Posted on 03/10/2002 11:53:20 AM PST by JediGirl
Let me tell you what little I know about Michael Shermer, Jim Lippard, and that crowd and, granted it's pretty sparse, I suspect it's worth adding to whatever kind of weighting system you use in evaluating stuff you get from that direction.
It's one thing to claim to be skeptical, to have a skeptical attitude, to be from Missouri etc. etc. It's another thing to claim to be on some sort of mission from God to save western civilization and the white race from every sort of radical or unusual idea which ever comes down the highway, or to be some sort of a masterdebunker as Lippard and Shermer claim. That almost amounts to a claim of omniscience since, in real life, nobody has the time and energy for that, much less the talent.
In 1994 the first of a number of major Kronia (www.kronia.com) neo-catastrophism conferences took place in Portland Ore. and Shermer sent to that conference as his representative/reporter/semi-official eyes and ears an old psychotic by the name of Ellenberger who has been on another mission from God to annoy and intimidate people in Velikovsky/neo-catastrophist circles and generally attempt to break up such gatherings via disorderly conduct and who was declared to be persona-non-grata, i.e. not allowed in the door at the Portland conference aforehand, and Shermer knew this before sending Ellenberger there.
Now, near as I can tell, Shermer has a fiduciary responsibility to the people who shell out the $30/year or whatever a subscription to his rag costs because they are interested in being kept abreast of unusual scientific news and what not, to attempt to provide them with such news and, in my judgement, sending Ellenberger to the Portland conference amounted to a violation of that responsibility and, in fact, amounted to choosing to make a statement of some sort rather than attempt to provide his readers with any real information, since he could as easily have sent somebody who would have been allowed in.
That's basically all I know about Shermer; granted it's not much, but it's enough to prevent me from taking the guy seriously. It indicates, to me at least, that the guy is operating in accordance to some sort of an ideological program rather than any sort of a desire to seek truth or anything like that.
Are you prescient? I do not recall ever being to your website. And the only time I mentioned any possibility of knowing what is on your site comes in my post immediately after the one that I am answering. I presume it comes from some feeling of guilt that you include me in the to line.
Are you prescient? I do not recall ever being to your website. And the only time I mentioned any possibility of knowing what is on your site comes in my post immediately after the one that I am answering. I presume it comes from some feeling of guilt that you include me in the to line.
Not all creationists are like this. You, for instance, come back with well-researched responses (which is good because it keeps me on my toes). I only revert to my frustratiin lexicon with medved (for his spamming and his inability to double check his "theories"), gore3000 for his inability to see anything posted to him and then claiming that no one answers his questions, and f.christian because his posts are incoherent. My "ad hominem" attacks against those three are usually liberally sprinkled with references to research or attempts to "run the numbers" to see if what they are claiming is feasible.
Which is fine, though you'd appear to be in the minority. I'd be interested to know whether you're calling all organized religion corrupt, or just some variants.
I would love it if my kids could have attended a high school that allowed or encouraged rip-snorting debates over philosophical and religious issues, but there are limits to what is debateable and what is time-wasting.
Okay to being frustrated with someone not accepting your evidence.
Well excuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me for living!
Exactly God's point and the idea behind his perfect mercy and the topic we are discussing. I actually believe you are catching on.
Wow. I thought I was pointing out an absurdity in your argument - the absurdity of inherited guilt. But if that means I'm "catching on" to what you really believe, then what I'm catching on to horrifies me. Maybe you're not talking about inherited guilt per se, but the way you think of us is no better than how Muslims think of us: For them we're mere dream particles of Allah, who will forget about us if we step out of line. The implications you make from this are somewhat different than with Islam, but the basic premise is still very toxic. (IMO)
I accept no guilt for the so-called crime of merely existing, nor for anything my distant ancestors may have done.
As pointed out above (unless you're perfect), this statement is not at issue. Therefore, not a valid argument. God is not holding you accountable for anyone else's problems.
Ah, but He is! I was baptized into the Catholic Church when I was a couple weeks old, to erase my Original Sin. If I was Protestant, I'd be baptized later when I was able to give "informed consent" to the baptism, but it'd still be the same thing. Confession is where we confess our sins for what we have actually done to harm others. Original Sin is all about inherited guilt.
The second problem is the scapegoat. Just thinking off the top of my head, a rigorously just yet merciful response would simply entail forgiveness of whatever actual sins we as individuals commit, and for which we truly repent & try to pay back the damages.
