Posted on 08/22/2006 2:04:20 PM PDT by js1138
Right. It kept them from going from bad to wurst.
(This comment is about all this silly thread deserves.)
"God" has historically been provided with a great many self-serving and arbitrary attributes, and has taken on many forms. He is a handy slate on which to write the conventions of morality. And consequently, "in the [presence] of God there is nothing objectively morally wrong with genocide or selective breeding or hatred or mass murder or anything else," so long as the person committing these morally reprehensible acts proclaims them to be the "will" of his God.
Which leaves us in a peculiar situation. If God is the source of morality, by what measure do we conclude that acts committed in the name of "God" are morally reprehensible?
Thank you for raising a valid issue instead of merely dismissing anyone who questions whether a meaningless universe and create and impose an objective morality.
First of all, when you define morality (as I do) as "arbitrary Divine decree," it becomes a little silly to say "if G-d is the source of morality." Of course G-d is the source of His Decrees! How could it be otherwise?
Second, you are assuming that all religion is either inherited ethno-cultural taboos from a prehistoric past and/or the product of human speculation. Is this assumption of yours self-evident? Are all religions equally moonbeams, the products of "holy men" who went off into a mountain somewhere and then came back and said "G-d spoke to me?"
I would also remind you that actually, all the "Biblical" religions admit that Judaism was founded by G-d and was the One True Religion at one time in the past. They all agree on this, but they all insist that it was replaced by something else--and they can never agree on what allegedly "replaced" it! Have you ever thought about this?
See Note #15.
The collection called Table Talk is questioned by some; while most historians consider it a useful source, they do not regard it as wholly reliable. Ian Kershaw makes clear the questionable nature of Table Talk as a historically valid source; see his Hitler 1889-1936 Hubris London, 1998, xiv.Richard Carrier goes further contending that certain portions of Table Talk, especially those regarding Hitler's alleged hatred of Christianity, are outright inventions: see his "Hitler's Table Talk, Troubling Finds" German Studies Review26:3 (forthcoming 2003). However, although Kershaw recommends treating the work with caution, he does not suggest dispensing with it altogether. (The Holy Reich, p. 253)
"I'm told vegetarianism had an influence on Nazi thinking."
Vegetarianism certainly inflicted flatulism upon the top Nazi.
> Thanks for admitting that you get to impose your morality on the world simply because you don't believe in G-d.
Where did I "admit" that? Or are you making it up?
> Now tell me again about what those awful "chr*stians" did to those poor widdwe Canaanite kids?
What? The Canaanites were pretty much wiped out by the time the ChrIstians came on the scene.
You err.
There are plenty of biological reasons not to kill, steal, etc.
Very few animals kill their own, and when they do, it is under closely defined circumstances.
Since you didn't answer the question, here it is again:
If God is the source of morality, by what measure do we conclude that acts committed in the name of "God" are morally reprehensible?
I do agree with the evolutionists who point out the unhappy, ironic, and inappropriate fact that many creationists are racists. However, this is no more nonsensical than evolutionists being anti-racists, since only G-d can define racism (or anything else) as right or wrong and in the world they believe in this cannot happen. They in fact are merely invoking a subjective hang-up for utilitarian purposes (evolutionism causes morality and brotherhood).
I also find it most interesting that whites who interpret the Bible literally are accused of racism while Blacks who do so are not. In fact, they're barely acknowledged. But then, that's easy to understand considering that they've always been AWOL on this issue.
> (Shofetim veshoterim titen-lekha bekhol she`areykha . . .)
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
What we have is unreliable translations into English from an unreliable french translation of a German work by a known murderer and liar, justifying his existence.
Unless you're claiming Hitler spoke English at dinner time, Hitler's Secret Conversations (the Trevor-Roper 1953 translation) is not a primary source. The primary sources are the notebooks of Picker and Heim; the next most direct sources are the two published German editions of those transcripts. The first German edition was published by Picker, the man who originally transcribed Hitler's words. Those two editions agree with each other almost everywhere, and do not agree with the English translation. Jochmann, who edited Heim's notes, also provides some of the original pages to demonstrate the authenticity of the work. Trevor-Roper, who edited the 1953 English edition, didn't even speak German and had to rely on a couple of translators! Also, recall that the same Hugh Trevor-Roper was the historian who 'authenticated' the fake Hitler diaries.
