Brian Peacock wrote:Seth. Seth, Seth, Seth, Seth, Seth, Seth, Are you also the self-appointed Grande Validator Christian now as well?
No, I'm the Grand Validator of Reason and Logic here at Ratz.
I would have thought that self-declaring as a Christian is all that was required to validate one's Christian credentials,
I sure you would have thought that because it makes it very convenient for you to bash Christians generally when someone who identifies as a Christian does something bad. But that's not how it actually is, which is unfortunate for your ad hominem argumentation.
but perhaps you're right and Christians have to check with you first these days.
They don't have to check with me, they have to check with Jesus, or so I'm told.
Careful though, that's how schisms start, and we all know how messily they can end eh?
It's okay, God will, I'm told, sort it all out in the end.
So if you'd like to offer some evidence that a great many Christians don't hold the Bible to be the inerrant word of God, don't hold that God's law supersedes all human laws, and don't hold that divine command is the foundation of all ethics and a moral obligation for all humans, then be my guest.
I wouldn't because what you posit is merely another fallacy. Or two. Or three possibly. What a "great many Christians" believe or do not believe is not relevant to the question of whether or not any particular person is a Christian. Nor is what a "great many Christians" believe about the bible necessarily the metric by which Christianity is measured. And even if they do believe as you suggest, which Christians don't, those beliefs are not inherently immoral, which is what you are trying to suggest.
Not only would I'd love to see you argue against that (no, I really would), but I'd also love to hear you say that these are not basic Christian beliefs, and not even the sort of thing your friends the Evangelicals are ever likely to utter.
Well, in my experience Christians believe in rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's and render unto God what is God's. They do not, as you are trying to suggest, hold that "God's law supersedes all human laws," unlike I hasten to add, Muslims do. While they may believe that God's laws are
superior to man's laws, particularly in terms of moral suasion to rightful and godly acts, Christians do not generally try to use their religious beliefs about the moral superiority of God's laws as justification for violating secular laws of their communities and societies. Indeed the New Testament expressly requires Christians to obey secular authorities even when doing so leads to their deaths in the arena. Jesus says that by being obedient to temporal authority, even when temporal authority is evil and corrupt, Christians lead by example and martyrdom and will be rewarded one day.
As to your claim that Christians believe that "divine command is the foundation of all ethics and a moral obligation for all humans," this is perfectly true, so far as it goes. They do indeed feel that way, but they are not, unlike Muslims, commanded to enforce those "divine commands" upon non-Christians by force
because those divine commandments apply only to Christians. They are counseled to
lead by example by living godly lives in accordance with God's commandments and allow God to work in the hearts of unbelievers, who are granted free will by God to choose or refuse to choose salvation, for better or worse, and thereby bring such lost souls to salvation through Christ. Christians are to provide warnings and offer to assist others in obtaining salvation for themselves, as such persons are drawn to do of their own accord through the workings of God. They are not authorized to impose Christianity on anyone against their will, ever.
This does not mean, however, that when it comes to matters temporal and secular that Christians acting politically within their community or culture are not permitted to have their political decisions, desires and votes informed by their religious beliefs, nor does it mean that they cannot, as members of a community with rights equal in every way to non-Christians, seek to enact policies and laws that comport with their moral and ethical beliefs, despite those beliefs being based in their religious doctrines. So long as the political advocacy and laws they argue for do not violate the First Amendment proscription on an establishment of a state religion the moral, ethical, social and political beliefs of Christians have every bit as much authority to be enacted into secular law as do the moral, ethical, social and political beliefs of anyone else.
The fact that such opinions flow from religious belief does not necessarily make public policy enacted to effectuate those opinions through the democratic process, as constrained by the First Amendment, an act of "establishment of religion" in the constitutional sense. Everyone's opinions about social structure are informed by their belief systems, including Atheists, and just because the root of those opinions might be belief in God and a desire to obey God's commandments, or a belief in not-God and a desire to extirpate theistic influences on secular society doesn't make it an establishment of a state religion. Unless, of course, it does, and at that point the Constitution intervenes by testing the law to determine if it lies within the ambit of the Constitution.
