Posted on 04/10/2010 11:49:41 PM PDT by Steelfish
April 11, 2010 Richard Dawkins: I Will Arrest Pope Benedict XVI Marc Horne
Atheist campaigner Richard Dawkins RICHARD DAWKINS, the atheist campaigner, is planning a legal ambush to have the Pope arrested during his state visit to Britain “for crimes against humanity”.
Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the atheist author, have asked human rights lawyers to produce a case for charging Pope Benedict XVI over his alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic church.
The pair believe they can exploit the same legal principle used to arrest Augusto Pinochet, the late Chilean dictator, when he visited Britain in 1998.
The Pope was embroiled in new controversy this weekend over a letter he signed arguing that the “good of the universal church” should be considered against the defrocking of an American priest who committed sex offences against two boys. It was dated 1985, when he was in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which deals with sex abuse cases.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Right. Because those are happening in the present day; and present two test cases for your alleged "principles".
One is the deliberate killing of infants without even pretending divine sanction; the other is the killing of infants in the present day, claiming ongoing GENERAL divine sanction, not tied to a particular military/territorial campaign.
I called both the latter practices as vile and disgusting, and you’re accusing me for holding those views? Where do you come from, Idiotsville?
No, you must have me confused with some of your friends. Responding to atrocities with merely an exclamation of distaste, not of a claim to universal morality, doesn't make your attack on Judaism (and therefore by implication, Christianity) look like anything more than a pretext. You are more concerned with "gotcha" points from historical texts (which, if they favored Christianity, you would be attacking with abandon) than with the deaths of real children.
Especially those in the present day committed by Hindus against their OWN children, as metmom pointed out in post 574.
As far as the explanation goes, you are a troll.
Cheers!
I called out against those practices for what they truly are: vile and disgusting. What do you do, I'd like to hear. Write eloquent essays on the same?
Metmom's article-reference explanation has already been provided. Refer to my previous post to her.
“unambiguous in message”
Therein lies all of your problems- you are a textualist pure and simple, utterly incapable of admitting contrarian interpretations. Even an ordinary modern-day will is not infrequently contested for discerning the testator’s true intent.
Yet you purport to assign a conclusion “unambiguous in message” and keep repeating this text with blinders to historical and Old testament scholarship with reference to an assembly of text written over several centuries by different authors nuanced by subtext, culture, purpose, audience, language uses, and interpretations. If all this is all beyond your ken then so confess.
I suspect part of this problem lies in the fact that you have consistently relied upon this text only to be exposed of its inherent fallacy and now the post-fall Humpty-Dumpty theory is difficult to reconstruct.
Asking for explanation for seemingly irreconcilable verses, is not an “attack”. That you think that to be the case, tells me enough about how rational you are. This is a kind of behaviour typically expected from Jehadis, too.
Ask Geert Wilders*.
* - Fitna comprises largely of verses directly taken from the Quran. What he got in return, was death threats.
Textualist? Perhaps, because I don’t see divine scripture as needing human re-interpretation. Perhaps this is a Catholic thing, which makes it possible for you to accept such modifications. I hope that you challenge your assumptions every living day, so that the quest for the Truth is never given up on.
I won’t accept re-interpretations, especially not for verses that are plain, simple, and unambiguous. It is impossible for me to accept contorted, MANMADE re-interpretations of such verses, twisting them to such an extent that they are forced to mean the opposite of what they really convey.
Intellectually speaking you are your own worst enemy.
I am aware of that, Steelfish.
It troubles me every single second of every single day.
I won’t mind being humble enough to ask you how you realised your faith. I envy that. A lot.
I’ve noticed that you derive a dubious pleasure out of juvenile outbursts.
I don't know. What could three little girls have done to earn that treatment from their father? Explain away the Pak priest's actions.
Why aren't you condemning those as well?
You keep ignoring them all the while focusing on something the Jews did about 4,000 years ago and for what? What's your point in focusing on this one verse? Why so much attention on it?
And you still aren't willing or interested in addressing present day slaughter of children in the name of religion, or atheism. Until you do, you're going to be a bigger hypocrite than what you are trying to portray God as.
As an exercise, go to (say) the New American Standard version and type each of those verses out longhand into the reply.
Then read the verses to see if you can identify anything in common about them.
Cheers!
This should be a healthy spiritual prescription.
Catholic Apologetics
http://www.catholicapologetics.org/
I want you to do that, as a post, here.
Thanks.
I’ve already condemned them. They are vile and disgusting acts, not in keeping with the teachings of the Gita.
Try again.
You just implied that either
a) some child-slaughter is not condemable
or
b) some child-slaughter is in keeping with Hinduism, or the teachings of the Gita.
Re-check your grammar.
Note the lack of cheap shots.
But since you raised the question: what was this dude's rationale (by his own account) for the killing? Are there any subsects within Hinduism which promote this kind of thing (thinking here of the Thuggees death cult by way of analogy).
Cheers!
Which is why I call out trolls who resort to them.
You don't or you wouldn't be asking.
It's the student who needs to do the homework.
Cheers!
“You just implied that either...”
Umm, no, I didn’t. Killing of children has nothing to do with the Gita, which was my argument through the length of that entire thread, against Steelfish’s accusation to the contrary. Learn to refer to context, please.
Speaking of grammar and erudition, perhaps you need to learn the difference between ‘here’ and ‘hear’ as well, as was apparent from your post on the other thread.
Let’s not be Grammar Nazis, shall we?
I need you to do it, because I want to reveal to you, and to the others following this thread, the flaw in your argument, once and for all.
That you fear and detest doing so, speaks volumes. Instead of making a hundred-thousand inane, meaningless rant-spamming posts that you apparently fail to tire from doing so, you could at least BEGIN to contribute here, by doing yourself what you asked me to do.
Do try.
Thuggies, child-rapists, paedophile Catholic priests, indulgence-sellers, witch-hunters all members of the same tribe.
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