Answer to 9.5 years younger @Bloody_Wolf Yeah so wherever you are, whoever you are I'm challenging your argument in this topic.
First of all...Christians don't kill other people just for holding different beliefs. They do believe that theirs is the only way to God, but come on, no one in a Christian church would go crazy just because a Buddhist monk decided to walk in the door. I do remember the Crusades, but that was simply a political plot to gain land under the guise of a holy war. The church had nothing to do with it. As for "turning the other cheek," this doesn't mean Christians are pacifists, or allow themselves to be trod upon. It just means they don't go around retaliating against people all the time.
To address the hypocrisy issue, I agree it exists and is a major problem. In fact, the church is aware of it. The fact is that everyone will give in to sin sometimes, but anyone who calls himself a Christian and purposely goes on sinning is just going to cause trouble for himself and make others think that Christians are no different from any other people when it comes to bad behavior.
As for human nature, I've noticed that almost invariably, when left to their own devices, humans will choose evil over good. Also, as strange as this may sound, truth and morality are not relative concepts. They are absolute. Think about it; anyone who believes in physics believes in absolute truth. Is it not an absolute statement to say, "There exists a force in our universe called gravity which holds its structure together." ? Gravity works. That's an absolute statement. I don't believe in situational ethics, either. Things like murder and thievery will always be wrong, and no situation or circumstance can change that. There will always be good and evil, right and wrong.
Whew - feeling a bit rantish...better quit before I write a whole book in this post! XD
First of all...Christians don't kill other people just for holding different beliefs. (…)
I do remember the Crusades, but that was simply a political plot to gain land under the guise of a holy war. The church had nothing to do with it.
First of all you are generalizing by using present simple tense in the beginning, because:
Over the centuries Christians were performing genocides over other religion/religions for holding different beliefs (called heresies), it was called Inquisition primarily pagans and then protestants (also Christians but on the other side of schisms), after that Aborigines in time of colonisation.
And about Crusades: Crusade can be announced only by the pope. The first Crusade started in 1096. The main reason of it according to Wikipedia (reliable article) was the fact that the emperor of Byzantium introduced Muslims to the pope Alexander II as awful pagans. For some people it was a plot to gain land, for some to defend borders but for majority of participants it was for the God (more or less hypocrisy involved). Pope declared that every earlier and further sin will be forgiven… and one can only imagine where did that declaration lead medieval soldiers… The slogan of the Crusaders was: “God wills it!”
They do believe that theirs is the only way to God, but come on, no one in a Christian church would go crazy just because a Buddhist monk decided to walk in the door.
Another generalization: There’s no assurance that in some church there won’t be a xenophobe at given moment. And believe me – one could find an excuse for violence (most certainly not performed directly in a church) – like f.e. retaliation:
As for "turning the other cheek," this doesn't mean Christians are pacifists, or allow themselves to be trod upon. It just means they don't go around retaliating against people all the time.
This time I’ll cite some of the Nazi’s ideology that also derives from Christianity. Hitler in one of his explanations:
“My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. ...Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. ...”
Most Nazis worship Hitler and his interpretations of the Bible. Nazi Christians might strike for their never exhausted need of revenge to any Yew (and it seems that also to any apparent confessor of other faith). But also a Christian doesn’t need to be Nazi to have extremist notions and be intolerant against other religions. I mean that in every group of people there are good and evil people and upbringing with Christian faith doesn’t guarantee that a person will be good and tolerant for neighbours. There are many more factors to that than just a faith (namely whole bunch of nature, nurture and society factors). Also there are more peaceful religions, although not all are as peaceful. Having a proper Christian upbringing certainly is a positive factor.
To address the hypocrisy issue, I agree it exists and is a major problem. In fact, the church is aware of it.
What do you mean by that? There are many scandals caused by priests, which the Church always tries to fix, but I think that by hypocrisy you meant any sin done by priests. This claim needs sources or at the very least more explanation for some credibility.
The fact is that everyone will give in to sin sometimes, but anyone who calls himself a Christian and purposely goes on sinning is just going to cause trouble for himself and make others think that Christians are no different from any other people when it comes to bad behavior.
So… somebody would be right? No matter if it is Christian, Jew or other religion – everybody who does evil deeds has the same fault (in the same circumstances) for his/her behavior. What you had written makes me think that you consider Christians as better people than confessors of other faiths, because only if they go on sinning they are no different to other people who do so. So otherwise we, Christians, are better people than other? That fights with these quotes from the Bible:
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 32:8
“So Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, (…)” Acts 10:34
As for human nature, I've noticed that almost invariably, when left to their own devices, humans will choose evil over good.
I, on the other hand, have noticed that almost invariably people when left to their own devices will choose these options which give the best results costing the least and it is most of the time choosing good well over evil and (or, well there’s always something between these two extremes, the better option). If by “left to their own devices” you mean: live without the guidance of the Bible, then I think that people might act good without ever reading the Book. Many other religions also predicate good deeds and even people who are atheists might have many virtues guaranteeing good choices over evil. Virtues which were developed by some other means.
