So, let's ignore, for a second, all the instances of God utterly snuffing out nonbelievers with purging fire, and promising an eternity of hell to those who don't believe in him.
In other words, you wish to ignore those instances where punishment follows a crime in what one would otherwise call justice and instead talk of intolerance.
As this is a fundamental difference in our approaches that seems to be preventing us from reaching a common ground, allow me to explain why our arguments are totally missing each other.
The problem of communication here isn’t that there is injustice in the bible or intolerance; the problem is much more fundamental than that. You point to “intolerance” or “injustice” and call it a sign that religion should be done away with. I do not deny that there are such instances in the bible. However, I do deny that those signs are meaning what you are thinking they are meaning. Certainly, on one level there is a question of if this or that is violent, intolerant, of unjust. If I believe you have mislabeled something, I will argue against it, but all such discussion along these lines are tertiary to a deeper point that you do not seem to be addressing. You’ve been attacking the crown molding and concluding that the foundation is rot. Or, to offer a military analogy, you aren’t just attacking your enemy where he is weak, you are attacking your enemy where he just plain isn’t there.
The underlying, deeper point is if these instances of intolerance, injustice, and violence are good or bad. You point out the classic verse urging Christians not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers. Firstly, this doesn’t say anything about being intolerant, just selective. You can no more accuse believers of intolerance in this regard than you could fault a researcher for not taking on an undergrad as a Co-PI. Yet, even if you label this selectivity as intolerant, it is a case of good intolerance. People are influenced by those that they associate with. If one is trying to be a law abiding citizen, one would do well not to associate with criminals.
So then, your argument in this case should not be that these verses are intolerant (I maintain that they are not, but that is really besides the point), but that the intolerance is inherently bad. Unless you do so, you are spending your time and energies on topics that don’t change anything even if you are correct.
As a side note, there are certain period specific meanings to those verses that you are missing. Krispin addresses them rather nicely, but to add just a few comments of my own. Luke 10:25-37, parable of the Good Samaritan. Christians are to help anyone in need. When taken together with your verses, it reveals a basic principle that Christians should do everything they can not to sin (aka, commit crimes), but that kindness and help should be offered to everyone, regardless of belief. There is also a slight difference in what it means nowadays to welcome someone into your home and what it meant at the time. At the time period in question, welcoming someone into your home also obligated you legally. You would become responsible for them and if they committed any crimes you also had responsibility. Essentially, you became their patron for as long as they were under your hospitality. Inviting a nonbeliever into ones home, then, was also taking on responsibility for the nonbeliever. It would be like inviting a criminal into your home knowing that you’d be held responsible for any crimes they committed while there.
6:20 O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called:
This just in: science is bunk. If it goes against Christianity, it is to be avoided as babbling.
Firstly, that is a bunk interpretation. Science, as it is conceived of in the modern mind, did not exist at the time the text was originally written. Indeed, even when the King James version of the bible was created (and the King James version is criticized in some Christian circles for the liberties it takes with the original text), science still didn't have the same meaning to which you are applying it. Indeed,
given that science doesn’t address the same issues that religion does, there would never be science that contradicts religion (just as there isn’t science that contradicts literature). For this reason the verse would be better translated as something more along the lines of: " ... turning away from the profane babblings and oppositions of the knowledge which is falsely so called;"
Regardless of issues with translation, you are also making an interpretational error on basic linguistic levels. What does the verse tell Timothy to do? To avoid "knowledge" (or "science") that is falsely called such. That is not an urging to avoid knowledge (or science), just false versions of such. If Paul were writing such in the modern era and were to provide an example, he might well have used eugenics and racial theory as examples of false knowledge/science.
6:9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
Crap! Consentual sex is out, and I guess born homosexuals have to roast whether they like it or not. Aww, and here I thought that in 2008, we were out of the Dark Ages. Silly ol' me.
Not consensual sex, casual sex (and casual sex regardless of prior commitments). That is an important difference (as it separates Quakers from Shakers, for example).
But again you are aiming your arguments at tertiary points and missing the underlying pin. If casual sex, idolatry, adultery, etc are crimes, then it is good that they are punished. Your task, then, is to argue that these things are not crimes (and, if possible, that they are good). Only after you have established that something is bad can you fault an institution for having that something.
As it stands, you are essentially complaining that Christianity does not tolerate corruption. Hardly an offense worthy of eradication.
Do you mean to allege that your eyes were completely closed during the numerous times Krispin denied religion's placement in the Dark Ages? Wait, wait; nevermind. I forget your dim view of humanity as hopeless in a world it cannot understand, subservient to a God for its advancement. My mistake.
