Sunday, November 24, 2013

Modern Day Christian Hypocrisy

Yes, yes, I too would like the answer to that question.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

The "hypocrisy" attack is very anti-intellectual. Scripture nerds who can go into Talmudic scholar mode can rationally explain *almost* everything without having to concede that some laws probably are just arbitrary divine commands. And the latter are virtually always quirky things only specific to religious communities.

The problem with this, is that the nerd (and it's not just scripture) in any case is going to lose the argument. Even if he wins intellectually, it degrades his social status to do so. Talmudic scholar mode is a big turn-off. He would have been better off screaming ALLAH and using force instead. It's more effective against the fedora wearing New Atheist (tm) dweebs.

The sooner people realize what kind of fake debate traps are used to humiliate sincere believers (in anything), the sooner they see that the same tactics are abused on all thinkers. You could call it woman-fu. Muslims subconsciously understand this, and it's why they are winning.

An actual fair debate in theology or philosophy is spread out over very long books, and there is a strong sense of respect on all sides. This doesn't exist in any sphere that matters now.

Kristophr said...

Anonymous:

He would not have been better off using force to answer a religious debate. Go there, and I will cheerfully shoot that person's ass. The only answer to initiating the first use of force is immediate countervailing force.

I am an atheist, but in light of that text, I won't ever use Leviticus to dishonestly twit believers. Mathew makes it very clear that Jesus did not abrogate the entire Torah for believers.

Anonymous said...

If the Reds weren't giving Muslims a window, they would be openly hated for their murders. That hatred is still there, but suppressed by the media. How you can call that "winning" is beyond me, since they are just being used. For what bloody end, I can only imagine genocide with the 20th century as a guide.

If the Reds need an easy political win, they can always cannibalize their Muslims and everyone will love them for it. Europeans are stupid enough for that to work.

Anonymous said...

I'm not a biblical scholar, but are any old testament rules applicable to Christians? The old testament was written by Jews way before Christianity existed so..

I don't know the answer

Anonymous said...

Yes, the 10 commandments are still considered binding. So much so, that the any disobedience of them is considered a mortal sin by the Catholic Church.

MalcolmS said...

All dietary laws in the Old Testament were eliminated by the command of God when St Peter saw a vision of unclean animals and was commanded by God to eat them.

The Old Testament laws were part of a contract explicitly between God and the Jewish people. They never applied to other nations.

The elders of the early Christian church decided around AD 50 that the only laws that applied to non-Jewish believers were to not worship idols, avoid sexual immorality, meat from strangled animals and from blood.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Jerusalem

That's it. So don't worry about what cloth mixture anyone wears or what crop mixtures are grown in the field. But under the sexual immorality clause, the ghey and, for that matter, period sex, as well as incest and rape, are right out.

(These are similar to the laws believed to have been applied to the pre-Jewish Noah.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Laws_of_Noah)

So there is no hypocrisy in not following Old Testament dietary and other laws while still condemning homosex.


Anonymous said...

"He would not have been better off using force to answer a religious debate. Go there, and I will cheerfully shoot that person's ass. The only answer to initiating the first use of force is immediate countervailing force."

Haha! I respect that courage, if you really mean it literally, but it's not collectively found in most Western countries. The point is, preemptive force of some form (especially demographic muscle) is what is most appropriate against passive-aggression. Muslims understand this in a way that Talmudic scholars never will.

People need to recognize a tribal situation for what it is. Reason will never work on another tribe.

Dwight House said...

I don't understand this post.

You title it "Modern Day Christian Hypocrisy" and then express desire to know the answer to a question that is the title of another post, namely: "Which of the moral rules in the Old Testament are still binding on Christians?"

However, if you had read the post, you would see the answer to the question listed in the same post.

Furthermore, as the son of a Preacher, I have a hard time believing that you don't already know the answer, or at least know the answer a reasonably well informed Christian would give to this question (which incidentally, is the same answer given in the post).

This is a good question, and is somewhere in the middle between easy and hard Christian questions. The question is based on the assumption that, unlike the laws made by governments today, God's laws must always be absolute, and binding to everyone throughout history, regardless of context. Some of God's laws are. Most, however, are context-sensitive to specific times, places, and peoples. The largest and most written about context is that of the ancient Israelites, as they represented the only group of people God directly ruled as their government and legal authority, rather than being simply the religious and moral authority.