I already said that this passage was not my cite for Jesus being a Communist. I was only responding to a specific request for a cite that Jesus ordered Christians to pay their taxes.
Well none of that has any relevance to whether Jesus advocated Communism so who cares?
Yeah, right. It was “voluntary.” Just ask Ananinas and Sapphira how voluntary it was.
I didn’t say Jesus advocated Socialism, I said he endorsed Communism. Those are two different things. Communism has no government.
Nitpick: Only small-c communism. The capitalized word refers to the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist orthodoxy. Noam Chomsky is a communist. Fidel Castro is a Communist.
Well, you said this: “Taxing people does not enforce any behavior other than the paying of taxes. . .” So I was simply illustrating your error.
I’m sorry, did I miss the part in the Bible where the Apostles went out and found this couple and forced them to give money to them? How I read it is that these two folks promised to sell their property and give it all to the church. When they kept part of the proceeds (and thus broke their promise), they were killed. These folks entered into a voluntary contract and then broke it, essentially.
So you agree that those who try to use Jesus to support socialism are misusing the Bible?
It wasn’t an error. I was still right. Attempts to encourage or discourage specific behaviors through taxes are still not enforcing behavior, so I was not wrong and I have not been corrected.
If you can’t break a contract, it’s not voluntary.
It depends on what they’re specifically trying to support. Jesus was no capitalist, that’s for sure.
I would also point out that Christians who try to weasel Jesus’ commands by saying “well, he wasn’t talking about the state…” are being disingenunious in that they rarely, if ever, follow those commands (the economic ones) in their private lives either.
OK. Sorry. Taxes can influence a behavior but not enforce it. A minor difference in my book.
That’s pretty ridiculous. I have a contract to pay my mortgage every month. If I want to break it, I’ll pay a pretty heavy penalty. That’s not to say that I didn’t enter into the contract voluntarily.
Ananinas and Saphira entered into a voluntary contract and then suffered a pretty heavy penalty when they broke it. If they would not have agreed to give all their money to the church and then not done so, the Apostles wouldn’t have bothered them at all.
Agreed.
Let’s see a cite for that, since recent research indicates that people who are churchgoers give a lot more money to charity than people who are not:
"The book’s basic findings are that conservatives who practice religion, live in traditional nuclear families and reject the notion that the government should engage in income redistribution are the most generous Americans, by any measure.
Conversely, secular liberals who believe fervently in government entitlement programs give far less to charity. They want everyone’s tax dollars to support charitable causes and are reluctant to write checks to those causes, even when governments don’t provide them with enough money."
Actually, no. He just says that it is OK (not against God’s will) to pay taxes, not that one must pay taxes. What he appears to be getting at is emphasizing, once again, the difference between the kingdom of heaven and kingdom(s) of earth. IOW, it’s OK to give Caesar something that belongs to him, but don’t give Caesar something that belongs to God.
As far as your chastizing Liberal, he’s always been consistent in advocating helping the poor.
And that’s why I said it your original statement was true, to a point. These were voluntary associations, not governments as we know them today. In fact, these communities generally existed outside the civil governments of their day.
However, even if those early communities did live that way, I don’t see that proves anything one way or the other about whether Jesus told people to live that way. He may have said give all your money to the poor, but he didn’t say give it all to your community leaders so that they could give it to the poor.
Sorry, no double standards allowed. Pick one:
Police and CEOs are judged according to what they actually do.
Police are judged according to your theory. Capitalism is judged according to the theories of Adam Smith and Ludwig von Mises.
Get back to me when you decide.
Capitalism is also judged according to the theories of Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky. And others.
He said it wasn’t ok to NOT pay your taxes.
I didn’t chastize Liberal.
“Voluntary” associations enforced on penalty of death.
Those communities were (according to Acts) started by the disciples themselves according to the priniciples of Jesus as they understood them.
1.) What’s the difference
2.) It is not necessary to advocate a state intercessory in order to advocate communism. True communism has no state.
3.) According to Acts 5, if you DON’T turn over all your cash to your community leaders (ie. the Church) God will kill you.
It’s all theory and all judgements are my own.
The percentage of obesity is highest in America compared to the rest of the world. I think this is the most damning evidence that the health of the American lifestyle lags behind that of other countries.
(This site shows a plot taken from the OECD factbook of 2007: Swivel.com is for sale)
You’re correct that Europeans consume more alcohol per capita. (cite: http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/AlcoholFactsAndFiction.html.)
However, if anything, alcohol consumption is good for you as long as it’s on a moderate level. Most of the Europeans I have known drink in moderation. (Great Britain and Ireland being the exception ;).) Alcoholism is of course bad for you, but I couldn’t find any good cites on alcoholism by country. All I could find was drug addiction by country, where America has a higher rate than European countries (cite: Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos)
You’re also correct that Europeans smoke more than the US: http://encarta.msn.com/media_701500668/Prevalence_of_Smoking_by_Country_in_the_World.html
(The US isn’t on the list, which I assume means they have < 25% smokers.)
On the other hand, the Europeans I have known tend to be very good about maintaining their health through natural remedies including vitamins and supplements. I remember walking into a drugstore in Germany and being shocked by the hundreds and hundreds of supplements and remedies that you could buy there, each tailored to specific populations or conditions. There’s also a government organization in Germany (German Commission E) that studies the clinical effectiveness of herbal/natural remedies.
