not prophesying some future Messiah some 700 years in the future.
However, 700 odd years later comes Jesus, also at a time of crisis for Jews and Israel. Jesus, his family and his apostles all were faithful Jews, most probably Pharisee trained. They were opponents of the Romans, obviously, because the Pharisee’s led the ongoing revolt and had they not been the High Priest (Sadducee) would have been on their side and not arresting Jesus. It is possible that as religious Jews they used allusions to the Torah, to bolster their claim that Jesus was inheritor of the line of David and thus qualified as Messiah. However, Messiah to the Jews (Moshiach) referred to a human king who would destroy the Roman oppressors and lead the world to peace. In Jewish belief traditionally and at that time
no divinity was attached to the Messiah.
However, quite awhile after Jesus death comes Paul. He makes two claims that actually are suspicious. First that he is Pharisee by education and second that he worked for the High Priest (Sadducee) rounding up rebels. If he was Pharisee trained it is highly unlikely that he would work for the Saduccess, except of course if he was a traitor to Israel. His second claim though, while probably being true, makes his case even weaker. He claims Roman citizenship by birth. There is no way that the Pharisees would be training a hereditary Roman citizen since that’s exactly who they were fighting. Also a Roman citizen would have had to acknowledge the emperor as a God and no Jew, claiming to be at all religious could have done that. Also it must be remembered that Paul never met Jesus in the flesh.
We then have Paul on his way to Damascus, under a hot sun, falling off of his mount and having a vision of Jesus. This is supposedly where he is saved and becomes a super Apostle,that in his mind ranks above all the Apostles and followers of Jesus while he lived. Paul is the actual father of Christianity and certainly moved it in the direction of the deification of Jesus. Meanwhile, back in Jerusalem James the Just has become the head of Jesus’ movement. Why James when the Gospels portray Jesus family as being against him. That’s easily answered by realizing that as Jesus’ brother, he was also of the line of David, which was needed to claim the authenticity of the movement.
There are further passages in your Bible to show that there were problems between Paul’s claimed Apostleship and the real movement led by James. Much of that argument has been garbled by later Christian editors to show Paul somehow coming out on top. What wasn’t fully garbled though was that the Jesus movement in Jerusalem, led by James and Peter, approved of Paul’s desire to preach to the gentiles, probably to get him out of their sight.
Paul was a successful organizer and even though his version was an anathema to James and the original apostles, his support among the gentiles and among some Jews dispirited by their defeat by the Romans, 70CE, grew. Paul was a great organizer and polemicist. The James followers and movement didn’t die out and some historians trace their existence until the Sixth Century CE. Obviously though, Paul’s views won and to the victor comes the spoils of rewriting the history. When Constantine got into the game the Christian Canon was carefully edited to make the Romans seems like some benign group. This was hard to do when just a Century before you were throwing Christians to the lions, but done it was.
A long preamble, I suppose, but it provides context for my refutation. Historians place the writing of the individual Gospels from perhaps 75 to 140 CE, way after Jesus death. They were written by followers of Paul, who were in their minds rightly bitter towards the Jewish establishment and followers of James, who refused to acknowledge Paul’s teachings which were the abrogation of Judaism. As they were written and you can follow the progression, the gospels became progressively anti-Jewish. At the same time they also cut and pasted the Torah to find suitable indications that it foretold Jesus. Thus adding the patina of historicity to their claims. That their interpretations differed from those of the Jews who wrote and nurtured it meant little to them, because in their minds the Jews who didn’t agree with them didn’t understand their own Torah. That is how Isaiah came to be a mainstay even though it has nothing to do with Jesus.
What I find most interesting though is that there is no doubt that Jesus and his apostles lived as pious Jews. Yet the sections of the Torah forbidding eating pork and shellfish and requiring circumcision were ignored. I believe that was because Paul, always a good salesman, realized that part of the pitch was not going to sell with his gentile listeners, or apostate Jews.
I present this all not as a refutation of your belief Clint. I admit that I could be wrong and thus sentenced to eternal hell for my refusal to believe as you do. You have every right to believe as you choose. My point is that there exists a viewpoint and strong evidence to refute Christian claims to Isaiah’s teaching and to the Jewish Torah. I would deeply appreciate it if you Christians would stop trying to force your beliefs on to the rest of us, even if you’ve got some notion that its’ for our own good.
I don’t drink milk with meat and not only am I circumcised and proud, I would have circumcised my sons if I hadn’t been blessed with Daughters. My daughters never had need of abortions, unlike those of many fundamentalist Christians, but I would have strongly supported them getting one if they had made that decision. I believe, as in the Jewish belief, that life and the soul enter the infant with its’ first breath and I am offended that the anti-abortion movement is a sham by fundamentalists to raise funds, gain political power, maintain a patriarchy and rail against female sexuality.
