Badchad ignores me. Therefore, this response is for the benefit of all those who are not he.
I think Poly understands it just fine. What you don’t understand is your own position, so let me explain it to you.
You think of it this way… There was this guy named Jesus who claimed to be a mediator between God and man. Not only that, he claimed to be the ONLY mediator. He plays linebacker for God. You want to get to God, you gotta go through Jesus.
It is no wonder you do not understand what Poly is saying to you.
Poly thinks of it in quite a different way. Something like this… God manifested Himself in the person of this guy named Jesus. They are one and the same. God equals Jesus. Jesus equals God. God is Jesus. Jesus is God. When I choose one, I choose the other because one is not different from the other. There is no mediation. There is no linebacker.
Like Vorlon, you do not understand that there is a difference between rejecting a description of Christ and rejecting Christ. I reject most descriptions that I hear of Him.
If a bishop tells me that Christ is the one Who condemns gays, then I do not reject Christ; I reject the bishop’s description of Christ — because the bishop is a liar.
If a preacher tells me that Christ is the guardian of the gates of Hell, waiting to spring up and shout, “Boo!” when sinners pass by, then I do not reject Christ; I reject the preacher’s description of Christ — because the preacher is a liar.
And if you describe Christ as a linebacker Who blocks for God…
** Read more carefully; I’ve already answered that question. I’ll answer again:
Justice requires acting in accordance with a principle. Lower laws may be set aside in favor of higher laws while preserving justice, but by definition there are no higher standards than the highest. It cannot be set aside by any just being.
Acting in accordance with the law is not merciful, although the law itself may be, but in in reference to itself (how could a law provide compassionate exception from itself?).
Mercy would require that the highest standard be set aside, because acting in accordance with a law that mandates a mode of behavior is not merciful. If you rigidly adhere to the law, it’s not mercy, even if the law requires compassion and kindness.
I’m not going to pretend this is a respectable and worthy argument.
** Intellectual integrity requires that we not reject arguments merely because we don’t like their conclusions. The argument is sound; you just don’t agree with its premises (and conclusion), but your dislike doesn’t make it unsound.
And this dichotomy exists in the usage of the concepts of justice and mercy. You can try to redefine the concepts so that they give results you’d like better – history has shown us that you have no problem with giving words whatever meaning you like.
** Straw man. Those religions aren’t incompatible with Christianity because they have different names for their major deities – they’re incompatible because their teachings contradict the teachings of Christianity. Christianity doesn’t change merely because its teachings are communicated in a different language. It’s the concepts that a religion teaches that define it, and neither Hinduism’s nor Astratu’s doctrine is compatible with Christianity.
It’s a standard Christian claim, one of its most common ideas, in fact. Of course, you’re not a Christian.
** Gee, so that’s the straight and narrow path that Christ mentioned. Oh yeah, it’s difficult to follow that teaching – as long as you like the idea of Love (such a well-defined concept, BTW), you’re in like Flynn.
:rolleyes: Someone, somewhere, save me from these amateur theologians…
I’d use the rolling eyes smilie again, but I don’t want to dilute its meaning through overuse. This is just pathetic, Lib.
** No, that is how it’s defined. ‘Clemency’ is often given as part of mercy’s definition – now, do you know what ‘clemency’ means?
If you act in rigid accordance with a law, you can’t show vindictiveness or compassion, only that of the law itself. The law that describes what is ‘Right’ cannot be set aside justly, while mercy requires that laws be set aside.
And how do we determine what is good so that we can determine whether someone loves? Ah – but you already have a definition for love, and you’re asserting that is what facilitates goodness.
No, you’ve answered (in various ways) some sort of question that you made up.
The question (again) was “What if the standard of justice is mercy?”. And yet your “answer” depends, in part, on setting aside mercy, as in “Mercy would require that the highest standard be set aside”.
I must say that setting aside the very standard itself in order to evaluate the standard is just… bizarre.
