Posted on 08/09/2009 12:44:19 AM PDT by Laissez-faire capitalist
Besides the obvious filth movements of the sixties trying to destroy America, it is only recently that the left has come out of the closet in their hatred and phobia against Christian scripture.
The attack on Christian scripture as a basis for law is mostly a modern leftist movement by groups who think America is completely evil from the start and the Constitution must be ad hoc revised from the perspective of a modern secular liberal judge.
“The individual must give up themselves because YOU say so.”
So, umm...I wrote the Bible? Is that your point? Trying to write it off as just one man’s opinion is merely the excuse you use to justify ignoring God’s law.
“God may have laid down the Law”
God explained some things about right and wrong, analogously to the way a physicist might explain physical laws. Rather than laying down the law, this is more in the nature of trying to tell us what is harmful and what is beneficial.
“Libertarians are perfectly ok with you having your faith.”
No, actually, it’s easy to see that you are not “fine” with it.
“In your version of Christianity, I must accept A, B and C in order to be worthy of being considered D (Christian). But there is evidently no room for me at the inn, since while I wholeheartedly accept A and B, I have a somewhat different perspective on C.”
It is very frustrating to me that I cannot successfully explain what is so obvious. People arguing your side of this issue always distort. What does that indicate?
Here, you speak of “being worthy” and “room at the inn.” When you purport to rebut propositions I have not advanced, you seek to attribute those propositions to me. This strategy is adopted because the false propositions are so much easier to mock or rebut than the arguments I actually made.
Your arguments, whether advanced by you or anyone else, would be much more persuasive if they could be made without having to distort the arguments of the opposition.
I really hope I do not need to explain the difference between your misrepresentation of my position and the arguments I actually advanced. By the way, do you really think it is valid to have a slightly different perspective from God?
“I was once a participant in the “drug war.”
The war on drugs was announced by President Nixon in 1969. You most likely violated a state or local law.
“That record has damaged my career. I have been passed over for at least one job because of it. I have also been denied a promotion because of it. I made a stupid mistake, no question, but the conviction by the state hurt me worse than any drugs ever did.”
That arrest and everything that flowed from it was a direct result of your decision to violate the law in search of intoxication.
“you might be thinking, the arrest surely taught me my lesson, right? It surely kept me from moving to harder drugs.”
You think conservatives are really stupid, don’t you?
“A young policeman was hit, and killed…And all over a small amount of an intoxicating weed that people ingest voluntarily.”
You can’t really think that’s all there was to it, can you? The young man who fired the gun made a number of bad decisions, decisions that the Bible would have told him not to make. In the end, he chose to fire a gun blindly through the door. He and he alone is responsible for that policeman’s murder.
“Now I would not deny that misusing drugs does damage, and that undoubtedly other lives have been helped by the “institutionalized” rejection of this vice. And I would not condemn someone with the perspective that the drug war is an overall positive state program. I certainly would not condemn such a view as non Christian, just mistaken.”
You seem to be arguing that, since you don’t call another position non Christian, others should not say that your position is contrary to the tenets of Christianity. That is not a valid argument. A position either is or is not congruent with Christianity, regardless of who says what about it.
“But this is where you and I differ. Whereas I would suggest that two Christians could have different perspectives on this matter of the drug war - whether it should be continued or dropped - you, on the other hand, condemn me…”
Condemn you? There’s that distortion again. It’s really not honest, you know.
“…for my perspective, going so far as to question my belief in the teachings of Jesus Christ. In your mind it is evidently not possible that I am simply mistaken. I am simply not a Christian.”
Everything you assert about my position in that paragraph is the result of stretching for the worst possible interpretation of what I have said, and bridging the gaps with bare assumption where stretching does not suffice.
It is actually malicious to assume that I don’t admit the possibility that you could be simply mistaken. It is an accusation, an imputation of bigotry.
“I direct your attention to my tag line. This wonderful quote from one of our founding fathers can be interpreted in (at least) two ways.”
Well, no, it can’t. It can be interpreted, correctly, in the way that you reject, or misinterpreted to superimpose upon it the meaning you impute to it.
“For it is this realization that causes us to continually question our “facts”…approach every problem with what the Zen masters call “beginner’s mind”. The possibility that my facts may simply be wrong.”
You cannot approach every issue in this way every time, nor is it sensible to try. We learn. When we have spent great effort on consideration of an issue, we need not trot out the “beginner’s mind” unless we are presented new facts or new arguments. There is no requirement to treat the same-old same-old as fresh and new every time we see it.
“God only knows whether you are correct, that A, B and C are required in order to be considered D. God only knows. You don’t.”
