Posted on 03/31/2005 11:49:50 AM PST by Thanatos
"I believe a more accurate term is "consequences", (a concept all but lost in this generation)."
the concept isn't lost but our fast paced professionalism (very Nazi-like) has caused us to give up leisure time, thereby causing us to refrain from thinking about them and developing a spiritual sensitivity.
"And as the Bible states, one of these consequences for evil is that God will eventually turn his eyes away from those that displease Him, (see bottom), which would leave us unprotected from our enemies like the Islamofacists."
The enemy is ourselves. The fact that others do evil when we do good is related to our lack of awareness. It takes an extra effort to discover the common humanity and to restore it. Keep in mind that Christ did not come to the Isrealites to help destroy the Romans, he came to help us find the god in all of us: "Forgive them father for they know not what they do". Is this simple lesson forgotten? Don't bother with the list of grievances, we need ESSENTIAL generalizations, not ACCIDENTAL generalizations.
"now we're fighting them and chasing them all over the planet, and they're running like cockroaches."
This sounds familiar, give me a minute to consult history. Oh yes here it is: This phrase was used (almost word for word, switch "the planet" with "our great nation") by the Hutu genocidal psychopaths of the Radio Milles Collines in July 1994 directly before their militia and brainwashed townsfolk exterminated (pardon the pun) 800,000 Tutsi men, women, and children from the face of Rwanda. The Tutsis were called "cockroaches" and most were not muslims. I'm a bit confused, did you take that line from that particular source?
Well...I'm not jumping to any conclusions, I just don't do that. But you have alot of explaining to do sir..
Oh I almost forgot. Both the Hutus and the Tutsis were Roman Catholics. Reach deep down into your soul and try to understand what this implies.
They are not all heartless, they are Christian.
"What about the innocent children our bombs unintentionally shred?
They are entirely innocent.
I take it the peace at all costs movement has grown immensely in the last month based on the outpouring of devotion to life at any cost."
Precisely. But I guess those kids aren't white, American and pretty.
"There's a difference between the intentional and unintentional taking of life, don't you think?"
Don't be silly. We KNOW that innocent civilians will probably get killed when we drop bombs, even we don't want to kill them. That's war. But we do it anyway. That's how "sacred" those innocent civilians' lives are.
"It's a sad commentary on humanity. But it is a fact that to maintain civilization, it is necessary to be able to act in uncivilized ways when necessary. The trick is keeping those acts of uncivility in tight control, which I think this society has accomplished very well."
I get it. Life is always sacred. Except for when it isn't.
I find it funny the distinction you make. Apparently God thinks it's fine to kill hundreds of innocent people when you unitentionally kill them by dropping bombs on cities, but gets really angry when you remove a feeding tube. If we drop bombs on cities, do we not KNOW that innocent people are gonna get killed? We may not want them to - we do what we can to avoid it, in fact - but don't insult my intelligence and ask me to believe that we don't KNOW for a fact that collateral damage will be an inevitable result of war. We accept this as a cost of war. If we really thought their lives were sacred and that taking them would be against God's word, then we wouldn't do it. Period.
"I'm sure the Nazis believed they were doing the Jews a favor when they wiped millions of them off the face of the earth too--it "put them out of their misery," you know.. "
Er... no they didn't. They hated them, regarded them as sub-human and set out to exterminate them. Mercy had nothing to do with it.
What this implies is that your knowledge of history really sucks and you seem to specialize in embarrassing yourself.
First of all, the population of Rwanda & Burundi is mixed between Catholics, Protesants and Muslims. But the hatred between the Tutsis and Hutus is an ancient one, and their more recent genocide against each other represents an ongoing, ancient ancestral antagonism. It's also about political power, ethnicity, government-led incursions, and CIVIL WAR. The Hutus and Tutsis have been killing each other for at least 400 years. The Christian missionaries didn't establish thier first stations on Hutu/Tutsi soil until around 1880-90, centuries after the bloody wars between these two tribes began.
The Rwandan government was responsible for some the greatest massacres, and neither tribe were ever fighting each other under the banner of religion. It was all about ancestry, power, political position, and ethnicity, (the Tutsis are tall, cattle herding people of nomadic history, the Hutus are a very short people). They have perpetually struggled against each other for territorial supremecy.
These bloody wars also mean that the relatively recent Christian influence on these barbarians hasn't had nearly enough time to help them forget their long history of bloodshed and end their hatred for one another. This will take more than a baptismal font, it will take TIME.
With your preposterous reasoning, you could make the claim that Hitler's Germany, (mostly Protestant), were fighting a religious war against their mostly Catholic neighbors, (France, Italy, Austria, Poland, etc). But making WWII into a religious war is pure nonsense, and the same goes for the ancient and perpetual warfare between Tutsis and Hutus.
Yet we also know that by not dropping them, even more innocents will be killed. Saddam wasn't big on protecting the innocent.
Yes that's all true. However that's outside the point of my statement. I didn't claim that they were ALL catholics or that religion was even the culprit. I only mentioned their religion because in your last post you seemed to be saying that it was a physical war between christianity and Islam. I was specifically asking why you used that quote about "cockroaches".
By the way, you just answered the second post successfully. You get credit for that.
And deaths caused by car accidents is an inevitable cost of using motor vehicles. But I find such slippery slope arguments to be sophomoric. But I understand the temptation to use them when defending the otherwise indefensible
Apparently God thinks it's fine to kill hundreds of innocent people when you unintentionally kill them by dropping bombs on cities, but gets really angry when you remove a feeding tube.
I do not presume to know God's mind anymore then an ant knows mine. But I find it hard to believe that collateral damage in war breaks the Commandment not to murder. Whereas I view forcefully preventing a mother from giving a glass of water to her child dying of thirst does.
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