Also, Europeans eat better. Again Ireland and UK are not good examples of this, but in Italy for example, there is a greater amount of fruits and vegetables in the diet than in America. Aside from gelato, there isn’t the prevalence of sugary and/or salty snacks in Europe that there is in the US. Mealtimes (with colleagues for lunch and with family for dinner) seem to be more important than snacking, which may play a role. The statements describe my experience in Germany and France.
I realize the last two issues (health maintenance and better diet) are harder to cite than smoking and drinking and so these are my observations based on my personal experience. I would argue, though, that (on average) health maintenance and better diet are far more important in determining how healthy a nation is than the rate of smoking. (I’m leaving drinking out because I think the health benefits/detriments could be more controversial.)
Anyway, I see the conversation of this debate has moved on to different themes, so I’ll just post this and get back to work. 
Those numbers are skewed because they count money put into collection plates as "charitable,’ and because it doesn’t count other forms of giving (like volunteer work).
It’s also not ameasure of wjether people follow Jesus’ teachings. Jesus said give EVERYTHING you own to the poor. Jesus said to go around with nothing but the shirt on your back and count on God to provide. Jesus said rich people can’t go to Heaven. Most Christians aren’t willing to submit to the kind of asceticism that Jesus commanded. They give whatever makes thm feel virtuous without feeling too uncomfortable. Jesus despised that kind of shallow piety.
What do nuclear familes have to do with following the teachings of Jesus? Jesus said you’re supposed to HATE your families, refused to speak to his own mother and advocated that his disciples abandon their own families. He was no family values proponent.
How are they quantifying “generosity?” By how money money they give to churches? That sounds like kind of a rigged metric to me. Also, it’s irrelevant to my point. Jesus didn’t say “give more than atheists.” he said give EVERYTHING.
No, they give less to Churches. Churches are not charity. And like I said before, this is a metric which does not measure non-monetary giving so it’s basically tendentious and useless. More importantly, it’s irrelevant to my point. I did not say that “secular liberals” followed the teachings of Jesus, so why bring them up?
Oh, and most political liberals in the US are Christians. Just FYI.
Ah, Dio, do you persist in spouting off about stuff with absolutely no factual basis? First your assertion that there is absolutely no regulation of U.S. health care, then your assertion that taxes do not “enforce” behavior, and now your assertions about charitable giving.
From here: “He writes that religious people are more likely than the nonreligious to volunteer for secular charitable activities, give blood, and return money when they are accidentally given too much change” and “Mr. Brooks says the data show that religious people, on average, give 54 percent more per year than secular people to human-welfare charities. Some of those charities may be religiously affiliated, but their work is focused on charity and not religion, he says.”
From here: “A religious person is 57% more likely than a secularist to help a homeless person” and “There is a huge ‘charity gap’ that follows religion: On average, religious people are far more generous than secularists with their time and money. This is not just because of giving to churches—religious people are more generous than secularists towards explicitly non-religious charities as well. They are also more generous in informal ways, such as giving money to family members, and behaving honestly.”
What the hell is a “secularist?” And how did we go from talking about Christians to talking about all religious people?
Never mind, I don’t buy the metrics being used and I think the conclusions are self-seving nonsense but notwithstanding any of that, it’s still irrelevant to my point. You seem to be caught up in a different debate than I am. I didn’t say that “secualrists” give more to charity than “religious” people. I said that most Christians don’t really follow the teachings of Jesus and they don’t. They follow a kind of Jesus lite. They don’t really follow the hard stuff.
Since the majority of religious folks in the U.S. are Christian, it stands to reason that we are mainly dealing with Christians in this research. But nevermind what it concludes. Since you disagree with it, it can’t be right, huh?
It’s more that it’s irrelevant. I’m sure I could debunk it if I cared to, but since I don’t care to – and since it does not affect my argument either way – I’m not going to waste my time on it.
Nope. Some people may interpret it that way, but it needn’t be interpreted thusly and if we look at the actual text, it doesn’t support that interpretation except by a stretch:
The direct question is: Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, meaning is it against God’s law to give tribute to Caesar. (Tribute, btw, is not the same as taxes.) It was a trick question, and he answered it in a suitably vague way. If this belongs to Caesar, give it to him, but be sure you give God that which belongs to God (who doesn’t give a fig about money anyway).
You questioned whether or not he was acting as a Christian. Call it what you like.
So what? They voluntarily agreed to be Baptized. But who says the disciples were interpreting Jesus’ words correctly? The Gospels themselves are filled with examples of Jesus telling his disciples that they didn’t understand what he was saying, and that was while he was still walking among them. There is no instance in the Gospels where Jesus tells his followers to form such communities and certainly not to kill people who got out of line. That tells me right there that they misinterpreted Jesus’ message.
Depends on what those community leaders actually do. Would you always trust “community leaders” of the religious sort to handle your money appropriately?
Exactly. Which is why Jesus’ words can’t be interpreted as saying “pay your taxes” if he is, in fact, advocating communism.
So? Jesus never said that.
And let me just add… That even if we were to interpret that passage as saying “God commands you to pay your taxes”, there is nothing in there that says what the taxes must be used to pay for. And people in this thread, even Liberal, aren’t advocating that citizens become tax resisters. We’re just arguing about what those tax dollars should be used for.
To be fair to Dio, that passage does not have the disciples kill Annanais and his wife, but God striking them dead. But their deaths are due to the fact they they were trying to deceive the disciples (and God) rather than the fact that they did not turn over everything to the disciples. It certainly does not support Dio’s claim that this passage shows the disciples went out and forced people to submit so socialism on the pain of death.
According to this, Gupta had no excuse for not getting the facts right.