And yet you press on.
And yet you do it all the same. Because you would not accept these two premises — 1. If God exists, then He exists necessarily and 2. It is possible that God exists — you rejected Tisthammer’s argument. Somehow, your “intellectual integrity” allows you to reject premises but does not allow others to do so.
When you reject a premise, you call it a refutation. When another man rejects a premise, you call it rejecting an argument because he doesn’t like its conclusion. That sort of equivocation is what led the board’s best debator, Spiritus Mundi, to abandon debate with you.
Let me explain to you what “sound” and “unsound” mean here. An argument is sound if it is both valid AND all its premises are true. Your argument is merely valid, but not sound. I cannot accept a premise, like yours, that is self-contradictory. If mercy is the standard, you cannot set mercy aside in order to evaluate the standard.
Redefine? You are the one who gave the wrong definition of “mercy”.
To refresh your memory, you said that “mercy is defined as an exception to a rule”. I showed you where no such definition of mercy exists, and I asked you where you found it. You then hemmed and hawed about how “related words” imply your redefinition.
I don’t think you know what a straw man is any more than you know what Hinduism is. The whole purpose of Hindu bhakti is to receive darshan from the majestic Gods and thereby alter the flow of pranas until you achieve a state of familiarity and love between the worshipper and the Deity.
The Hindu moral journey is one of discovering love. See Love Sex and Gender in the World Religions, ISBN 1-85168-223-6: “Love is a primary way of understanding the religious life in Hinduism. The cultivation of love is valued as a transformative religious practice, moving human beings out of the predictability of dharma and the laws of karma and into dynamic relationship. The religious practitioner becomes bhakta or devotee, and ultimate reality is experienced as profoundly personal. Human modes of loving become both mirror and an emotional training ground for Divine-human love and provide a language to articulate the intensely personal relationship developing between devotee and Divine-parental love, friendship, the loyal and respectful love of servant for master, and the passionate union of lover and beloved.”
Luckily, your opinion is worthless in that regard.
And what is that sort of rhetorical arm-flailing supposed to signify?
Well, neener neener.
The reason you got hit in the head a lot when you played dodge ball as a kid is that you don’t dodge very well. One more time… When the law is mercy, being merciful is not setting the law aside — it is, in fact, enforcing it.
What is good is what is valued by God. But that drives you crazy, right?
** That’s the point. How can you evaluate the highest possible standard?
As always, your philosophical sophistication is at about the level I’ve come to expect from you, Lib.
** Those premises can be broken down into more basic elements – you’re not using the word “god” to reference a defintion you’re presenting, you’re taking an established concept and asserting that it includes a certain concept.
Some premises are unjustifiable, Lib, and there can be valid and invalid reasons for rejecting a premise.
** The premises aren’t self-contradictory – they illustrate a contradiction inherent in the idea of being both perfectly just and perfectly merciful. Because of the nature of mercy, mercy cannot be an ultimate standard, because that would require that all lesser principles be set aside for a higher one while there is no higher one.
In discussions of divine mercy, the debators usually implicitly assume that the highest standard is Goodness, and that mercy involves setting aside principles that lead to something other than Goodness. It follows from this that God cannot deviate from Goodness, even if it required an infliction of suffering and pain, and that such an infliction would be utterly right. Being “merciful” (not inflicting suffering and pain) would require setting the principle that the infliction of suffering and pain should be avoided over the principle of Goodness, which contradicts the idea that Goodness is the highest principle. In other words, setting aside the highest principle is necessarily unjust, which means that applying mercy to the highest principle is unjust.
** No, I didn’t. Would you like to begin comparing situations in which the term ‘mercy’ would be considered appropriate?
** Clemency is an exception to a rule – specifically, it’s setting aside a legal penalty to reduce or eliminate someone’s punishment.
