Christianity and War (Jesus, priest, Kingdom, followers, minority)

[Quath]

Originally Posted by tomspug

Yeah, uh, explain the Jewish 'pantheon' to me. Exactly how many 'gods' can you prove were Jewish in origin and not borrowed from surrounding cultures. Not only that, show ANY religious Jewish texts that PROMOTE pantheism. You will find that there is none. Just because there are Muslims in America doesn't make America a Muslim nation. Just because there is evidence of pantheism in Jewish history doesn't automatically make the religion pantheistic.

The "Host" in the older parts of the Bible referred to the collections of the gods. The creation story has the god (plural, not singular) creating the heavens and the earth. A prophet's main power came from being privy to the god's council and reporting to others what to do.

Borrowing is a common way to build up a pantheon. In the beginning, the Jews had household gods. Part of the Bible is trying top convince each tribe that all their household gods were really the same god. This is similar to how the Romabs became convinced that Jupiter was also Zeus. The Jews also borrowed gods from the Caanadites. Even Yahweh has a lot of attributes borrowed from them. There is one guy in the Bible who has a name that means "Yahweh is Ba'al." It also appears that Yahweh's consort was Ashera, a goddess.

You are making the assumption that God is the one with the gun. Maybe you don't actually understand what I'm talking about. What do YOU think would make a benevolent God?

A benevolent God would move away from meaningless suffering and towards peace and love. So a benevolent God would never need to order children to be killed or to kill innocents for a crime they did not commit. Such a God would not hold a judgement system that is arbitrary or punishes the wrong people for specific crimes. A benevolent God would not order people to worship him or else send people to hell. (Annhiliation Hell is more benevolent than an eternal torture Hell.)

This is where you refuse to be wrong. Those prophecies have absolutely NOTHING to do with Israel. God is referring to the Babylonians who capture and destroy Israel. The other one is referring to the Assyrians, who capture and destroy Babylon. Are those nations 'God's followers'?

Do you agree that God is ordering people to go kill one another in a war? I apologize for being loose with the term God's followers. It could mean someone who obeys God or Israelites. I was meaning the former here.

Seriously, are you speaking from any point of knowledge at all at this point? Now you're just trying to make fun of God. Please, enlighten me how YOU would like to save the world from eternal separation from God.

I am just commenting that a racially pure version of Jesus as being the only fit sacrifice makes God sound like a supreme racist.

There are so many ways this could have been done different. Here are a few in which the first is what many Trinitarian Christians believe:
1. God sacrifices himself to himself to change a law that he made himself in direct opposition that such a sacrifice must be made by a Levi priest and against the Biblical concept that each is responsible for his own sins.
2. Adam eats fruit. God conjures Jesus. God kills Jesus. God forgives everyone instantly.
3. Adam eats fruit. God says "I am God and I have the power to forgive anyone without a ceremony, therefore I forgive you."
4. God just proclaims that forgiveness is not needed since he made these creations and they are eternally bound to him by that act.
And so on...

Are you trying to argue that war has no purpose whatsoever? You will find that no philosopher in his right mind would agree with you on this point. Hitler would be the ruler of the world if there was no war. Peace can just as easily be attained by a dictator. Why don't you go live in an imaginary world where there is nothing wrong and nothing worth fighting for?

To a deity with unlimited power, war has no purpose other than to spread suffering. There was no threat to the Israelites that God could not have handled. He could have taught the Israelites the idea of negotiations, peace and working together. Instead he taught revenge for deeds done several hundred of years earlier, child killing and the justness of genocide.

Man, you are so much smarter than God. Oh wait, you still don't understand what free will means. Why don't you go back and play Black & White on a PC, where you can pick people up and put them wherever you want. Apparently, this is as deep as your theology can get.

Have you ever questioned the wisdom of God's commands? If not, then you pretty much have proven the main point that war and Christianity can easily go together.

Free will is just the scapegoat Christians give to God to allow for him to commit horrible deeds and still call him good. After all, most Christians believe that God is good and also had free will, so free will does not mean that you have sin. So God could have designed us to have free will and not sin as well.

No, that is a bad analogy. If you sat there and did nothing, that WOULD be an act of free will on your part. If God CHANGED THE LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE, that's a LITTLE different, don't you think?

