And no amount of repeating gobear’s quote is going to make it mean what you’ve said it does. I’m still waiting for the detailed parsing of gobear’s comment showing how it is to the effect that the central tenet of Christianity is genocide of unbelievers.
Leander in your post #91 above you list a number of gobear’s questions and comments. You appear to think that you are holding them up for ridicule or as examples of gobear being obnoxious. To me, they all seem like sensible questions and comments, to which I have never seen anything resembling an intelligent or satisfactory response from any Christian. You’ll have to do better before you even begin to make a dent on gobear, I’m afraid.
Revtim:
I can see your point; three hours of suffering (plus all the scourging and humiliation) for the option of eternal salvation for all humans. Sounds like a good deal.
You do realize that ignores ‘who took upon himself the sins of the world’, yes? That means a lot more than that we can watch porn and still get to heaven.
I understand why you’re here. I really have some problems with your early religious education, as I do with my own.
I do have one serious disagreement with your post.
But would you endure it if you did not have to only for the benefit of others?
iampunha:
Post Vatican II, up to sixth grade.
Venial sins were washed away by repentance and confession; penance was not even required (so why did I have to say all those 'Hail, Mary’s?)
Mortal sins, even if confessed and repented (and pennance was not optional here), left a stain on the soul that required doing time in Purgatory. Last time the religion of my childhood made sense to me.
I really miss confession.
gobear & homebrew:
Are you really missing that the point is not the ‘killing’ but the willing sacrifice of oneself for others?
And finally, to PunditLisa:
What did you expect in a Pit post titled, ‘Yes Mom, Jesus went through enormous pain. But it was 21 centuries ago’?
Sorry, that should be #71
I consider ‘who took upon himself the sins of the world’ as part of ‘eternal salvation for all humans’.
Can’t say. Would you?
I didn’t attack Christians–I attacked an idea, and yes, I mocked it. But when you say I attacked Christians, you lie. Typical. I have nothing against Christians as long as they leave me alone, but I have many problems with the ideas they espouse. I have nothing against people who believe in John Edward,but I have many problems with cold reading. If you can’t take argument, why the fuck are you in the Pit?
Hey, dumbshit, medieval history major here. For my senior thesis, I translated from Latin three sermons by Alan of Lille commenting on the lamentable tide of secular education, which I combined with a 100-page paper on the transformation of education in 12th-century France. Go patronize somebody else, buster. I’ve read the bleedin’ Sic et Non, so if you want to get into Abelard’s use of dialectic in a rapprochement between Nominalism and Realism as a forerunner to the later Thomist Scholasticism that attempted to integrate Aristotelian philosphy with Christian doctrine, bring it on, beyotch!
St. Anselm’s ontological argument for God’s existence has been used many times, mostly by Libertarian, and it has handily been refuted. If this were GD, I’d happily lay the scholarly smackdown on you, complete with citations. However, in this forum I merely remind you that you cited Hume as a defense of faith, showing that you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. It’s not enough to Google sources, you need to have read them, too.
A new book you might find informative is Aristotle’s Children, by Richard Rubinstein, which discusses how medieval scholars used the rediscovery of Aristotle’s works to kickstart the Scholasticists attempt to reconcile faith and reason.
I’m still waiting for argument instead of invective from Leander. C’mon, Hoc Gobearum reprehendo! You can say it.
By Pitting her.
I rest my case. 
Crap, that should have been Sic Gobearum reprehendo. Me and my rusty Latin.
“Hail Marys”, just FTR. Plural of “Hail Mary”
My information sessions were roughly from 1985 to … 1999? That last year wasn’t about rules so much as … music? It’s hard to describe because year 3 was rules rules rules, with a heaping teaspoon of definitions added for good measure. Senior year’s class was called Sacred Music, but then we also read Salinger, so I’m not sure.
I suspect it’s a matter of perspective. If I squint I can almost see it, but then I still don’t entirely buy the best Christian answer I’ve seen to “Why couldn’t God have more than one son?”
The answer boiled down basically to “Because it’s God’s love for us, and that love doesn’t change”. It’s a similar concept (but with less theological importance, IMO) to “Can God make a stone He can’t lift?” I find the imposed limit of one son (really, the imposed limit of anything) on a being Whose main claim to fame is His omnipotence to be more than slightly dissonant regardless of W/who’s ordering the limit.
Upon preview, gobear is making me all hot and sweaty talking about medieval education like that…non habito in fornice, sed volo te “cogitere”
Rev:
[quote oder changed]
I love to think I would, wouldn’t you? Of course we ALL would if we were certain; but we can’t be, because we are human, and therefore not omniscent. To be born of flesh is to exist in linear time and so not be omniscient and therefore to doubt and to fear. All born of flesh would feel not just the pain and humiliation but the doubt and the fear, which makes the sacrifice.
I’m pretty certain that is wrong; the point is not only the selfless sacrifice, but the acceptance of responsibility and (for want of a better phrase) all the emotional weight of all sin of all humankind.
I am going to do something I always hated in religious classes; I am going to use an analogy. I am going to be pretty general, to minimize any tendency to pick at the details (because that is what I do, pick at the details).
You are the parent of a teen-ager. You did your best to teach this child morals, ethics, and manners. Your child does something horribly and obviously wrong. What you feel, [when you are past the phase of denial] is the weight of the sins of your child.
Do you see what I mean?
