BrandonMustang wrote:"Why do I believe the Mosaic Law is a good standard?" or "Why do I believe that 'all sins have equal consequences' is a good standard?"
Either one will do, although it seems to me like you're just stalling here.
Well, I have tried pretty hard to figure out my beliefs and set apart from what I have been taught when neccessary like my beliefs on the government's role in abortion. Of course I would choose theft. Although all sin carries the same sentence (really just sin in general in any amount) I am still going to weigh the physical consequences.
So you admit that your ethical system requires the addition of
materialist ethics in order to make practical decisions? Why do you not acknowledge the superiority of materialist ethics systems then, since you obviously acknowledge that they are more useful than your religious ethics system?
When I said all sin was equal in the sight of God I should have said no sin is acceptable in the sight of God. You are just as separated from God by a theft as you are by a murder because both are sin.
So you acknowledge that such an ethics system is useless in any practical sense, hence requiring the addition of materialist ethics in order to function, yet you claim that God himself uses this useless system? Doesn't that mean that God himself employs an oversimplistic and useless system?
I will admit that comparing the death penalty of those sins mentioned in the Mosaic Law to the wages of sin was a bad comparison on my part. Ripp_N_Wipe really summed up the sin=death stuff on the other thread pretty well.
But neither of you have explained why this system is not worthless, since it appears to be
utterly worthless. Indeed, your method of dealing with my ethical dilemma was to simply call upon materialist ethics in order to make the decision: a tacit admission of inferiority.
The Mosaic Law does not mention everyone deserving death. That is correct. However, it is talked about other places in the Bible and the Mosaic Law is but one part of the law. I'll agree that this is a harsh set of laws. No doubt about it. Sin is a really big deal, however. In that time in that group the laws were non-negotiable and this was the only law. This was the government. There was an accountability factor as well. I will try to find a citation to send you but the original text implies accountability issues rather often when addressing sin. In fact, the specific example I remember being used was the unwillful child. I wish I could read the original text in the original language because there is more than one word for just about every sin. These sins were listed as sins knowingly commited so a homosexual that knew the law and the penalty for breaking the law but still commited the act (unless under extenuating circumstances to be determined by judge) had no appeal. I will agree that this is still extremely harsh compared to what we have today but this was a nation of God and they were not bound to stay there just like we are not bound to stay in our respective countries. I should also add that God never told the Israelites to try other nations under these laws and dole out punishments accordingly. As an unbeliever, you are not expected to follow God's law. Unbelievers face eternal separation from God, but that is a choice left to them.
You don't really think that this line of reasoning constitutes a defense of their ethics, do you? Saying that people were able to flee Israeli oppression or avoid it by living elsewhere is no excuse. Do you realize that the same could have been said of most of the world's oppressive regimes throughout history?
Now, as far as leaving the Lord's nation is concerned, I think the heart and actions of the person determine whether or not they have committed blasphemy and that is between them and the Lord. I have some homosexual friends and acquaintances that profess a Christian faith and some I believe to be legitimate and some I do not. I will fight the urge to go in that direction for the time being, however.
You still haven't explained why homosexuals are singled out by Mosaic Law if it is not indeed hateful toward certain targeted groups.
I dunno why that reply came out sounding that way. Those groups exclude a majority that either accepts it as something they will not ever understand (which would drive me crazy) and another group (even worse) that pick and choose which parts of the Bible they believe or hold as literal law (like the Mosaic law was just an illustration of how bad those sins are). I tend to discredit both of those groups as people who refuse to put a little thought into their own beliefs and I guess I just left them out. Sadly, I think they make up a majority of the church nowadays.
OK, so you acknowledge that plenty of Christians accept that Mosaic Law was either wrong or incorrectly portrayed in the Bible. So we're right back to our original point, aren't we? Only now, we have three groups, with three excuses:
1) "Mosaic Law was wrong, and I have no explanation."
2) "Mosaic Law was wrong, but the Bible was probably not being literally correct when it described these laws."
3) (you) "Mosaic Law was right, because God said so, and I will dance around specific examples of its evil nature with red-herrings, so I will never address the point about how a supposedly moral God could dictate such evil laws."
I don't see where you get off attacking groups #1 and #2 for their bad attitude. From where I sit, both of them have a better attitude than yours. You use the "everyone deserves death anyway" gambit even though you admit that Mosaic Law never said any such thing. You use the "victims of oppression were able to flee" red-herring as if this makes the oppression OK. It's becoming rather clear that you have no real answer for this line of criticism, whether you admit it or not.
Why is it inexcusable after the coming of Jesus? Did Jesus ever tell anyone that it was evil to follow the old Mosaic Law?
It was inexcusable because Jesus had removed the need for punishment administered by the religious leaders and paved the way for complete absolution of all sin and a personal conduit to God. No, He never said it was evil. However, at that point carrying out those sentences would have been playing God so to speak.
