tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post5077469950523737996..comments2024-03-27T17:15:37.606-04:00Comments on Triablogue: Can We Be Good Without God?Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17809283662428917799noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-19323296423163788312010-03-21T22:53:56.267-04:002010-03-21T22:53:56.267-04:00"it doesn't follow that you should be bad..."it doesn't follow that you should be bad"<br /><br />Admittedly, I have no college level philosophy under my belt, so I may be missing something, but if there is no morality, then where does Ruse even get the categories of "good" and "bad" to begin with????<br /><br />If we lived in his world he wouldn't last 5 minutes. For if it REALLY was as he describes, then I don't see any reason why I shouldn't kill him and take everything he has as fast as I possibly can.<br /><br />Thank God we don't live in his world. Or rather, that his world does not exist.JIBBShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09694225940522888649noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-50487138287119586142010-03-21T20:56:08.484-04:002010-03-21T20:56:08.484-04:00Regarding Deut. 21:10-14, Steve wrote, "Since...Regarding Deut. 21:10-14, Steve wrote, "Since I, for one, have already discussed this passage..."<br /><br />Here is what Steve wrote elsewhere (Blinded by the light; Aug. 12, 2006):<br /><br />Todd: Rape is wrong, unless the Lord has allowed you to take a woman without her consent (Deuteronomy 21:10-14) in which case it's AOK.<br />("When you go out to war against your enemies and the LORD, your God, delivers them into your hand, so that you take captives, if you see a comely woman among the captives and become so enamored of her that you wish to have her as wife, you may take her home to your house ... but you shall not sell her or enslave her, since she was married to you UNDER COMPULSION." )<br /><br />Steve: <br /><br />1.The disposition of female POWs is a special case of the general predicament which Gene, among others, has already addressed.<br /><br />2.Beyond that, I’d say something else.<br /><br />In the ANE, marriages were arranged marriages. They were marriages of convenience, negotiated by the paterfamilias or elder brother with his counterpart. <br /><br />Marriage was an economic institution, concerned with legitimate lines of inheritance as well as provision for the elderly.<br /><br />In a tribal society, land was common property, belonging to the respective clan.<br /><br />This the primary reason for the patriarchal custom of endogamy.*<br /><br />And there was no welfare state to care for the elderly. <br /><br />Todd is judging Deut 21:10-14 by the anachronistic model of legally and financially independent men and women in a society structured by the nuclear families who fall in love and tie the knot. But ANE marriage was never consensual in that romantic, libertarian sense.<br /><br />Aside from the fact that the contemporary model has not been distinguished by its stability, it assumes a socioeconomic infrastructure which was nonexistent in the ANE.<br /><br />*BTW, I believe it was Todd who earlier noted an apparent or actual discrepancy between patriarchal customs and the Mosaic Law, with its forbidden degrees of consanguinity.<br /><br />But this would furnish evidence for the historical accuracy of the respective accounts. If the Pentateuch were composed during the Babylonian Exile, then the redactors would lack the historical know-how to distinguish between patriarchal customs and the Mosaic Law. Rather, they’d unwittingly retroject a 1st millennium perspective on both epochs.bellerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15263644056413736693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-11009857307079282572010-03-21T10:55:42.701-04:002010-03-21T10:55:42.701-04:00Is Ruse a professional philosopher?