Also, as strange as this may sound, truth and morality are not relative concepts. They are absolute. Think about it; anyone who believes in physics believes in absolute truth. Is it not an absolute statement to say, "There exists a force in our universe called gravity which holds its structure together." ? Gravity works. That's an absolute statement.
I found an article which was saying same things and these are from a book called “True Truth: Defending Absolute Truth in a Relativistic World” by Art Lindsley.
Basically this book blames relativism for causing religious absolutism which led to Inquisition, Crusades and Nazism and then author creates the new, reformed, absolute truths. I didn’t have an opportunity to read more than a review of that book. I wasn't sure if this was all made up before I had searched for Absolute Truth in the Bible:
“Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”
John 14:6
"But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.
John 16:3
“God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?”
Numbers 23:19
You see, according to these quotes God is the absolute Truth. If you consider vision of truth of every person as absolute then your interpretations of the Bible are… specific and you just didn’t understand your sources of information – which as it turned out are also interpretations of the Bible made by the author. I wholeheartedly don’t agree with one thing he had done in his book: justifying religious absolutism by blaming relativism of it. Give me a break! The reason why Inquisiton looked as it looked was because Christians were blinkered by oppressive absolutism, they were totally intolerant for new religions (which they called heresies), because of treating Christianity as the one and only acceptable religion and its precepts as absolute (there were exceptions). According to Wikipedia at start the Church was trying persuasion, but when it didn’t work the real Inquisition started. They were sentencing people to death after trials (often including tortures) which couldn’t result in innocence. Allegedly priests started to perform the trials and sentences to prevent secular lynches – even worse in results.
To sum up: it is your thing if you believe in the content of this book – it’s author’s attempt and not absolute truths composed on a church council. Truth is relative. Some people might believe in things that are false for others, I will provide some examples but first let’s come back to the theory of gravity. I’m not saying that it is at any point fault (I think that it would be pointless to do so), but in science theories might be challenged and denied if there is enough evidence from studies. That happened many times throughout the ages, as examples: The list of superseded scientific theories.
It’s good to take scientific theories as truth and that would be ridiculous to deny many of them, but if there happens to be proofs denying them people shouldn’t defend these theories and treat them as absolute. So I hope that you see how truth is often situational...
And morality… It’s good to be governed by a healthy morality in life. But we can’t expect that every person in the world, or at least from one faith will adopt the same absolute morality – it is a fictional view on this subject, it’s impossible.
Also countries have laws that at given point should be respected, it’s good to look at them as absolute at very least to avoid penalties, but also because they are precisely described and try involving many possibilities. Also in this case I can’t tell that there aren’t any situational/relative laws. Also every country (in USA every State) have differences in law. It would be great if all the people in the world would adopt Geneva Conventions, but you can’t expect to make that happen f.e. in dictatorship countries.
I don't believe in situational ethics, either. Things like murder and thievery will always be wrong, and no situation or circumstance can change that. There will always be good and evil, right and wrong.
And I believe in them. Thievery of food done by starving people and murder caused in self defense are my examples. Every court in civilized country will treat these as special circumstances and lower the sentence. The Bible also says this about such situations:
Thievery in starvation:
"People do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his appetite when he is hungry, but if he is caught, he will pay sevenfold; he will give all the goods of his house."
Killing in self-defense:
“If a thief is found breaking in and is struck so that he dies, there shall be no bloodguilt for him”
Also some killing in war is justified in the Bible, because God Himself dictated battles to be fought and killing is inseparable part of wars.
Quote from from another article:
“The Bible never condemns the actions of a soldier following orders on a battlefield.”
To square this thought away the article says that every killing leaves a stigma and that is why God told David:
“You are not to build a house for my Name, because you are a warrior and have shed blood”
1 Chronicles 28:3
Quote from the Bible:
“And the Lord said to Joshua, “Do not fear and do not be dismayed. Take all the fighting men with you, and arise, go up to Ai. See, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, and his people, his city, and his land. 2 And you shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king. Only its spoil and its livestock you shall take as plunder for yourselves. Lay an ambush against the city, behind it.”
Joshua 8:1-2
All in all I didn’t agree with almost anything from your argument even if I’m also a Christian (Catholic). That isn’t 100% caused by the fact that it’s a competition. The game is called “How FishPreferred are you?” and yet these are my arguments - I didn’t try to answer like the host would (I have no idea how anyway). Also lack of facts and claims without any support of articles made your argument very “easy” to attack. I mean there was so much to attack that I don’t know if in the end I answered properly on your argument.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition
https://www.openbible.info/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades/
https://www.gotquestions.org/killing-in-war.html
https://www.gotquestions.org/absolute-truth.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superseded_scientific_theories
https://www.amazon.com/True-Truth-Defending-Absolute-Relativistic/dp/0830832351
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2430792/jewish/The-Spanish-Inquisition.htm
I just hope that some of my arguments will match up to yours @FishPreferred and I’ll get more than 20 pisca XD
