SezMe
post-pre-born
When you return, PJ, sit down carefully. SC has just methodically ripped you a new one, which must hurt on every imaginable level. Too bad, you so justly deserved it.
Why do YOU love Jesus?
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dafydd
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I should thank Jesus for Catholic girls. They suuuuuuuure are horny.
That is true.My first girlfriend was a Catholic and horny was the apposite word.
I don't go for stereotypes, but this is one of those that in my life seems to demonstrate itself quite often. In my experience it's not catholics specifically but the fundy-catholics (who think the catholic church is "too liberal") and many non-catholic fundies have this kind of "do as I say" hypocrisy.
I had a childhood-through-college friend who, once she hit 15, was sleeping with different guys every week. But she always carried around her little pocket bible, reading it at lunch and in between class, and anytime I mentioned anything I'd read about biology or archeology she'd say "Stop right there, that's just a theory and always will be, and I know the world is only 6000 years old."
The only other YEC friend I had in High School, was a boy from a wealthy family who on other topics was quite intelligent, but talked about "Once atheists take over and think they can just have orgies and do whatever they want, is when civilizations crumble, all through history." Yet he was sexually promiscuous throughout High School, and on at least one occasion I am aware of cheated (sexually) on his girlfriend.
Conversely most of my atheist friends were science/electronics types too busy or awkward, soldering leads and transistors or prank-hacking the school network, to lose their virginity before college.
My (completely unscientific and biased) hypothesis is that the element of the "forbidden" makes it much more tempting. The way that drug laws help romanticize drug users into anti-heroes, while (non-forbidden) alcoholics are just losers.
My household was nominally catholic, but at some point around age 7-8 I was asking my mother about a bunch of the more absurd inconsistencies and why God was always killing people and changing his mind about things, and my mother eventually told me "Jesus was a great philosopher who we should honor for his insights, but the miracles are probably mythology written by man." After that, Jesus never really came up outside of stubbed toes or unseasonably warm days. I lost my virginity when I was 20 to my at-the-time-girlfriend.
However my mom's still catholic, and goes to catholic church. So some catholics are more in the "Jesus-fanclub" because of their family/social network and don't really believe most of the stuff they'll vigorously nod to.
. Like condoms being bad? My mom would think that's just nutty and irresponsible.Maia
Graduate Poster
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Well, the answer to THAT question, I don't know. But the above highlighted portion did make me think of something I just read in Niles Eldredges' recent book, The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of Creationism. He devoted several pages to outlining his absolute fury at a creationist (Philip Johnston) taking some of his quotes completely out of context and getting them to one of Reagan's speechwriters in the early 1980's, leading to an infamous speech where Reagan said that evolution was "only a theory" and that there were all kinds of controversy among scientists about it.
Mister Agenda
Illuminator
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I am indifferent to Jesus (Im an atheist, I donno if that's why or not)
The user plumjam asked an interesting question "What for example, Charles Darwin ever do for any of us here?"
Charles Darwin changed my life, when I learned about evolution (4 years ago, at the age of 24) it instantly inspired me to learn more about not only evolution but all of science. I appreciated life so much more, all life, all forms of life suddenly became beautiful. I went from a hard core blind faith religious person, who was content with simple answers (god did it) to an atheist who is inspired by questions and curious about everything. For me Charles Darwin made my life better, not only a better outlook at living plants and animals but made me go back to school, I'm in collage all because of the man.
The only downside is I spend so much time investigating claims that it's hard to get any school work done. THERE IS SO MUCH BUNK IN THE WORLD!
The user plumjam asked an interesting question "What for example, Charles Darwin ever do for any of us here?"
Charles Darwin changed my life, when I learned about evolution (4 years ago, at the age of 24) it instantly inspired me to learn more about not only evolution but all of science. I appreciated life so much more, all life, all forms of life suddenly became beautiful. I went from a hard core blind faith religious person, who was content with simple answers (god did it) to an atheist who is inspired by questions and curious about everything. For me Charles Darwin made my life better, not only a better outlook at living plants and animals but made me go back to school, I'm in collage all because of the man.
The only downside is I spend so much time investigating claims that it's hard to get any school work done. THERE IS SO MUCH BUNK IN THE WORLD!
Last of the Fraggles
Illuminator
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What exactly do you think the ToE tells us about the nature of the human being? That we are biological entities evolved from other biological entities does not change our morals or ethics.
Even if it did, you can't blame Darwin for it. He just explained something. He just pointed out was already there. You wouldn't blame Newton for a plane crash, would you?
You seem to just ignore the difference that was pointed out to you earlier. Darwin did not encourage anyone to act in any particular way or try to set out his theory as any kind of encouragement for any act or way of thinking. You can't use Darwins books as instructional manuals for life because they don't have any instructions in them.
In a different but equal way I don't think you can blame Jesus for the ills of Christianity either mind you. The Christians are to blame for Christianity, just like the Nazis are to blame for the Holocaust, and the Commies are to blame for the Soviet Union.
