Butterflies and bull feathers

Some comments I left at Beggars All:

steve said...

It’s ironic that a Mohammedan would presume to compare sovereign grace to rape when you consider the fact that Islam not only has the custom of honor-killings, but honor-rapings (i.e. gang-raping a girl/woman who “shamed” her family, even if she was the innocent victim).

steve said...
Ken said...

"I am grateful the Grandverbalizer19 sometimes speaks out against violence and hypocrisy from other Muslims..."

But isn't that rather disingenuous on his part? He has no voice in the Muslim world. He's just an American kid who converted to American-style Islam, and speaks out from the safety of his American surroundings.

Effective criticism must come from the top down. From political and religious representatives in positions of power and prestige throughout the Muslim world.

He doesn't have the luxury of defining or redefining Islam to make it more humane or democratic. Islam defines him. So he can't disassociate himself from the institutional violence and hypocrisy of his adopted religion. It's a package deal.

Let him go to Saudi Arabia, stand on a street corner with a megaphone, and see what happens to him when he tries to peddle his libertarian form of Islam at the epicenter.

thegrandverbalizer19 said...

“Wow! Can sure feel the love and grace over here!”

You set the tone with your incendiary “rape” analogy.

“Steve first off I'm not a Mohammedan. Just so you know that terminology is 100 plus years out dated. So I just needed to bring you up to speed.”

I don’t capitulate to politically correct usage.

“Mohammedan” is accurate. You don’t follow the true God. Rather, you worship the projection of a false prophet.

“There is major flaws with this. 1) It assumes that people who go to the hospital and give consent do so of their own free will and volition outside of the will of God. To admit this is pantheism and shirk-association of partners with God.”

i) It makes no such assumption. I wasn’t contrasting those who give consent with those who don’t. I was simply responding to Waltz’ defamatory comparison between rape and acting on behalf of a second party without his consent.

ii) As a Calvinist, I don’t think any man either can or does act outside the will (i.e. decree) of God.

“2) Your deity set up the whole scenario to begin with! Don't try and play nice.”

i) That’s one of the things which makes him God. The Creator of the world.

ii) Do you think that Allah didn’t set up the whole scenario to begin with?

“The analogy we are looking at is someone who unleashes a virus upon humanity and than introduces the cure and says to everyone see how great I am that I have stepped in and given vacinations to people so far gone out of their mind that they cannot speak of their own.”

i) Unless you think natural and moral evils take place outside the will of Allah, you’re in the same boat.

ii) The Fall was an evil event, considered in isolation. However, the Fall also faciliates various greater, incommensurable, and second-order goods.

Apart from the Fall, you and I wouldn’t be here. If Adam never fell, the genealogy of man would branch off in a very different direction. Different human beings would take our place. So there are tradeoffs. A fallen world comes at a cost, but it also has compensatory benefits which are unobtainable in an unfallen world.

“The nail in the coffin is this. What would you say of Physicians who upon seeing the sick, crippled and dying capraciously upon their own whim chose which ones they would save and which they would not?”

i) Since the God of biblical Calvinism doesn’t act “capriciously” on a “whim,” you’re burning a straw man.

To the contrary, he acts rationally, purposefully, and justly.

If you think otherwise, then you need to present an actual argument. Tendentious adjectives won’t do the trick.

ii) If the patient was a suicide bomber (you know, the kind that your religion multiplies like rabbits), then I’d commend the physician for letting him die of his wounds while tending to the needs of his victims.

thegrandverbalizer19 said...

“Well steve my boy, I set no tone that was not already given by your Christian brethern.”

Well, my boy. Ken, for one, is the very model of the Christian gentleman, so if you were truly calibrating your tone to match the tone of my Christian brethren, then you should take a cue from Ken. It’s his post.

“Steve please do not give such conflicting messages. I am seeing a man desperately trying to flash 'lion' but all I am seeing are feathers?”

And all I’m seeing are bull feathers from the bull verbalizer. But do continue.

“So Adam and Eve sinned with the decree of Allah?”

i) If by “Allah” you mean the Mohammedan deity, then they didn’t sin by his decree since Allah (in that sense) is a nonentity.

ii) But if you’re using “Allah” as simply the Arabic name for God, as Arab Christians do, then, yes, God decreed the Fall.

“If there are 'second-order goods' pray do tell what are the first-order goods?”

The unfallen world.

“*Ahem* How does that help establish your original analogy again? So you capitulate very good!”

It’s irrelevant to my original analogy. I was merely responding to your irrelevant objection.

“Such as? For example would we be aware that one of Allah's attributes is the forgiver?”

One can’t experience the grace of God in a sinless world. So that’s an example of a second-order good.

“Really? Than let's see some Sola Scriptura in action shall we. Textual evidence please?”

Take Rom 9:17,22-23, where God gives an underlying rationale for election and reprobation.

“What you see as tendentious I see is objective, especially in the light of such sloppy analogy.”

You’ve given us your subjective assertion in lieu of any objective argument.

“I'll take this tired statement of yours and put it up on my shelf; with all the others made by Caucasian males over the age of 50;whom see a world they once controlled slowly giving way to a world of colour.”

The Mideast was Christian long before it was overrun by the Saracens. Do you classify Arab Christians as “Caucasians”?

And why do Mohammedans enslave and murder Black African Christians if they cherish peoples of colour?

You can also spare me the faux radical chic line about “males.” Islam is the most male chauvinistic religion on earth. A religion by and for men. A religion which celebrates the most brutal forms of misogyny while sanctioning male libertinism to a fare-thee-well.

steve said...
David Waltz said...

"Up to your usual caustic and misrepresenting behavior I see...You have (and I suspect with a dark, dubious and premeditated purpose in mind) implied that I have accused the Reformed position on soteriology as 'rape'; I did not do so, and I do not believe such. All I said is that I 'understand' the position of those who actually do so—understanding another position is not an endorsement (well, except to those who seem to relish in misrepresenting others for personal pleasure)."

Thanks for illustrating your capacity for dissimulation. What you've now done is to misrepresent your original statement. But this is what you originally said–this is what I responded to:

"I personally do not like the term 'rape' for the Reformed position concerning regeneration (i.e being born again) prior to belief. Yet with that said, I think I understand why non-Reformed folk invoke the term, for despite protestations, when one breaks down Reformed soteriology, one is left with the fact that regeneration occurs against the will of the unregenerate sinner—the sinner has NO CHOICE in the matter; as such, there is some truth to the claim that it is “a forced love."

That goes well beyond mere intellectual understanding of the objection. Rather, that expresses sympathy with the objection. "That...despite protestations, when one breaks [it] down...one is left with the fact...as such, there is some truth in the claim it is 'a forced love.'"

So you object to the rhetoric of "rape," but not the underlying charge.

When you left the church of Rome, I kept my silence. I gave you your space.

It was my hope that you might be leaving error for truth, rather than leaving one error for yet another error.

But, no, one of your first moves was to make yourself a doormat for Islam–even though Islam has been the sworn enemy of the Christian faith since its inception.

You’re not a truth-seeker, David. You’re a social butterfly who flits from one pretty flower to another. For you, it’s a noncommittal exercise in comparative religion, like Huston Smith. You’re tolerant of everything except commitment. The consummate syncretist. “Fair” to all and faithful to none.