I don't understand what you are saying. Say a real biological father and God (spiritual father) see an 8 yeard old girl getting gang raped. The biological father would try to stop it and God would not. Therein lies the difference. Saying that God loves us like a father just disrespects what a father's love really is.

And none of this required a change in universal laws. If God interfering is changing universal laws, then the Bible is full of God doing this for the pettiest of things. I much rather God interfere to save a hurt child than to kill David's son for David's adultery. Or I rather God save children from a mud slide instead of sending bears to kill 42 of them for insulting a prophet.

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Originally Posted by tomspug

Yeah, uh, explain the Jewish 'pantheon' to me. Exactly how many 'gods' can you prove were Jewish in origin and not borrowed from surrounding cultures. Not only that, show ANY religious Jewish texts that PROMOTE pantheism. You will find that there is none.

Read 1 Kings. Elijah never advocates monotheism (i.e. belief in the existence of only one god) explicitly. To the polytheist society he would have been preaching to, his instructions work just as well with henotheism (i.e. the belief in the existence of a number of gods, but the worship of only one).

And I'd be interested to see any evidence from you that even YHWH was "Jewish in origin and not borrowed from surrounding cultures."

[Nick Soapdish]

Originally Posted by Quath

Because a Jesus with some blood from other tribes would have meant that the sacrifice would not have worked? That makes God out to be extremely shallow and very racist.

The Jews were God's chosen people. That is because the Christ would be born a Jew. How God decided to lay out the landscape to ensure His message was propagated appropriately was very important.

Originally Posted by Quath

As soon as you say that God is pro just war, then how do you know a war is just? Well, the priests say it is so. God does not chime in. God never says which side of a war he is on. Both sides just assume he is on their side and they feel just in killing each other.

My personal opinion is that a war is just if it is in defense of the country. Jesus does not speak of war.. that is a matter of the state which the Church has no business with. He was more concerned with His kingdom.

Originally Posted by Quath

When you sare saying that God's love is like a Father's love for their child, then this is what you are saying. However, there is no comparison. If I saw my daughter being gangraped and mulitated, i would not sit idly by and let her enjoy her free will. I would intervene as any loving parent would. So it is a bad analogy to say that God's love is like that of a parent.

When did I make that analogy? In any case, any analogy is not perfect. A father does not create the child and lend it each day the child lives. Furthermore, the father does not control the child's afterlife.

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Originally Posted by Nick Soapdish

The Jews were God's chosen people. That is because the Christ would be born a Jew. How God decided to lay out the landscape to ensure His message was propagated appropriately was very important.

The Bible says that the Christ was born a human being as well. Why not make all of humanity "God's chosen people"?

Originally Posted by Nick Soapdish

My personal opinion is that a war is just if it is in defense of the country. Jesus does not speak of war.. that is a matter of the state which the Church has no business with. He was more concerned with His kingdom.

Isn't "His Kingdom" the kingdom which Christians inhabit as well? If, through the death of Christ, Christians are dead to Earthly Law, why wouldn't they be dead to Earthly affairs generally as well?

[Quath]

Originally Posted by Nick Soapdish

The Jews were God's chosen people. That is because the Christ would be born a Jew. How God decided to lay out the landscape to ensure His message was propagated appropriately was very important.

As 9-10ths_Penguin said, God could have made Jesus out of any tribe. God could have gone to every tribe; introduced himself; laid down the laws and picked the tribe that did the best. Instead God picks one race; frees them from slavery; lets them set up a system of slavery; tells them to kill people in the area he is moving them to; and sets up his perfect and eternal laws that Christians will later ignore most of.

My personal opinion is that a war is just if it is in defense of the country. Jesus does not speak of war.. that is a matter of the state which the Church has no business with. He was more concerned with His kingdom.

I agree with you that a defensive war is probably the most just war. However, the wars in the Old Testament were wars of aggression where Joshua was taking lands away from other tribes or getting revengs for actions that occurred hundreds of years earlier.

When did I make that analogy? In any case, any analogy is not perfect. A father does not create the child and lend it each day the child lives. Furthermore, the father does not control the child's afterlife.

This was a reply to tomspug who said "You are right that God is limitless, but so is his love. If you have been a parent you might understand this kind of love. The only times God get involves is when he's making things better, not worse."

I think the analogy is flawed on a very deep level. If we named the attributes of love, we would find that God does not really fit the description. For example, if you love someone, you would not want them to suffer sensely. That is either hatred or apathy.