So it was "playing God" to follow God's edicts? Where did this idea come from, how does it make any sense, and how does it address the question of how moral or immoral those edicts were?
I know I am having a hard time communicating this point. I tried to justify the Mosaic Law as being just but to do so you have to look at it from a Biblical point of view. This is one of those places we are not going to find any common ground on (less than everywhere else, I mean) because someone that percieves secular law and natural rights the way you do is not going to see the justification. I, in the same way, can not justify my faith that God is perfect and perfectly moral. The best I will be able to do is show Biblical justification which obviously does no good when one does not believe in the Bible. I really just wanted to point out some flaws in mainstream stereotypical Christianity and give a better Biblical reason for some points of controversy than the "shut up you are a stupid heathen" argument or the "Here is the best loophole I could come up with" argument. I think on every point we are going to get back to the "justify your belief in this" and I obviously can not prove that the Lord is real and the Bible is true. That is the point of Faith and, of course, the greatest boon to your fallacy arguments.
I am not asking you to prove that the Bible is true (an impossible task anyway, given its multiple absurdities) or that God is real (also an impossible task since he is defined as an inscrutable entity whose existence cannot therefore be properly tested). What I am asking you to do is explain what makes your ethics system a good one, rather than a horrible and/or useless one which is what it appears to be. You virtually admit as much when you use materialist ethics in order to answer an ethical dilemma I posed for you.
I do hope you are hearing a better thought-out, less hypocritical, analysis of these issues. For the record, I was never planning on coming in and proving the Bible to you. I just wanted to offer a Christian perspective and, to be honest, dig deeper into my own beliefs.
As I said, I'm not asking you to prove the Bible is true. I'm asking you to prove that its ethics system is not horrible and/or useless.
I may not have done a good job of explaining this before. My bad. The sins mentioned in the Mosaic Law are still just as sinful. What has changed is that the punishment is no longer neccessary due to the fulfillment of the Law. The Old Covenant was doomed to fail from the beginning and that is a hard concept to grasp but, for whatever reason (there is a lot of debate on this because it is something we just don't know), God waited until Jesus came to forge a new Covenant so the impossible rules would not have to fail to be held over and over and Israel would not have to repent over and over.
Why couldn't God simply relax his own rules, if he was so bound and determined to start off on a new foot? Why incarnate himself on Earth in human form so that he could sacrifice himself to himself in order to sate his own bloodlust, and why would this mollify him anyway? And why send such a fragile messenger of his so-called "new covenant" if he pronounced his earlier covenant by shouting in a thunderous voice from the mountaintop?
I think I already mentioned this but the comparison to eternal death as a punishment was a horrible comparison on my part. Also, I do not make my judgements based on the fact that all sins are equally sinful. All sins are equally ungodly but obviously some sins hurt ourselves and others more than other sins. That is why we have things like "The Golden Rule". There are no examples in the Bible of anyone holding up two different "magnitudes of sins" and saying "You might as well do either for they are both the same". I did not mean to imply that kind of reasoning.
Since assessment of harm and "The Golden Rule" are actually examples of materialist ethics (and have therefore unsurprisingly been found in every major culture around the world, regardless of whether they ever encountered Judeo-Christianity), this takes us right back to the question of why your ethical system should be considered worthwhile.
Wow, this actually came up in a class discussion today in Psychology. First of all, I can't find anywhere in the Bible that God tells one of His children to go break His laws (like "don't murder"). There are some guidelines that get broken by the will of God to put some things in place (or does God just use those mistakes? It's a chicken and egg argument) but none of His moral laws. I really don't see that happening. God would have to be fallible to force a person to break His own perfect law. I don't think you are gonna find any sane people that think John Lennon's murderer actually received a revelation from God.
Now you're dancing around the point again. God does indeed tell people to do terrible things in the Bible, and in fact, this was the subject of a famous Biblical story: the story of Abraham and Isaac. Don't pretend you haven't heard of this, or you can't conceive of God giving an immoral order.
As far as me being trusted to behave in a responsible fashion in society: I suppose that if we lived in a society in which my beliefs made me a criminal, I would be a criminal. However, you seem to be pretty set in your own beliefs. If society went way against something you felt convicted about (like forcing Christianity on everyone or killing all of the children to control the population), wouldn't you feel that your beliefs superceeded society? I know those were pretty out there but I was trying to think of examples that would put either of us in that situation.
It's not just you vs society: it is you vs
reality. In my case, I might uphold a sense of justice or avoidance of harm above society's laws. But elevating
real harm above social laws can hardly be compared to elevating religious beliefs over social laws. John Lennon's murderer did the latter; the people who sheltered Jews in Nazi Germany did the former. To equate the two is simply absurd.
Yeah, I cannot fathom some peoples' inability to realize we are all people with the same urges and same problems. We all make mistakes, etc. The elitists on BOTH sides infuriate me to no end.