P.J. Denyer
Penultimate Amazing
Okay, but even if we accept for the sake of this argument, that he himself didn't believe, his Christian rhetoric was effective in stirring up the German people who did believe to carry out his genocide and actually do the killing.
Yeah, I don't think anyone seriously condemns Christianity for inspiring Hitler, but it's true that religion in general is a button often pushed to justify atrocities. It would actually be an ad hominem fallacy to discredit Christianity because Hitler explicitly used Christian rhetoric when he incited the German people, much like it's an ad hominem fallacy to attempt to discredit evolution by claiming that Hitler based his actions on it. This latter case is worse, though, since the claim is a lie and not even rational: science describes objective reality; it doesn't make people do things.bynmdsue said:
HansMustermann
Penultimate Amazing
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The most trivial problem with blaming the genocide on darwinism, is that basically racism was alive and kicking at least 2000 years before Darwin was even born.
Aristotle, for example, in his defense of slavery not only managed to rationalize just about every non-greek as sub-human. He managed to rationalize that even the Greeks themselves although born of proper Greek uber-menschen parents and even those able to trace their genealogy all the way back to the gods themselves, can still be born only fit to be slaves. In essence, if you got captured in a war and enslaved, that's your proof that you weren't physically or mentally fit to be a free man to start with.
"What does this mean but that they distinguish freedom and slavery, noble and humble birth, by the two principles of good and evil? They think that as men and animals beget men and animals, so from good men a good man springs. But this is what nature, though she may intend it, cannot always accomplish." (Aristotle, "Politics", Book 1, Part VI, in relation to the objection of Helen of Theodectes: "Who would presume to call me servant who am on both sides sprung from the stem of the Gods?" Aristotle's answer was basically that you can still be one of nature's failures and unfit to be a free man even if your parents were more than fit.)
Note how he didn't need Darwin to come up with the idea of such a mutation.
And you don't need to look at his infamous advice to Alexander The Great, to be "a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after friends and relatives, and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants." I mean, seriously, advising to treat some people like wild beasts is already insulting, but _plants_? It takes dehumanizing other people and races to a level that even the Nazis or even the most perverted mis-uses of Darwinism never even aspired to.
If anything, proper study of human genetics, or even a basic understanding of evolution would debunk such ideas of Aristotle as: "Where then there is such a difference as that between soul and body, or between men and animals (as in the case of those whose business is to use their body, and who can do nothing better), the lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master. For he who can be, and therefore is, another's and he who participates in rational principle enough to apprehend, but not to have, such a principle, is a slave by nature. Whereas the lower animals cannot even apprehend a principle; they obey their instincts. And indeed the use made of slaves and of tame animals is not very different; for both with their bodies minister to the needs of life. Nature would like to distinguish between the bodies of freemen and slaves, making the one strong for servile labor, the other upright, and although useless for such services, useful for political life in the arts both of war and peace. But the opposite often happens--that some have the souls and others have the bodies of freemen. And doubtless if men differed from one another in the mere forms of their bodies as much as the statues of the Gods do from men, all would acknowledge that the inferior class should be slaves of the superior. And if this is true of the body, how much more just that a similar distinction should exist in the soul? but the beauty of the body is seen, whereas the beauty of the soul is not seen. It is clear, then, that some men are by nature free, and others slaves, and that for these latter slavery is both expedient and right." (Aristotle, "Politics", Book 1, Part V)
It makes no sense for natural selection to have not only created a whole sub-species of inferior people, to the extent where they actually need a slave master to function properly, but made them the dominant population of Europe too.
At any rate, to return to the mass-murder of Jews, while an abject atrocity, it was:
A) just a continuation of earlier pogroms, a lot from _long_ before Darwin was even born. The 15'th century for example saw a right explosion of antisemitism, and if anyone genuinely believes that those were because of belief in evolution, I have some logging rights in Sahara to sell.
B) not really racially motivated in the genetics/Darwin sense. In a letter to Bormann, Hitler himself makes it clear that he did _not_ believe there actually was such a thing as a biological Jewish race. In fact, funnily enough, he basically struggles to describe what we nowadays call _culture_, but without actually doing so. (Presumably because Kultur in German at the time would have meant something completely different.)
Heck, even Mein Kampf actually makes it pretty clear that Hitler didn't really talk about the biological meaning of races and people. You could actually lose the right to be a part of his racial state, which makes no sense if it were based on actual genetics: you can't actually stop being a nordic caucasian by engaging in criminal activity. Again it seems to me like he was struggling to somehow define a spiritual kind of race, i.e., a culture.
In effect, trying to ascribe it to actual Darwinism is just ignorant and stupid. What Hitler was trying to destroy was a culture, not a race in any sense that Darwin would have used it.
Aristotle, for example, in his defense of slavery not only managed to rationalize just about every non-greek as sub-human. He managed to rationalize that even the Greeks themselves although born of proper Greek uber-menschen parents and even those able to trace their genealogy all the way back to the gods themselves, can still be born only fit to be slaves. In essence, if you got captured in a war and enslaved, that's your proof that you weren't physically or mentally fit to be a free man to start with.