Thus, a law which commands all persons to cease working on Sunday and attend a place of worship or pray five times a day is flatly unconstitutional. But a law that prohibits abortion is not necessarily unconstitutional because it is eminently possible to object to abortion for entirely secular reasons and therefore a law prohibition abortion enacted after due process and democratic determination can, at least theoretically, survive constitutional scrutiny. This is why at the present time states have full authority to regulate abortion after the first trimester and prohibit abortion entirely after the second trimester under Roe v. Wade.
While you're at it, you might take a little time to explain how fundamentalist Christians are not, you know, fundamentally fundamental in their attitude to the Bible and in their interpretation of its text, and how this has no effect on how they live their lives either.
Why would I do so? You're positing yet another strawman and red-herring argument by implying that fundamentalist interpretations and obedience to the Bible, by which you actually mean only the Old Testament, is somehow inherently immoral, which is suggested by your use of the loaded term "fundamentalist."
It's up to Christians what they choose to believe and how they choose to (peaceably) exercise their religion, not me and certainly not you. I have never claimed that the Bible does not inform Christianity and how Christians "live their lives." I merely dispute your implication that doing so axiomatically means that they live their lives according to those parts of the Old Testament which you and other Atheists like to cite as evidence of the inherent evil of Christianity. That's a red-herring argument, as I've explained many times, because according to Christian doctrine, which is explicated not in the Old Testament but in the New Testament, your favorite strawman and red-herring arguments about the commandments of God to kill people found in the Old Testament mean that Christians are obligated to kill people in obedience to those commandments is quite simply a completely false statement, and at this point a mendaciously false one.
As I've told you many times, this is not the case, and those commandments were specifically repealed by Jesus and replaced with new commandments and guidelines for living
as Christians. Obviously one who obeys only the Old Testament is not a Christian because Christianity is, by definition, adherence to the doctrines of Christ, who came long after the Old Testament went to press. That, JBTW, is why the New Testament exists. It's an amendment to the Old Testament.
Now I know you don't like people to characterise things without your prior approval,
Argumentun ad hominem, you puerile putz.
but really, this characterisation of a brand of Christianity at the arse-end of the spectrum is hardly a misscharacterisation by any degree, and certainly not something you should be getting all hot and bothered about - unless that is your thinking that any unfavourable thing said about even the most deranged branch of Christianity is an offensive attack on the whole of the creed.
Well, since your devious intent in this bald-faced attempt at smearing all Christians with that particular "fundamentalist" broad brush is perfectly clear and comprises a "poisoning the well" fallacy it's hardly irrational of me to point that fact out.
And how can there be a fallacy of composition in a qualifying clause of a sentence when, you know, it's a qualifying clause of a sentence and neither a declaration or a claim?
You wrote: "However, fundamentalism's self-righteous self-certainty exposes the ethical vacuum at the heart of all religious dogmas..."
That's not a "qualifying clause" it's a purported statement of objective truth.
But you're right, it's not a fallacy of composition, it's a non sequitur fallacy and a series of circumstantial ad hominem attacks.
This is because, in the first place, you have stated premises that are not supported by any evidence that comprise nothing more than personal opinion, and then you engage in circumstantial ad hominem argumentation which you claim proves the false premises.
Nonetheless, I applaud your continued efforts in avoiding the issue of murderous Christians murdering in the name of their religion and on the presumed authority of their mythological deity though,
Where have I avoided that issue? People who murder, including murdering under the "presumed authority" of Christ, are not Christians because Christ forbids such actions entirely, much less in his name. That's rather the point of the whole sub-thread. We simply disagree on whether or not those who self-identify as Christians and attempt to use Old Testament passages as justification for committing crimes are actually Christians. You want to claim them as being Christians because by doing so you get to criticize all Christians as a part of a repeated fallacy of composition. This is very typical religious Atheist sophistry.
and I must congratulate you for your persistence and for the energy with which you prosecute that task - you really couldn't have done more to destroy the context of my remarks if you'd broke them down into random groups of three and set them to a balalaika beat.
Why thank you. It's a dirty job but somebody has to do it.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S
"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth
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