So many flaws; where to start. First, perfect justice requires perfect punishment. Someone must pay for the crime or else it wouldn't be perfect justice. God cannot deny himself. Second, as pointed out above, there is no "scapegoat", God needed to satisfy perfect mercy and he did it with himself, once again no third party involved. Third, repentence is good and God accepts that, but someone still must pay for the crime or perfect justice would not be served.
Everybody is either more or less perfect than someone else. What's the general principle you are assuming here? It's this:
But if we apply this argument to people in general, we come up with this:
Clearly wrong.
I think the whole idea of "mercy" is based on not enforcing one's right to restitution or revenge.
Nothing to do with either of these, mercy is the setting aside of punishment. Restitution and revenge are not in play here. God will set aside our deserved punishment because he is merciful, but this only satisfies half of the equation. God must also satisfy perfect justice. Someone must suffer the consequences of sin.
But mercy is precisely the setting aside of just punishment! If I forgive Willie's stealing my purse, there's no more to be done. If my forgiveness is contingent on Willie giving me my purse back or paying me back in some other way, fine. But would that be "more perfect mercy?" "Less perfect mercy?" I don't think your theory of perfect justice can answer that.
(As for justice vs. restitution and/or revenge: What else could punishment consist of? But that's a side argument, so we can agree to disagree on that. Though I'd be interested to know just what punishment consists of, if not either restitution nor revenge.)
It's simple, to the point, and deals with the debt the criminal owes to the victim.
But fails to answer the question of perfect justice. God cannot deny himself. Therefore this is flawed thinking, we are not discussing debt, but justice (someone must be punished) and in God's mercy, the transference of that punishment, in essence to himself.
But you cannot divorce "justice" from the "debt". "Justice" isn't some floating abstraction, disconnected from the harm someone initiated on an innocent victim. There can't be a crime without a debt incurred, except if the law being broken is flawed & arbitrary. No, Justice has everything to do with paying the debt, and mercy consists of satisfying the debt. Nothing more.
Thanks, I'm discovering here that there are indeed quite different interpretations of the same religion!
Seeing that modern atheism arose as a reaction against the wars of religion in Western Europe after the collapse of confessional unity within the Patriarchate of Rome, it, as an indentifiable movement, is about 400 years old. I propose considering a body count for the first 400 years of each movement.
Let's see:
I shudder to think what the death-toll from secularist atheism will look like by the time it is as old as Christianity was when the 30-Years war ended.
Many other social problems such as drug abuse and adultery and drug abuse are also not motivated by physical pleasure. People become drug abusers because of poor self-esteem and poor judgement, not physical pleasure. Anyone with even the most vague knowledge of drugs will know that while they may provide a short-term "hit", they eventually burn out the pleasure centres in your brain, thus robbing you of all life's physical pleasures. In the long term, drugs reduce physical pleasure. And what of adultery? Adultery is motivated by the excitement of its illicit nature and perhaps by dissatisfaction with one's marriage. However, to put it bluntly, another woman's vagina will not feel a whole lot different than your wife's vagina. To put it even more bluntly, the vagina of the most beautiful woman in the world won't feel any better than the vagina of an unattractive woman. Men stray for myriad psychological reasons, none of which have anything to do with physical pleasure. In the end, adultery is a relationship problem, not a hedonist problem.
So let me get this straight, rape is not pleasurable, but rapists rape people "to get off?" And adultery isn't really pleasurable or hedonistic? Then "pleasure" is redesignated as just "physical pleasure."
But that's silly, because neither hedonism nor religious doctrines of morality make any distinction between physical or other types of pleasure.
There are lots of different kinds of secularism, not all are hedonistic or materialistic. The communists weren't interested in hedonism, they wanted everyone to fall into line. They weren't interested in people experiencing pleasure. "Secularism" is being defined too narrowly here.
False premise.
Quite frankly, salvation doesn't mean a whole lot when the person "saving" you is the same person who's threatening you! The notion of Christian salvation is quite frankly the most incredibly audacious example of spin-doctoring in human history. If a mugger holds a gun to your head and says that out of his love for you, he will "save" you from his own violence as long as you give him your money, would you think him wondrously merciful? Would you be glad you ran into him? Or would you think that he's a deranged, violent sociopath?
"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell."--Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)Does that answer those questions? Just as "Evolution theory identifies natural selection as an existing mechanism in nature. It did not invent it. It does not praise it. It does not pass any kind of moral judgement upon it. Evolution theory only describes it. Don't shoot the messenger," Christian doctrine is not accepted by most Christians because it's nice, or right, or good, it's accepted because they think it's true. Then based on that understanding of the Bible, they decide what is right, and good, and nice.
Is there not one US Constitution?
But only religion has claimed to kill on the direct command of God.
Interesting justification.
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