It’s not a redefinition – it’s the core of what the concept means. Did you even think about the meanings of the definitions presented? Merely feeling compassion for someone isn’t mercy, and neither is showing compassion. That’s “being compassionate”.
Hinduism makes fundamentally different assumptions about the nature of Divinity, time, souls, right and wrong, justice, mercy, and virtually every other important concept in Christianity.
** But what’s the highest law? You continually fail to understand this idea – to be merciful, you must set aside one law in favor of a higher one. Mercy cannot be applied to the highest law, because there’s nothing to set it aside for. Your example contains an inherent contradiction.
But that’s an empirical definition that can’t be empirically evaluated. As such, it’s useless. Now, if you had a well-defined meaning for “good”, then saying that it was valued by God would be a meaningful assertion about the nature of God. If you could demonstrate what God valued, you could make a meaningful assertioni about the nature of good. Without either, you have no foundation on which to build a conclusion of any kind.
In re: the OP, the human mind has a hard time grasping infinity in one dimension, let alone two, and many of us who have experienced the depth of God’s mercy have a sad tendency to forget its wideness.
I don’t really think my statement can be abbreviated that way.
If I said that halablicheck was what tomogram valued, and tomogram was that which facilitated halablicheck, what conclusions could you draw from those statements?
Why on earth are you asking me? It’s YOUR argument: “Then that standard must be adhered to without fail.” — The Vorlon Ambassador’s Aide
How does yet another personal attack advance your case?
Bizarre. Please demonstrate what you mean by breaking these down into “more basic elements”:
G -> G
<>G
Let me guess. Your reasons, of course, are valid and mine are invalid, right?
What do you know about the nature of mercy? You have yet even to define it. And this business of establishing some imagined hierarchy of standards wherein mercy is on level 8 while justice is on level 9 thereby rendering them hopelessly at odds is just hogwash.
About justice, you said that “lower laws may be set aside in favor of higher laws while preserving justice, but by definition there are no higher standards than the highest.” And yet when it is posited that mercy itself might be the highest standard, you say that the exact same reasoning — it “would require that all lesser principles be set aside for a higher one while there is no higher one” — disqualifies mercy as a standard altogether.
Your whole argument is crazy and is based on your being some sort of supreme being: whatever premises you accept are valid, while those that you reject are invalid; mercy means whatever you please and changes from post to post; there are inviolate levels of standards assigned by you with the one you’ve selected being the highest; mercy cannot be the standard of justice because you have not said, “so mote it be”.
Now you’re back to mixing up ability and volition. God is not bounded by rules (or else He would not be God). He is not good because He has to be — He is good because He chooses to be. He is good because He loves goodness.
For whatever reason, you have unilaterally declared that God must inflict pain to be just. There is no logical reason to make that assumption. A suicide and a murder are not the same. If a man chooses to reject God’s love, then blaming God for the man’s free exercise of will is a blatant fallacy.
You did indeed. You are denying it on the same page that you did it. You wrote: “mercy is defined as an exception to a rule”. That is in fact NOT how mercy is defined.
What I would like is for you to answer the original question: what if the standard of justice is mercy? Do not dodge the question by saying that it cannot possibly be. As a libertarian, I get the most bizarre hypotheticals imaginable, and I do not avoid them by saying they won’t ever happen. Just answer the question.
I haven’t said anything about clemency. Substituting a synonym for one meaning of mercy doesn’t get you out of the pit you’re in.
Well, let’s be clear. It was I, and not you, who presented the definitions. I asked you where you got yours, and showed you where I got mine. And there are four of them. The core concept of the sort of mercy taught by Jesus is from the second definition: forgiveness. You will find several references to it in His teachings.
I can see why you wrote that without quoting the text I gave you, because what you say stands in direct contradiction to it. In both Hinduism and Christianity, Love is the key.
Not if the highest law is itself mercy.
No, yours does.