"What does this mean but that they distinguish freedom and slavery, noble and humble birth, by the two principles of good and evil? They think that as men and animals beget men and animals, so from good men a good man springs. But this is what nature, though she may intend it, cannot always accomplish." (Aristotle, "Politics", Book 1, Part VI, in relation to the objection of Helen of Theodectes: "Who would presume to call me servant who am on both sides sprung from the stem of the Gods?" Aristotle's answer was basically that you can still be one of nature's failures and unfit to be a free man even if your parents were more than fit.)
Note how he didn't need Darwin to come up with the idea of such a mutation.
And you don't need to look at his infamous advice to Alexander The Great, to be "a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after friends and relatives, and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants." I mean, seriously, advising to treat some people like wild beasts is already insulting, but _plants_? It takes dehumanizing other people and races to a level that even the Nazis or even the most perverted mis-uses of Darwinism never even aspired to.
If anything, proper study of human genetics, or even a basic understanding of evolution would debunk such ideas of Aristotle as: "Where then there is such a difference as that between soul and body, or between men and animals (as in the case of those whose business is to use their body, and who can do nothing better), the lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master. For he who can be, and therefore is, another's and he who participates in rational principle enough to apprehend, but not to have, such a principle, is a slave by nature. Whereas the lower animals cannot even apprehend a principle; they obey their instincts. And indeed the use made of slaves and of tame animals is not very different; for both with their bodies minister to the needs of life. Nature would like to distinguish between the bodies of freemen and slaves, making the one strong for servile labor, the other upright, and although useless for such services, useful for political life in the arts both of war and peace. But the opposite often happens--that some have the souls and others have the bodies of freemen. And doubtless if men differed from one another in the mere forms of their bodies as much as the statues of the Gods do from men, all would acknowledge that the inferior class should be slaves of the superior. And if this is true of the body, how much more just that a similar distinction should exist in the soul? but the beauty of the body is seen, whereas the beauty of the soul is not seen. It is clear, then, that some men are by nature free, and others slaves, and that for these latter slavery is both expedient and right." (Aristotle, "Politics", Book 1, Part V)
It makes no sense for natural selection to have not only created a whole sub-species of inferior people, to the extent where they actually need a slave master to function properly, but made them the dominant population of Europe too.
At any rate, to return to the mass-murder of Jews, while an abject atrocity, it was:
A) just a continuation of earlier pogroms, a lot from _long_ before Darwin was even born. The 15'th century for example saw a right explosion of antisemitism, and if anyone genuinely believes that those were because of belief in evolution, I have some logging rights in Sahara to sell.
B) not really racially motivated in the genetics/Darwin sense. In a letter to Bormann, Hitler himself makes it clear that he did _not_ believe there actually was such a thing as a biological Jewish race. In fact, funnily enough, he basically struggles to describe what we nowadays call _culture_, but without actually doing so. (Presumably because Kultur in German at the time would have meant something completely different.)
Heck, even Mein Kampf actually makes it pretty clear that Hitler didn't really talk about the biological meaning of races and people. You could actually lose the right to be a part of his racial state, which makes no sense if it were based on actual genetics: you can't actually stop being a nordic caucasian by engaging in criminal activity. Again it seems to me like he was struggling to somehow define a spiritual kind of race, i.e., a culture.
In effect, trying to ascribe it to actual Darwinism is just ignorant and stupid. What Hitler was trying to destroy was a culture, not a race in any sense that Darwin would have used it.
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To rephrase myself from an earlier thread - the reverse of this one. I don't - it is not functional/rational to love a non-existant literary device/character.
Foster Zygote
Dental Floss Tycoon
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What did Michael Faraday do for anyone?
devnull
Philosopher
I only love Jesus when it's very very cold, and he's open to some man-lovin'.
Tricky
Briefly immortal
A few posts that were off-topic and attacking the arguer have been moved to Abandon All Hope. Please stay on topic and don't attack the arguer.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic Posted By: Tricky
Live&Learn
Critical Thinker
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Because he was willing to die to pay the price for my sins.
John 15.
13 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
14 You are my friends if you do what I command.
Foster Zygote
Dental Floss Tycoon
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Sacrifice of one's self for others is admirable. But I reject the notion that every human being deserves the fate that Jesus is said to have endured.
I have many friends, and in none of these relationships is our friendship dependent on their obedience to my command. This seems more a description of dominance that friendship.
Mister Agenda
Illuminator
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The book of Hitler's conversations were hideously mistranslated by someone with an agenda. I should know.
Live&Learn
Critical Thinker
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1. Crucifixion is certainly a gruesome way to die. However, Jesus saved me from something far worse. An eternity in hell as punishment for my sins. If a person saved your life by pulling you out of a burning house, you would be forever thankful. I have that same gratitude to Jesus.
2. I understand your point. However, you're not God. Here's a human comparison that will have some exceptions. When we were children, most of our parents gave us specific commands because they wanted the best for us. God's the same way, just on a much higher level.
How do you know all this?