I do, but I’d very quickly like to point out to you that not all parents would react as your analogous one did. Some, for example, would feel no guilt, no horror, nothing. This sometimes requires that the parent(s) be people of suspect character, which is certainly the case with the two I’m thinking of as running contrary to your analogy.
WTF? What, pray tell, did I say it meant? Where the Hell did you get “genocide of unbelievers”?
I called it agressive, bigoted, and “an attempt to discredit your opposition by ridiculously exagerating their position”. I stand by that. I tried to give him a bit of an out by assuming “people” meant “jesus” rather than what it sounded like (more than one martyr), but his defense of his statement is such a mess of dissembling and random biblical verses that I’m not sure even he knows what the Hell he was getting at by using that word. He came close to a coherent defense with: “Moreoever, if we are to believe that Jesus died for our sins, then we must agree that viewing porn, which is generally considered to be at least mildly sinful, must be one of the sins that He died for.”, but because he admits that porn is only mildly sinful, he’s admitting he exagerated… which is what I accused him of in the first place.
I compared it to the debating tactics of Anne Coulter, who does this type of exageration all the time. I went on to say it implied martyrs would be required to save us from Jenna Jameson. That was obviously satirical. Lastly, in the post you responded to, I called him on the dissembling over the word “people”. How many Jesuses is he talking about, anyway?
Now, princhester, where the fuck did you get “genocide of unbelievers” from all that? Is it possible you are just trying to mischarachterize my position by exagerating it into the realm of absurdity? That would be amusing, as fighting that type of dishonest tactic is why I posted in this thread to begin with.
You don’t happen to know where to find this outside of the SDMB, do you? The only place I’ve ever seen it referenced is in Libertarian’s posts. I’m starting to wonder if it’s an urban legend that this is an urban legend.
In the midst of passionate religious debates, you bring up mis-placed apostraphes? You’re not drinking yet, are you?
I am not going to complicate this discussion with Salinger; I am tempted, but it is getting late.
Keep this in mind; one god, with three manifestations, not a separate entity on the cross.
I think he is holding any others in reserve until we implement the teachings of the first.
I don’t mean to be snarky, but i am so tired, but still interested.
I realize that I have been trying to make two different points here.
It is not the requirement of the sacrifice, but the sacrifice itself that matters, and that it is not just the selfless sacrifice but the acceptance of it that matters. But I was responding to two very different posts.
Mu. To be more specific, I do not drink.
To you, perhaps. To someone trying to understand it all, the reason is very important.
[finally manages to stop laughing]
And this is the problem with analogies …
Yes, my analogy does require that we not view god as of suspect character.
[please dont let gobear reply to this post, please …]
Of course, I could be wrong about this interpretation; it would be a difficult concept for a child to understand, and I left in the church when I was very young.
That’s okay, your Latin is almost as bad as your memory.
-
If I ridicule gays, am I not attacking them? How about if I just mock the “idea” of gay marriage…is that okay with you?
-
If, as you say, you are so edumacated in Abelard and Anselm, then why do you continue to talk of Atonement with such ignorance. Do you know the difference between the remedial and sacrificial? Do you understand the Socian influence? (Have you read Cur Deus Homo?)
You do realize that Jesus is not “an innocent person”; He is the son of God, both man and God. (Yes, it is possible, if you believe in the Trinity.) He gave his life to save all mankind (if you believe in “unlimited atonement”). It was, as others have pointed out, a sacrifice, not a killing. God sacrificed part of Himself to save all. Perhaps, as some believe, He was sent to fulfill some divine justice. Perhaps He was here as a moral influence as well as a reconciliation; perhaps He was here to create a new covenant with God.
There are many theories, but to simply say that God sent an innocent person to be killed is ridiculous, and shows no understanding of Scripture or philisophical discourse.
- I never used Hume as a defense of faith; in fact, I proposed you read a bit more Hume to make your case. Sadly, you cannot or would not.
Don’t have much of a dog in this fight (hugs to militant vegitarian agnostic mum), but this little snippet of post has secured my undying admiration of gobear forever.
I want to frame it and hang it somewhere prominant, with the beyotch part gold embossed.
Is it possible that you are revising desperately? Are you backing away from your original comment like the steaming pile of dung that it was? Methinks yes.
Your original comment, emphasis added, was;
Coulter’s comment quite clearly states that the tenets of Islam are to kill everyone non-muslim ie that it is a religion that espouses genocide for unbelievers. You did not merely say that gobear’s comment was aggressive and bigoted. You said it was as aggressive and bigoted as a comment that a particular religion called for genocide. It wasn’t.
You now say that you were merely comparing gobear’s allegedly aggressive debating tactics to those of Coulter. That may be what you are saying now, but that’s not what you said originally.
Did you fail logic? If I said earthquakes cause as much damage as hurricanes, would you accuse me of claiming that earthquakes cause high winds?
Because two arguments are equally agressive and bigoted does not meant that they are agressive and bigotted in the same way, or even for the same reasons. It just doesn’t follow. Yes, Coulter clearly states that the tenets of Islam include killing people who don’t smell. No, gobear is not saying that the tenets of Christianity include killing people who don’t smell. What gobear did say, however, is that the tenets of Christianity require somebody to die to atone for the sin of sleeping in on Sunday. Whether they are talking about genocide or martyrdom, both agressively and malicioulsy mischaracterize an entire religion out of bigotry.