But this definition, “mercy is defined as an exception to a rule” is useful, right? […shaking head…]
Wow, this is the first time I’ve almost agreed with most things. My only issue is with Christ being the one to create evil. My son will lie to me, I’m sure, during the course of his life. I didn’t create the lie, I didn’t make him lie, but he will.
The God of the New Testament is the same as the God of the Old Testament. The Bible says that He never changes. He is just as merciful in the Old Testament as He is in the New Testament. Read Nehemiah 9 for a summary of how God mercifully forgave Israel, again and again, after they repeatedly sinned and turned their back on Him. The psalms often speak of God’s mercy poured out on sinners.
He is also just as wrath-filled in the New Testament as He is in the Old. He killed a husband and wife in the Book of Acts, simply because they told one lie. Jesus warned that He was to be feared because He has the power to cast the body and soul into hell. The apostle Paul said that he persuaded men to come to the Savior because he knew the “terror of the Lord.” Read the dreadful judgments of the New Testament’s Book of Revelation. That will put the “fear of God” in you, which incidentally is “the beginning of wisdom.”
Perhaps the most fearful display of His wrath is seen in the cross of Jesus Christ. His fury so came upon the Messiah that it seems God enshrouded the face of Jesus in darkness so that creation couldn’t gaze upon His unspeakable agony. Whether we like it or not, our God is a consuming fire of holiness (Hebrews 12:29). He isn’t going to change, so we had better …before the Day of Judgment. If we repent, God, in His mercy, will forgive us and grant us eternal life in heaven with Him.
Svt4Him, you’re free to follow your God in whatever way you think best. But I can only look on in befuddlement at a God who has to terrorize His followers into obedience. Maybe that’s not what it is and I’m sadly mistaken, but from all the postings by fundamentalists on this msg. board, that’s what it sounds like: a tyrannical bully who frightens people into following Him.
I don’t think you can distinguish between criticism and a personal attack. Actually, that would explain a lot about your posting habits on these boards.
** For example: God – the source of all things, a consciousness/intelligence beyond all comprehension, that which lies beyond this universe, the essence of Love, the essence of Goodness.
Those are just some of the basic concepts that seem to be inherent in your idea of God, and none of them necessarily need to be related.
In this particular case? Yes. Not always. My reasons aren’t valid because they’re mine – they’re mine because they’re valid. Your reasons aren’t invalid because they’re yours – they’re invalid because you ignore the needs of logic to choose that which delivers what you want to hear.
** I’ve already defined it – setting aside a rule to remain consistent with a higher-priority rule that leads to a reduction or elimination of suffering.
If a leader overrides the legal system and pardons someone convicted of a crime, that can be mercy. If a judge can freely choose a range of punishments for an offender, and chooses a lighter punishment for the offender’s sake, that can be mercy. Giving or withholding punishment according to a set of principles is not mercy.
The point is that an ethical or moral code that requires shows of “mercy” in certain situations requires justice, not mercy. Mercy would require setting aside that code to avoid suffering in situations denied by that code.
** Precisely. It’s like considering inconsistency to be the defining principle of someone’s behavior – if you’re always inconsistent, you’re consistently inconsistent, which is a paradox.
** :dubious:
** You can only reach that conclusion if you assume that God is bound by logic – and since your assumption requires that God not be bound by any rules, including logic, your conclusion is necessarily incorrect. If God wasn’t bound by rules, He could be bound by rules and still be God. He also wouldn’t be God. He also would never have been God, and always have been God, and hated goodness, and loved goodness, and been indifferent to goodness, and not existed, and existed…
** An example in its definition is “clemency”. Do you know what clemency means, Libertarian?
Mercy can loosely be considered to be “giving someone better than they deserve” out of compassion. If you give someone what they deserve, or less than they deserve, it’s not mercy.
** What would I see if I rode on a beam of light, Libertarian? What would happen if an immovable object met an irresistable force? What is the square of the largest possible prime number?
** Do you know anything about the theological and philosophical positions of the two faiths?
How can people deserve to be given more than they deserve?