I’ve lived on this planet for a relatively long time, experienced much more of the pain and travail of living than most Americans. I refuse to be dictated to by people who haven’t spent half the time I have trying to make sense out of this thing we call life. I disdain those who have the arrogance to believe they have the right to preach to others and to jam their beliefs down our throats. I feel sorry for those so frightened of life that they wrap themselves in absolutes and refuse to look at evidence to the contrary.
Bravo Mike Spindell,
You are a shining Mentsh. I feel indebted to you. Thank you
Sorry for the lateness.
*Historians place the writing of the individual Gospels from perhaps 75 to 140 CE, way after Jesus death.*
What historians?
*Jesus, his family and his apostles all were faithful Jews, most probably Pharisee trained. They were opponents of the Romans, obviously, because the Pharisee’s led the ongoing revolt and had they not been the High Priest (Sadducee) would have been on their side and not arresting Jesus.*
What history book do you get this from since you reject what has been written of Him?
**Isaiah was railing against the Jewish crisis in his own times and was not prophesying some future Messiah some 700 years in the future.**
Was this the pre-Christian view of this passage in Isaiah among Jews?
How is this “railing against the Jewish crisis”? Who is Isaiah speaking of in this particular passage?
“But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,”
Pretty crafty of Paul to write something similar, “For our sake, He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God” -2 Cor. 5:21.
You seem to have kept the Mosaic law rather well. What about atonement? Is that no longer necessary?
“You seem to have kept the Mosaic law rather well. What about atonement? Is that no longer necessary?”
Clint,
Atonement, in the Hebraic conceptualization, is always necessary whether one is or isn’t religious. Atonement is self examination of how we have treated others and ourselves. Even though I am a Deist Jew I practice it specifically every year between Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur as I celebrate the Jewish High Holy Days in Synagogue and at home. With the self examination of past deeds and behaviors comes the concomitant need to deal with those I have wronged and make good on it personally. In truth I try to practice Rabbi Hillel’s and the Pharisaic formulation, known to you as The Golden Rule, every day of my life, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. I freely admit my humanity.
Now you ask me various question and for the answers I refer you to the work of Hyam Maccoby and then to the sources he cites. If you so choose to follow this up you will also find Christian scholars who dispute and deride him. This is to be expected. Maccoby was Jewish and writing from a Jewish perspective. However, many Christian biblical scholars have also supported this perspective and retained their faith.
My point is not to tell you that your religious belief is wrong. One’s religious, or non-religious belief is personal and hopefully is examined and modified throughout one’s life. My point is that from a Jewish perspective Christians have hi-jacked and misinterpreted our Torah and we have valid reasons for feeling that way. From your perspective Christianity has replaced Judaism and is an extension of the Torah culminating in the “New Testament.”
I don’t know and can’t comment how you came to your religious point of view. For me though I was born a Jew and became more religious as I said the “Mourner’s Kaddish” daily in Synagogue for the year after my mother died, when I was 17. When my father died and I was 18, I did not “say Kaddish” and didn’t step into a Synagogue (except for family “Mitzvah’s) until I was 37. Throughout my whole life though I’ve explored all forms of religious belief to try to open myself up to some sense of what life is about. In that journey I’ve read much about Christianity and of course what you call “The New Testament.” I’ve not found Christianity or its’ beliefs persuasive. However, I’ve been friends with many who have and I have respected their beliefs and participated with respect and enthusiasm in their religious rituals. I love Gospel music and Christmas Carols, but do not celebrate Christmas.
Where I get angered by some currents of current Christianity is when their proponents try to enforce their beliefs on society as a whole. The abortion issue for instance is to me a religious belief that should be left to a woman’s choice.
I believe that Fundamentalist thought in any religion is dangerous when it mixes with politics and that includes Judaism. To my mind religious fundamentalists are responsible for innumerable deaths and misery throughout history.
When I see TV Preachers spouting Republicanism and Conservatism it does not jibe with my reading of the Gospels, nor of Jesus life. When I also see people claiming to completely understand a being such as God I see that as blasphemy and egotism. That’s me though, you are entitled to your beliefs.
I offered you a source for where many of my ideas were formed, its’ your choice whether you avail yourself of it. I’m not here to deride your belief or to educate you. If it provides comfort to you and your wife God Bless. However I would appreciate it if you and your fellow believers stayed out of my face and out of the laws of my country. When I’m approached by pimply young kids sent out to save my soul I am put off and angered by their effrontery and that of the people who sent them on their mission.
**When I see TV Preachers spouting Republicanism and Conservatism it does not jibe with my reading of the Gospels, nor of Jesus life.**
I am in firm agreement with you. Right-wing religion is arrogant, self-righteous, and cares nothing about the essence of worship or godliness. Jesus bears no resemblance.
**When I also see people claiming to completely understand a being such as God I see that as blasphemy and egotism.**
I don’t claim to know anything but what has been explicitly revealed by God–revealed to me because of His grace, not my merit. It will take an eternity to understand an Infinite God.