Actually, my view (and the view of most religion) is that humanity has the amazing ability to transcend its natural limitations. Religion admits that humans are flawed (something that you seem to fault it for), yet maintains that those flaws can be overcome. It is the atheist who demands that humans are trapped in limited shells.
As for Krispin, my eyes were open so I saw the important distinction he was making between crimes committed by people and crimes committed by the church. In short, he was trying to point out the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy you were and are so willingly committing.
DDT might have eradicated malaria, or relegated it to negligible, trace levels.
For a time. Small pox, once thought to have been "eradicated" or "relegated to negligible, trace levels," is making a come back. The plague, which chances are you and I both have an old immunity from that we inherited, is still around and becoming more of a concern. Influenza, which caused a pandemic this last century, is a concern every single year.
Modern society has more auto-immune diseases than historic society. The cause of this is not entirely known, but it is suspected that part of it comes from how little we get sick. Our immune systems, being put to so little use, malfunction and start attacking our own bodies. I’d much rather have chicken pox, the flu, and other such diseases that my body can handle than to have (adult onset) type I diabetes.
With the development of antiviral medicines, humans have the ability to treat things as simple as the common cold and the flu. It is to medicine's credit that no one is so blind to use it for that. We have valuable, finite resources in this regard and humanity is using it (mostly) responsibly. As for gene therapy, you should attend a Bioethics Grand Rounds if you ever get a chance (any university that has PhD/MD programs has Ethics Grand Rounds). The very people who are making the discoveries that might someday allow gene therapy to replace eugenics are questioning its use for such. There is a fundamental ethical difference between ensuring that a child doesn’t have a gene deletion or misspelling that results in severe health problems and using our knowledge of genes to try to improve a child’s intelligence (for one, such things like intelligence are controlled by so many different factors that any change to a specific location is unlikely to have a noticeable effect). But as long as Junk DNA remains labeled as "Junk," humans don't understand our own DNA enough to try manipulating it. With the discovery of micro RNA science is realizing that the human genome is comparatively unique (not utterly unique, mind you) on the planet. Human DNA, RNA, mRNA, and micro RNA (among other things that I am not even aware of) can do more things with fewer letters than most other organisms can, even with thrice the amount of code. Even with the Human Genome Project complete (and, luckily, the human genome remains public knowledge, rather than patented waste), there is still so far to go.
Yes, it does. Too bad you haven’t got the recklessness to offer your own interpretation of what that might be, because it would be very interesting. I was, apparently, correct about your age. You have doubtlessly encountered all kinds of people in your travels, and surely you have an opinion about me, even if you aren’t brazen enough to share it. Too bad; my loss.
Not much of a loss. You are what you are. My opinion of you, based on a few posts, won’t change that. It is a rare individual indeed who will change because of some random person’s opinion. I don’t mean this as offense to you, just that you are human in that regard. If we knew each other well, if we were close friends, then my opinion might matter (and it would be more likely to be correct).
Firstly, no, none of you disembowled (Krispin). His arguments stood fast.
You mean they stood fast for you. You show strange judgment, Thought. I smell bias.
Strangely enough, I’ve reread my post and can’t find where I said that. That was posted near midnight, so I certainly could have said something that I don’t remember and just cant’ find it now. Or perhaps the problem I had with my quote tags made it appear that I said this, rather than that I was quoting Krispin?
But of course I am biased for Krispin’s arguments (I agree with his basic stance) and against yours and ZeaLitY’s (I do not agree with your basic stance). As I pointed out, we are all biased and just not suited to making these sorts of judgments.
I don’t see how you can honestly suggest that they stood fast.
As indicated above, I don’t believe I ever said his arguments stood fast. However, I do think they were quite fine and showed remarkable insight, so let us take it as said, even if I didn’t say it. Unfortunately you will be disappointed in how I can honestly suggest such a thing. As you may have noticed in the atheism thread, to start off with I rejected logic as an end-all be-all basis for argument. This is not to say that I embrace all logical fallacies, rather I like to think I understand the limits of logic and am comfortable with them. If I am willing to do THAT (to discard logic when it has been exhausted and no longer can benefit inquiry) you then shouldn’t expect me to be limited to normal means in my evaluation of other arguments. But to provide one example that sticks out in my mind as rather brilliant, he countered arguments that religion is inherently limiting, intellectually by pointing out that he has not been limited by it. That was a wonderful approach, sort of like when one has been stumped by the old Petals Around the Rose game for hours and suddenly realizes the answer is far simpler than the reams of data they have collected. Now you might question the actual merits of such a statement (I find Krispin to have a fine academic mind, so I find the argument rather powerful; you do not seem to agree on that, so logically you would find the point weak and possibly counter-productive). But that is just one example of how I can honestly suggest (though once again I didn’t originally suggest) that his arguments stood.