The Trevor-Roper edition appears not even to be a direct translation of the German; it is a translation of Genoud's French translation of Picker's notes. Carrier thinks, and I agree, that Genoud, an atheist Nazi, added some anti-Christian remarks of his own; in another case, he was found 'augmenting' source material.
Any biographer who used Trevor-Roper's edited translation as opposed to the easily available German original is simply not doing a competent job. And a historian or biographer of the Nazi era who doesn't even understand enough German to read the primary documents should find another career.
Unless you're claiming Hitler spoke English at dinner time, Hitler's Secret Conversations (the Trevor-Roper 1953 translation) is not a primary source. The primary sources are the notebooks of Picker and Heim; the next most direct sources are the two published German editions of those transcripts. The first German edition was published by Picker, the man who originally transcribed Hitler's words. Those two editions agree with each other almost everywhere, and do not agree with the English translation. Jochmann, who edited Heim's notes, also provides some of the original pages to demonstrate the authenticity of the work. Trevor-Roper, who edited the 1953 English edition, didn't even speak German and had to rely on a couple of translators! Also, recall that the same Hugh Trevor-Roper was the historian who 'authenticated' the fake Hitler diaries.
The Trevor-Roper edition appears not even to be a direct translation of the German; it is a translation of Genoud's French translation of Picker's notes. Carrier thinks, and I agree, that Genoud, an atheist Nazi, added some anti-Christian remarks of his own; in another case, he was found 'augmenting' source material.
Any biographer who used Trevor-Roper's edited translation as opposed to the easily available German original is simply not doing a competent job. And a historian or biographer of the Nazi era who doesn't even understand enough German to read the primary documents should find another career.
ia ia
People are racists based on their behavior. I care not what people think.
I happen to have grown up in a town where the first integration of lunch counters was greeted with a massive purchase of ax handles and baseball bats. Many of the people buying these articles were nominal Christians. I know this not from news accounts, but because I went to school with their children.
I grew up in a neighborhood that had frequent cross burnings. The preferred place was across from my school bus stop, just a few blocks from my house.
The notion that Christianity and racism are incompatible is, by my first hand experience, ludicrous.
> morality is determined by His rules alone
Sez you. Those atheists, agnostics and other non-Judeo-Christians who nevertheless manage to live lives more "moral" than many Christians dubunk your hypothesis rather quickly.
I was merely making a remark about Kennedy's theology, not addressed to you (so far as I can remember). Most of the "chr*stian right" are Zionists, but Kennedy is a very classical Reformation Protestant, which is very different. He also promotes the notions of religious relativism and religious utilitarianism when he implies that each culture has its own "true" religion which holds it together.
Now, forgive me if I am wrong, but you seem to be implying that G-d and the Bible are an anti-Jewish, chr*stian document, and that therefore enemies of HaShem and the Torah are more "pro-Jewish" than people who acknowledge HaShem and the Torah.
I will give you a little friendly warning. I am a Noachide rather than a chr*stian. I have davnened with Orthodox Jews and still do so twice a year (I live two hours away). I have read the Bible in Hebrew for going on 21 years. I have numerous prayerbooks, two books on Halakhah, and even two tiqquns (which you don't even know what is, and it would take too long to explain it now). I correspond with Orthodox rabbis and Chasidim. The Bible is JEWISH, not chr*stian. G-d is the G-d of Israel, not of chr*stianity. And I am getting a little thin-skinned about all the "religious people hate Jews and we atheists love them, because they're all just like us!" argument.
The Jewish "trinity" is this: Israel, Torah, and The Holy One Blessed Be He, are One." I am sick and tired of people on both sides of the argument who want to divorce and disassociate G-d from the Jewish People and make him into an anti-Semite, or who want to make the Jewish People into the enemy of G-d. This applies to both anti-Semitic "believers" and "philo-Semitic" atheists.
If you are indeed laboring under the unfortunate notion that G-d and the Jews are enemies, or know better and are implying so in order to advance your argument, then I promise you that I whatever my deficiencies I am quite capable of running circles around the likes of you and will make you wish you were never born.
When Mashiach comes he will put a blade to your throat. I dare to venture that it will be very difficult for you to associate G-d or the Torah with the Southern Baptist Convention when that happens.
Nazi's condemned Christ. They called Jesus the "illegitimate son of a Jewish woman". The waffen SS removed all symbols of religion during the French invasion.
Hitler promoted a pagan religion/cult of "Blood and Land".
And why are his racial ideas indistinguishable from centuries of German Lutheran antisemitism?
So, you think Martin Luther wrote Genesis? You are ignorant.
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