Actually, it’s quite useful. It’s not mercy unless a standard is suspended. Therefore, acting in accordance with a principle that defines what people deserve is not mercy.
Wow, this is the first time I’ve almost agreed with most things.
Kind of funny huh. I’m as atheist as they come but I understand the fundamentalist perspective and though I don’t agree with it I find it has a few less personal contradictions than the liberal persuasion, Polycarp’s version in particular. I often wonder what folks like you think, as while I’m not exactly complementary to your belief system, I reckon it might sound that way compared to all those on these boards who judge you harshly for being to judgmental.
My only issue is with Christ being the one to create evil.
That one’s scriptural too.
Isaiah 45:7
I form the light and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the lord do all these things.
My son will lie to me, I’m sure, during the course of his life. I didn’t create the lie, I didn’t make him lie, but he will.
That is true but you weren’t all powerful and all knowing in your creation of your son. Allegedly it’s a different matter with god and as such he should bear more responsibility for the shortcomings of his creation.
*The God of the New Testament is the same as the God of the Old Testament. The Bible says that He never changes. He is just as merciful in the Old Testament as He is in the New Testament. Read Nehemiah 9 for a summary of how God mercifully forgave Israel, again and again, after they repeatedly sinned and turned their back on Him. The psalms often speak of God’s mercy poured out on sinners.
He is also just as wrath-filled in the New Testament as He is in the Old. He killed a husband and wife in the Book of Acts, simply because they told one lie. Jesus warned that He was to be feared because He has the power to cast the body and soul into hell. The apostle Paul said that he persuaded men to come to the Savior because he knew the “terror of the Lord.” Read the dreadful judgments of the New Testament’s Book of Revelation. That will put the “fear of God” in you, which incidentally is “the beginning of wisdom.”*
I agree more than I disagree. Shear numbers smited was more in the Old Testament, but the eternal suffering (which I would say is worse than simple death) part got heavily emphasized in the New Testament. As such I don’t think one could say Jesus was any less wrathful than his father, which as we know is stupid to say anyway because he and his father are one in the same, and even the watered down version of Christianity seems to be in agreement on this.
Svt4Him, you’re free to follow your God in whatever way you think best. But I can only look on in befuddlement at a God who has to terrorize His followers into obedience. Maybe that’s not what it is and I’m sadly mistaken, but from all the postings by fundamentalists on this msg. board, that’s what it sounds like: a tyrannical bully who frightens people into following Him.
If we define Christianity as those who follow the teachings of Jesus then I think you are kind of stuck with worshiping the above god, as according to the only recorded teachings of Jesus, he did all that stuff. Sure you can follow a god that doesn’t do the above stuff, but I don’t see why you would call it Christianity.
But what do I know, maybe all the scary stuff recorded in the bible was nothing more than transcriptional error.
But I would be pleased if you will justify why taking the stance you do is within the rules of practice here, and will undertake to answer you honestly and completely when you have done so.
I held up my part of the bargain. And you Polycarp?
Svt4Him, I’d like to discuss and debate our conflicting views on the nature of God, but I’d prefer to do it in a different thread. I feel that to do so here could come across as not respecting your views. Besides, in a new thread, we might gather some more interesting opinions.
Apparently, that is one and, like the others, contributes nothing to this debate.
Either way, Great Debates is not the place either to attack or criticize other posters. It would behoove you to attack and criticize arguments, not people.
Example of what? This business of constantly reminding you of what you’ve said is becoming tiresome. You said that “<>G” and “G->G” “can be broken down into more basic elements”.
How is “God – the source of all things, a consciousness/intelligence beyond all comprehension, that which lies beyond this universe, the essence of Love, the essence of Goodness” a more basic element than either of those?
My idea of God is simple: Supreme Being — or G.
What I want to hear is compelling argument, and I am coming to realize that I won’t get that from you.
