NC, I guess you've never been to a Good Friday service. Or, if you have, you weren't paying attention. No matter.
Your other posts are... well, they're not right. Actually, they're not even wrong, so...
Posts by Sulla
-
-
-
-
-
-
Sulla
Christians celebrate human sacrifice every year. The season is upon us soon.
You do know that Easter is the celebration of the Resurection, a victory over death, right? You do know the diffence between Good Friday and Easter Sunday -- how these days are observed -- right?
Not that this knowledge should impede you in any way whatever...
-
-
-
Sulla
When people were at the whim of their environment with little understanding of how natural phenomena worked, they created their answers. It gave them a sense of control. Appease this god, and maybe we won't have drought or flooding. But what about today? Knowledge is all around us. Information pours from our computer. We don't need to burn witches anymore, because we understand bacteria and have found the real cause of plague.
It isn't a matter of excusing them so much as it is a matter of understanding that we are them. The idea that we know better now because we have science is just not related to the evidence. The 20th century was brutal beyond description, yet we were very thoroughly modern and scientific. There is something about the sacrificial idea that is deeply coded in the human experience. It is folly to suppose we have somehow left all that behind. We have not. Not even the more smug and preening among us here have.
Although none of us can be sure what we would have done in another cultural context we can reflect on how we hope we would have acted.
But the whole idea, cofty, is that the brutality we read about is still part of the human condition. The shocking brutality of the Iliad, for example, is still read today simply because it speaks to these permanent aspects of how we experience life as humans. It is as impossible for us to condemn Achilles or Ajax as it is (or ought to be) for us to condemn Joshua. But one thing I don't think we can do is productively speak about how we hope we would have thought -- for actions taken at a time when the moral perspective we have now simply didn't exist, but all of the human pressures and fears did.
The great disadvantage the OT has is that it perceives the "wrongness" of some, but not all, of these violent acts. The ancient Jews were not, as it happens, guided to become 21st century Sweden, which to some of us is somehow a great moral failing.
When atheists read about the genocide and cold blooded infanticide that the bible says Yahweh ordered the armies of Joshua to carry out, we are repulsed and condemn it as barbaric.
I'm sorry, cofty, but surely you mean nice atheists like you, right? The bad ol' atheists like Stalin or Robespierre, given their acts, surely didn't bat an eyelash.
When a bible believing christian reads the same accounts they have no option but to applaud the baby murderers as icons of faith and hope they would also have had the fortitude to brutally hack their fair share of babies to death.
As a bible-believing Christian myself, could I suggest you don't know what you are talking about? I mean, I think I have some other options here than the one you have for me.
-
-
-
Sulla
snare, I argued on the "Jeptha" thread that the account really was a human sacrifice, for what it's worth. But my point is simply that, were we part of that time and place and part of a culture that practiced human sacrifice, we would all have gone along with the practice. The reason why I say that is because, outside of the Jews, I don't know that we read of anybody in the region who had a problem with the practice. For whatever reason, the practice was compelling enough that Jewish kings would sacrifice their own children!
So there really isn't any reason except moral preening to suppose that any of us would have taken some sort of heroic stand against burning babies to Molech or whoever. Indeed, I don't think that, except for the Jewish opposition, we have any contemporaneous condemnation of the practice. So, if you want to say the OT God is mean and nasty, that's fine. Were you alive at the time, you probably would have thought the Jewish God was a bit soft, compared to the others.
As for your comments about Nash: I've done a considerable amount of game theory and I am not at all convinced that a major implication of that discipline is that what is good for the group is good for the individual. Counter examples are too easy to find for that to be the case.
-
-
-
Sulla
Your suggestion that we would all offer child sacrifices if we lived a 2-3 millienia back is quaint but I would like to point out that, unlike you, many of us on this forum are among a minority today, and proudly stand apart from the 2+ billion who worship a 2k year old corpse and live by a bronze age morals.
Yes, life an an atheist in the 21st century American context is such challenge. Exactly the sort of bold moral action that makes it quite certain that, were you living in Carthage back in the day, you'd have had a) the moral insight to object to the practice and b) the courage to stand against it. This is pretty much the definition of moral preening, thanks for being exhibit A.
So who knows? Maybe we would be among the few back then who would've rejected the "the thinking and attitudes" that pontificating f*cks like you would've willingly adopted. But I understand if that's beyond your grasp.
Charming. Let me get this straight: I say that, were we living in that culture we'd have done the same thing. You say that you are such a tower of moral courage that you would have stood up to them Moabites sacrificing babies to Moloch and called them out. And I'm a "pontificating fuck"? What a brave boy you are, SBC, breaking bad on the internet. Particularly dumb, as it happens, but very very brave. And good to see you fan club likes it, too.
-
-
-
Sulla
Inded so, designs.
-
-
-
Sulla
You'd be agreeing with me if you think that people who say they would never have agreed to sacrifice a child are preening. Which you haven't said. But it's ok: you are charmingly clueless whether you agree with me or not.
snare&racket, it isn't obvious that you understand the idea of human sacrifice. The killing of the Egyptian firstborn, for example, is not a case of human sacrifice. Neither, for that matter, is the death of David's child.
For that matter, the actions of Josiah are probably not human sacrifices, either, given that they are a reaction against the practice of child sacrifice by his predecessor. So, you are not really making a point that I can see.
-
-
-
Sulla
NC, you make me smile when you are so charmingly clueless. I know a lot of charmingly clueless people and, if I knew you, I bet you'd be my favorite one of all!
Is there any point in reminding you that the moral is that you're not supposed to do human sacrifice? That, 15 centuries before Agamemnon slayed Iphigenia to get favorable winds to sail to Troy, or the king of Moab butchered his son on the city wall to appeal for divine help against the Israelites, the God of the Jews insisted that human sacrifice was wrong? This thing that every cuture everywhere since the beginning of time practied -- that is what you shouldn't do?
Probably not, because you have such industrial strength cluelessness. And it wasn't my point anyhow.
The point I was making is that anybody who thinks they are better than all those peole that simply doesn't have a grasp on the degree to which humanity has, historically speaking, always practiced human sacrifice or the degree to which plenty of people smarter than you and me thought it was perfectly logical and normal to practice it.
We are not better than those people. We are not smarter than them. We are not more morally pure. We happen to live in a different culture and, were we in that culture, we would have adopted the same attitudes and thinking that they did. To claim otherwise is simply moral preening. Which is what I said.
-
-
-
Sulla
Do you people realize the absurdity of this picture (not the art itself, the story behind it)!?!
As a parent, I'd tell him to go @#%$ himself. Then let him strike me dead.
Unlikely. Human sacrifice was pretty common at the time; indeed, for quite some time afterward (recall that the Carthaginians got some bad press for the practice before the Punic Wars). Actually, in plenty of cultures even well past the time of Christ.
So, you probably would have done what everybody did: slit the kid's throat and move on with your life.
-
34
Tell me---We all have regrets about being in the organisation,what's yours?
by MsGrowingGirl20 inwhat is/are your regrets?
do u wish that you'd have pursued something or dealt differently with a situation?.
-
-
Sulla
Designs, you always conflate Christianity with JW-ism. I think that's unfortunate.
My regret? Mostly that the arc of a family, beginning with an immigrant on a hardscrabble farm 100 years ago and advancing pretty well until some knucklehead joined the JWs, was set back by a generation. I'm living now the way my father should have been living and providing the educational and social opportunities for my children that he should have been providing for his. Most families don't have so many sons that they can afford to have them opt out of the entire project of living.