For example, say someone is surrounded by hungry animals that will kill and eat the person. God could just yank their "spirit" out and bring them to heaven. Why let them go through the suffering of being chewed up?

I think people want God to be loving despite the world they see and the beliefs they have.

[tomspug]

Ack! I'm so behind on this debate! I'll try to address everything...

Originally Posted by 9-10ths_Penguin

Elijah never advocates monotheism (i.e. belief in the existence of only one god) explicitly.

Just because one prophet in the Bible doesn't promote monotheism doesn't mean that he doesn't believe it. Actions speak louder than words, and it's interesting that you choose Elijah, a prophet best known for challenging the pantheistic false prophets to a duel between the one true God and the false ones in front of the entire royal family. Even if he isn't 'quoted' to a particular belief structure, that's probably the worst example you could give.

Quath - I understand your arguments about pantheism (also the Trinity would account for pluralism), but I need you to start quoting the Bible if you're going to challenge it, or maybe some Jewish texts.

Concerning the benevolence of God, it's totally based on your perspective of free will, so I don't want to get into a big debate when we're obviously coming from very starkly different starting points of view on benevolence. I believe that free will is the greatest act of love and that evil and war and pain are due to man's own desire to control, destroy, and conquer. I understand that the idea of a benevolent God seems convoluted when these kinds of things are allowed to exist, but I think the bigger problem is why can't man NOT do those things? Why is it such a human nature to NOT do good?

Do I believe the Bible 100%? I don't know. I think it's pretty hard to accept everything no matter who you are. However, despite what disagreements you can have about it, history happened the way the Bible describes it. Prophecies written before those 'wars' foretold those wars. Maybe the prophecies were wrathful as a warning, a warning that was ignored, so if God gave them fair warning, doesn't that make him benevolent in foretelling destruction and death upon women and children? Maybe I'm stretching here, but I think that kind of makes sense.

However, I cannot agree with you that War and Christianity go easy together. Far from it, my friend. It's war and POWER that go easily together. The Crusades went with the British Empire. Sure, it was done in God's name, but the motivations were mostly monetary, weren't they? The Inquisition was obviously bad, and the Catholic Church has denounced it as such. Was in done in God's name? Yes. Was it CHRISTIAN? Absolutely not. It was done out of fear and want of power, and those things are certainly not exclusive to religion.

In fact, Christianity goes much better with the major positive events. The Anti-Slavery initiative (in Britain and in the US) has only the teachings of the Christian church to thank. The Protestant Reformation was a huge step forward in religious freedom in Europe (even though it was marked with an abhorrent opposition of intolerance). And Europe has the church to thank for the funding of the Renaissance, including the boom in theater, painting, and science (remember how all that 'art' was in churches?).

I mean, name a war in history that you can argue was based ONLY on religion. Religion is sometimes used as an excuse, but never as motive. I mean, it's a HUGE generalization.

[Nick Soapdish]

Originally Posted by 9-10ths_Penguin

In most Western democracies, "the state" is not viewed as an unquestionable authority - in fact, we put in place all sorts of checks, balances, and transparency measures because this is not the case. And the United States was founded on the idea that a tyrannical state is not an authority at all, and should be removed.

I definitely agree. We recognize the government as an authority as in we should pay our taxes, obey the laws, etc.

Originally Posted by 9-10ths_Penguin

As for your examples from nature... if the wolf pack is an example of how our relationship between God and mortals should be, does that mean it's acceptable for a human to try to rip God's throat out if he feels the Almighty has become old and weak?

Not quite... it is not an exact analogy.

Originally Posted by 9-10ths_Penguin

Hmm. I haven't been able to find a good rationale for why one side or the other of the Euthyphro dilemma should be taken as correct. I take it that you have - any particular reason why?

It is the common position of Christianity that God's will dictates what is good. Otherwise, it seems that morality would proceed God.

[Quath]

Originally Posted by tomspug

Quath - I understand your arguments about pantheism (also the Trinity would account for pluralism), but I need you to start quoting the Bible if you're going to challenge it, or maybe some Jewish texts.

There are several places in the Bible that shows belief in different gods and that the followers of God/Yahweh also followed other gods as well. Here are just a few examples:

The following shows that God is talking to other