But anywho, that isn’t meant to be a defense of Krispin (as indicated before, I believe his arguments, and all our arguments, don’t need to be defended, or attacked), it is just meant as a look into my mind.
If you have truly devoted your many years to the pursuit of history, you can probably beat me—or at least stymie me pending further research—in my criticisms of institutional Christianity during the Middle Ages.
Since the debate seems to have died down a little, I don’t feel bad in indulging in yet another deviation. Actually, academically speaking, to be an expert means knowing more and more about less and less. My knowledge of the Middle Ages (though I am not claiming to be an expert, but perhaps on my way to such a status) is certainly better in some areas; I don’t feel it is unreasonable for me to say that I know more about the Germanic military capabilities of the classical period or the religious thoughts of the early bretwaldas of England than anyone else here (I might be wrong, certainly, but such knowledge is so trivial that I doubt it). But if we were to talk about, say, French social systems during the same time period as King Aethelbert, my “study” is much less useful. There will probably be a few random details that I picked up about that in my study of the other topics, but nothing worth noting. In specific, I might know more than other people (and only in a few specific topics), but in general we are all fairly evenly matched. I don’t doubt that you, ZeaLitY, Zeppy, Radical Dreamer, Kebrel, or Chrono’s cat could run circles around me, if given the proper topic of discussion (and visa versa if we were to, say, discuss the importance of certain pages in certain copies of the Guttenberg Bible having 40, rather than 42, lines).
Still, in the bustle of your response, I notice you declined to offer your real age. I can only guess that it embarrasses you, or else I think you would have freely and perhaps even proudly offered it up, if for no other reason than to defuse the subject and get back to the topic at hand. I’m willing to go out on a limb and guess that you are north of 34 and south of 70, but I can’t do any better than that.
Actually, I didn’t give my age because I find it mostly irrelevant (the mere accumulation of years… why should we judge people based on something they have no control over? And as people have the unfortunate tendency to do this, why should I offer such a chance?). However, my age is also freely available on the forum. Look under the “So tell me a little about yourself” thread,
http://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php/topic,4850.15.htmlYour estimates to my age are almost hilariously off. No, I still wont mention it here. If you really think it is important to know, go look. I also won’t tell you if I have a high school diploma or college degree(s) and if so, what in (though I suspect that such information isn’t too hard to deduce).
As for why I didn’t “defuse the subject and get back to the topic at hand,” the topic at hand has mostly been addressed. We’ve all made our arguments; a few more points of insight might come forward, but mostly what follows now is quibbling over this or that, nothing so significant as to cause one side of the other to come toppling down. As such, I am feeling rather indulgent in random conversation.
Insidious, eh? No, I’m pretty straightforward about what I want.
Interesting. I highly recommend you look over your analysis a little more, then. I think once you find what I am referring to with that insidious remark, you will be surprised and, I hope, amused. But as an aside, you are rather insidious, as illustrated by your admitted use of ad hominem attacks. Enrage your opponent so that they are less likely to post clear, reasoned responses? I am afraid I find such behavior despicable, in the worst meaning of the word. Such behavior is more fitting a tall, thin man dressed entirely in black and twirling a wiry handlebar mustache while cackling gleefully over some poor damsel tied to a train track.
You’re too modest.
Actually I’m not. But I do believe that if I act as if I were modest (and all that being modest would entail), I might actually be modest someday. Same goes for other things that I see as virtue. So some of what you see about me is just an act, but it is a rather honest con. I try to act as I want to be, even if I am not yet that, in hopes that action will lead to reality.
As for your extended commentary about Krispin… I am no psychologist, and glad of it. I like simple things, such as quantum mechanics, far more than the lovecraftian complexity of your relationship with him. I would, however, say it is unhealthy in the extreme. Yes, Krispin would do quite well to ignore you (and I am afraid you cannot ask him to pay attention when you are making real arguments if you are so willing to employ underhanded tactics; with the latter you have sacrificed trust that the former can be forthcoming), but you would do quite well to cease the behavior. Morality and ethics aside, if nothing else it is impolite and lacking in tact.