So that is your latest incarnation of the original definition: “mercy is defined as an exception to a rule”. That puts us back where we started. Here are the definitions of mercy. Remember that I showed you these before. And I asked you then where you got yours. The answer, I suppose, is that you made it up.
Mercy need not set aside any “rule”. If you feed a child who is hungry, what rule are you breaking? What higher principle are you setting aside?
I’m sure that, as you say, they can be mercy. But it is a logical fallacy to affirm your consequent. Just because a squirrel is a rodent does not mean that all rodents are squirrels. A rodent can be a squirrel, but to define rodent as “squirrel” is misguided.
Back again to this unanswered point: if mercy is the rule, then how is exercising mercy setting aside the rule?
Then your argument rivals the most splendid Russian nesting dolls: it is a paradox inside a puzzle inside an enigma inside a mystery.
Like many of the points you raise, I don’t know what that one means. You apparently switched from deduction to induction, thereby falling into the trap of reasoning from the particular to the general.
It is not God Himself who is bounded by logic or its rules; rather, it is our perception of Him that is bounded by these. It isn’t that He cannot make a square circle; it is merely that we wouldn’t know how to perceive one.
Yes, I do. But you don’t know what definition means.
Here is what you’ve done: you’ve looked at the definitions I gave you for mercy and have selected a synonym which is the final part of one of them. You have then selected the definition of that synonym as the definition you will use for mercy. And you have done this for no reason other than that it lends some nominal support to the conclusion you have already reached.
Using your same technique, a person could argue that a hairy man is dangerous. Here are the definitions of hairy. One of them gives a synonym of “hazardous”. And one of the definitions of hazardous is danger. Therefore, by your logic, a hairy man is dangerous.
Loosely? If your argument becomes any more “loose”, it will become a tautology and be proved by every statement that is possible. Why don’t you just claim to be saying that A is A and get it over with. It would be a great mercy to us all.
It should be noted that that was your answer to this: “What I would like is for you to answer the original question: what if the standard of justice is mercy? Do not dodge the question by saying that it cannot possibly be.” When you play dodge ball, the idea is to avoid getting hit.
So far, between the two of us, I alone have provided citations about them. Maybe the question you raise is one of those rhetorical ones.
It’s your private, personal definition. Not mine. Is caring for a sick child not merciful? How does the child not deserve the care you give? And why would he not deserve everything you can possibly give?
God gives no less than everything that is His to anyone who will accept it. What could be more merciful or more just?
Again, when you stop to feed a hungry child, what higher standard have you suspended?
** That wasn’t a rhetorical question – and your response indicates that you don’t actually understand what they are.
Your arguments are consistently incomplete, illogical, and trivial.
** No, I said that your definition of God can be broken down.
Your problem, Lib, is that you have no insight. You have no idea of why you think and believe the things you do – and this causes you to fall into error almost constantly.
Each one of those things is a basic assertion about God.
And what’s the “Supreme Being”? How does that related to your claim that God is Love?
** If you follow a code of behavior that mandates your feeding the hungry child, you’re breaking no rule – but you’re also not being merciful. Your behavior is not motivated by feelings of compassion.
Asked and answered. ‘Mercy’ involves suspending a rule that govens your behavior to act according to a principle that treats people “better than they deserve”. If mercy is the highest principle, then to exercise it, mercy must be set aside.
To you, I’m sure this is incomprehensible.
No kidding.
** You have no idea of what it means to say that something isn’t bound by logic, do you?
No, I can tell my your statements that you don’t. Without logic, there is no distinction between true and false – God must possess all properties and none.
** No, I’ve pointed out the meaning of one of the synonyms used in the definition, primarily because you are unable to understand the definition itself.
If it’s what the child deserves, it’s duty and not mercy. And how should I know what a sick child deserves?
Generally, none, which is why it’s not merciful.
This is going nowhere – I suggest you begin posting to the thread specially made for this topic and stop hijacking this one.