There you go again, trying to write off what I have said as merely one man’s opinion. Allow me to quote G. K. Chesterton, speaking of the Catholic Church:
“There is no other case of one continuous intelligent institution that has been thinking about thinking for two thousand years. Its experience naturally covers nearly all experiences; and especially nearly all errors. The result is a map in which all the blind alleys and bad roads are clearly marked, all the ways that have been shown to be worthless by the best of all evidence: the evidence of those who have gone down them.”
If you have arguments in rebuttal of what I say, present them by all means. But kindly drop this ridiculous nonsense of calling 2,000 years of the intellectual work product of the greatest minds in history as “just your opinion.”
“Consider that you just might be wrong. That’s what a Christian would do.”
Doubting the Word of God is no part of Christianity. That you would even say that makes me wonder if you are merely posing as a Christian.
Yes, that’s all very true.
Everything you assert about my position in that paragraph is the result of stretching for the worst possible interpretation of what I have said, and bridging the gaps with bare assumption where stretching does not suffice.
It is actually malicious to assume that I don’t admit the possibility that you could be simply mistaken. It is an accusation, an imputation of bigotry.
Your original post - the statements that caught my attention - were; Either they only think they’re libertarians, or they only think they’re Christians. Can’t be both.
Did I misinterpret your statements?
You think conservatives are really stupid, don’t you?
No sir, just that the individual conservative to whom I'm responding is mistaken when he states that one cannot be both a libertarian and a Christian, and that the neat little box that he has constructed in support of his position, likely due to his habit of closing his mind, is a box of his own making, and hardly reality.
FRiend, you and I will evidently just not agree on this. While I have considered the "institutionalization" of vice issue at length, I admit that I may be mistaken. Humans can reach false conclusions. I don't think I have done so here, but I respect your disagreement with me on that issue.
But I do not respect your conclusion that my opinion on that issue disqualifies me from being a Christian. As a Christian, I do my very best to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. I'm human, so I sometimes fail. But it is the fact that I honestly try that makes me a Christian.
“Did I misinterpret your statements?”
Willfully, I think. Having reflected that it might be possible that a libertarian is a bad Christian rather than no Christian at all, I refined my position as stated in the remark you quoted at the top of *your*last*post*:
“If you don’t deplore and reject those things that the Christian faith says should be deplored, then you are not practicing the Christian faith. If you do not want to save both yourself and your neighbor from the glamour of evil, then you are not practicing the Christian faith. If you do not think it is best to live in a society that institutionalizes its rejection of those things, then you do not understand and accept the Christian faith.”
Now, why would you quote that at the top of your last post, and then go back to an earlier post for this note? Is that honest?
“and that the neat little box that he has constructed in support of his position, likely due to his habit of closing his mind, is a box of his own making”
It’s a lot easier to dismiss these arguments unexamined if you pretend that it’s all “of (my) own making,” isn’t it? Whatever you pretend, though, I’m only passing along a tiny little piece of the intellectual work product of civilization’s best minds over the last 2,000 years.
“While I have considered the “institutionalization” of vice issue at length, I admit that I may be mistaken. Humans can reach false conclusions. I don’t think I have done so here, but I respect your disagreement with me on that issue.”
Again, it’s not “my” disagreement. You disagree not with me, but with a number of great minds.
“But I do not respect your conclusion that my opinion on that issue disqualifies me from being a Christian. As a Christian, I do my very best to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. I’m human, so I sometimes fail. But it is the fact that I honestly try that makes me a Christian.”
How much of the teachings of Jesus Christ does one have to get wrong before one is simply not a Christian? What percentage?
It is because that percentage is unknown (by me, at least) that I refined my position, as explained (again) above. Even if – if – one can rebel against a number of the tenets of Christianity and still be called a Christian, however, we are still left with the fact that such a person is in rebellion against a number of the tenets of Christianity.
You have continually strained for the worst, most extreme interpretation of everything I have said, because you don’t want to have to take another look at the implications of libertarianism. The fact remains, though, that the two things have several points of irreconcilable contradiction.
You'd rather MEN make those choices for us. MEN, just like you, interpret what "God's will" is and force it on the rest of us at the point of a government gun.
No thanks. I refuse to trade one tyrant for another. Why don't we go back to freedom instead. Let God judge those who don't follow his laws instead of some Nanny State bureaucrat that you'd prefer.
What time period in American history are you referring to? This ought to be interesting.
Leave the anti-Slavery Amendment alone, but roll us back to 1820...
I was surprised by your answer, but I agree with you here and wish everyone else could understand this fact.
I would like to pursue this in more detail and will try to write on it tomorrow if possible.
“As I said...”
Nothing but nonsense. You manufacture these boogeymen to reassure yourself that it’s really okay for you to ignore right and wrong.
As you have not advanced a single reasoned argument for your position, I’m done with this dispute.
Nice talking to you. Bye...
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