Isn't it rather ironic that you complain about "elitists" in the same post where you railed earlier against Christians who interpret the Bible differently than you do?
Well, this is one of those separation of church and state issues for me. I believe that murder is being committed but our society disagrees with me for the most part. My only argument is a Biblical one so I can't make that particualar argument to the government. I still feel it is my duty to speak out against abortion (without condemning and sloganeering) but with nothing but a spiritual argument, it is not constitutional for the government to enforce it at this time. I actually feel pretty torn up about that fact. ESPECIALLY after dealing with it firsthand.
So you put God's law above secular law, but you will not advocate for the criminalization of what you view as murder because it is not "constitutional" to do so? Have you sat down and seriously tried to figure out where it is that you stand? Because your position does not seem to be consistent.
"As long as the government is not promoting" these sins? What does that mean, exactly?
I meant as long as the government is not encouraging and/or forcing citizens to commit abortion, homosexuality, murder, theft, adultery, sodomy, {insert sin here}, I don't feel that anyone (Church, right wing, President, etc.) has the constitutional right to enforce their particular views as law.
And what do you mean by "encouraging"?
Honestly, it would be easier for me belief-wise if we did NOT live in a place that protected personal freedoms so much (I LOVE America and my personal freedoms, BTW). If not for the separation of church and state I could lobby to my heart's content against abortion and a slew of other things with Biblical backup. However, that is not the case.
See my earlier point about the apparent inconsistency of your relative weighting of Biblical and secular laws. As far as I can tell, your ranking seems to be:
1) US Constitution
2) Biblical Law
3) Other secular laws
Otherwise, your statements don't seem to be consistent at all.
I wasn't trying to play word games. This was another example of me trying to answer you in the context of my beliefs. My bad for not being more clear.
I DO believe the government has an obligation to prevent murder. I just don't believe we can pass legislation to that effect at this time with anything but a Biblical argument and that is unconstitutional.
See above.
I really REALLY wish it were otherwise. My child would be alive.
Maybe you should have been having sex with someone who wanted to be your wife and the mother of your children, then.
How ironic, that this debate is a Baptist preacher whose sex partner had an abortion, arguing against the pro-abortion position of an atheist family man who fathered and raised two sons with the first woman I ever bedded
1) If you intend to justify your belief system, you cannot simply explain how it works. You must explain why it is a good system.
I don't think we have been on the same page (probably because of my newness to the forum) and I was approaching this from an explanatory angle and not so much a "prove Christianity and take down all opposers" one. Originally I was laying out the Biblical views on abortion and the beginning of life at which point others brought up questions and I answered them as best I could. I have no notions of proving the sanctity of the Bible or debating whether it is fact. I don't mind defending the Mosaic Law, etc. but we both know that Faith is not gonna be proven in our discussion. I can't explain why the Mosaic Law is a good system in the secular world but I hoped I have sufficiently explained how it worked in the non-secular as well as addressed points of controversy over the differences between Old and New Covenant Law.
Once again, I'm not asking you to prove that the Bible is true. I'm asking you to prove that its ethical system is not a useless joke. Christians often tell themselves that their ethical system justifies their religion; noted Christian apologist author CS Lewis even based his entire argument against atheism upon this singular conceit. I'm asking you to back that up, and it appears that the opposite is true; your ethical system not only fails to justify your religion, it
needs your religion in order to be useful for anything, and even then, it is useful only for justifying itself to itself: a circular form of usefulness which benefits no one.
2) By resorting to the "all sin is equal" gambit in order to defend Old Testament Law, you not only demonstrate how useless Biblical ethics are in real-world situations, but you also fail to be honest with me, and possibly with yourself.
I hope I addressed this clearly earlier in my post. That was a bad communication on my part since I do not think that theft is just as bad as murder, etc. Equally sinful? Yes. Equally consequential (in the physical sense)? Of course not.
And once more, material consequentialism may be an important criteria in many ethics systems, but unless you're willing to concede the superiority of those materialist ethics systems, this argument is a non-starter for you.
Why I single out specific groups: I just addressed the groups that came up and used the most talked about in my examples. I do believe that all sins are equally sinful but I don't think a murderer is just as good a person as someone who does not feed the hungry as often as he should. I am far from sinless and have some vices and rough areas just like evryone else does.
If you mean why do Christians as a whole single out specific groups?: In most cases I think it is safe to assume they have serious problems with their own sin (like you said) although many are genuine and just see some issues as a bigger problem. For instance, most of society agrees that murder is wrong so Christians don't need to address the murder problem so much because everyone is in agreement about that one. Homosexuality, abortion, etc., are controversial, however, so there is still a need in their minds to argue those points.
I'm asking why Christians single out specific groups in order to continue my larger point about how the belief system is unjust. Do you believe that it is just and fair for Christians to have more of a problem with homosexuals than, say, right-wing national leaders who start overseas wars?