Rob,
What if...Is Ruse a professional philosopher?<br /><br /><br />Rob,<br />What if I did choose to go ahead and do that to my future Iraqi bride? How do you know it would be wrong? If you don't know whether it would be wrong, why complain about it?Rhologyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14245825667079220242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-87039342583687979652010-03-21T02:49:01.146-04:002010-03-21T02:49:01.146-04:00Does this mean that you can just go out and rape a...<i>Does this mean that you can just go out and rape and pillage, behave like an ancient Roman grabbing Sabine women? Not at all. I said that there are no grounds for being good. It doesn't follow that you should be bad.</i><br /><br />This comes from a professional philosopher.<br />Think about it.<br /><br />It's a sad, sad world.<br /><br />Let me try to translate this stupidity:<br /><i>But isn't it the case that "There are no obligations whatsoever from refraining from any action whatsoever" implies "There are no obligations whatsoever from refraining from from certain actions"? No, because "There are no obligations whatsoever from refraining from any action whatsoever" does not imply that "There are no obligations whatsoever to perform certain actions".</i><br /><br />THIS IS WRITTEN BY A PROFESSIONAL!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-84186274938561007832010-03-21T02:21:55.869-04:002010-03-21T02:21:55.869-04:00Dusman: "I will be very direct and will pull...<b>Dusman</b>: <i>"I will be very direct and will pull no punches when it comes to exposing Ruse's ruse for the lie that it is."</i><br /><br />I, for one, prefer it that way. <br /><br />And for that matter, did John the Baptist pull punches? <br /><br />And what did Jesus say about John the Baptist?Truth Unites... and Divideshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08891402278361538353noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-64663808969147936042010-03-20T21:51:33.880-04:002010-03-20T21:51:33.880-04:00Hi Rob,
You asked,
"Say I realized I had no...Hi Rob,<br /><br />You asked,<br /><br /><i>"Say I realized I had no sense of morals and I wanted to understand what God sees as moral. Should I pray and ask for guidance, or does God not reveal His will that directly to us anymore?"</i><br /><br />If you want to know God's will you must know God's word and know which Law you are under in order to please God. Prayer divorced from the word is a waste of time since you will fail to pray in accordance with God's will if you don't know God's word. It is important to note that I am about to say in response does not necessarily reflect the views of the rest of the contributors of this blog. <br /><br />The entire Mosaic Law was binding on the nation of Israel alone and it was inevitably tied to Old Covenant that Israel was under. The Mosaic Law is not binding as a unit upon the church of Jesus Christ today because we are under the New Covenant and with the New Covenant comes different laws. There are some commands that transcend all eras (i.e., the Greatest Commandment of Deut. 6:5/Lev. 19:18 cf. Matthew 22:37-40) and there are some commands that are brought over from the Mosaic Law (9 of the 10 commandments) that are now part of the New Covenant Law of Christ, but these "brought over" laws are now considered fully part of Christ's Law. Thus, believers today are under the Law of Christ and not the Law of Moses. <br /><br /><i>"Should I just open the Bible, hoping for moral clarity on this or that situation?"</i><br /><br />Yes, but per the brief clarification above.<br /><br />Deuteronomy 21:10-14 should be taken at face value <b>only for the ancient Israelite living in a physical, theocratic kingdom.</b> This law was part of the Mosaic Law and thus, it is no longer binding. <br /><br />You go on to say,<br /><br /><i>"If you mock me, isn't this an implicit acknowledgment that God's commands might sometimes be seen as morally offensive: therefore, you're sitting on judgment upon His decrees, no?"</i><br /><br />My desire is not to mock you, only to answer your questions to the best of my ability. It is true that God's commands can be viewed as morally offensive, but regardless of whether it is the Law of Moses or the Law of Christ, unbelievers will always take offense at God's commands since they are God-haters by nature and by choice. <br /><br /><i>"Here I am, on a "God-ordained" mission in Iraq started by a Bible-believing President (well, at least before that Communist took office)."</i><br /><br />LOL! I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing at the "communist" part. :-)<br /><br /><i>"Is there a passage from Scripture that clearly suggests such actions would be immoral? If so, I'm not aware of it."</i><br /><br />Yes, there is Scripture that clearly teaches that such things would be sinful today. My theology of Law teaches that some things that were perfectly holy, righteous, and good under the Mosaic Law would be sinful today under the Law of Christ. For you to attempt to do what was commanded by God through Moses in Deuteronomy 21:10-14 would be sinful today. This is because President Bush is not the God-appointed King over Israel, a physical theocratic kingdom, nor are we under the Mosaic Law/Old Covenant. We are in a different era with different laws (cf. Galatians 4:21-31; Ephesians 2:15; Colossians 2:16-17; Hebrews 8:13). What applied under one covenantal era doesn't necessarily apply under this era. For example, to hate the enemies of Israel and hack them up in pieces as commanded by God in the OT was a righteous and holy thing to do as directed by God (Deut. 23:3-6; Joshua 6:15-21; Psalm 139:21-22), but under the New Covenant, we are to love our personal enemies and pray for them, instead of hacking them up into pieces (Matt. 5:44-45).Dusmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18050174688923887698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-47529886361901612142010-03-20T21:50:19.995-04:002010-03-20T21:50:19.995-04:00"You may object, "Dude, you'll get t..."You may object, "Dude, you'll get thrown in jail and possibly be executed." But I'm really clever and I don't plan to get caught."<br /><br />Not only that, but there are certainly enough examples of evil people who have escaped the law, such as the Zodiac killer as one example.Matheteshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13527032591499860552noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-35263178298993919212010-03-20T21:18:04.764-04:002010-03-20T21:18:04.764-04:00Since I, for one, have already discussed this pass...Since I, for one, have already discussed this passage, I won’t repeat myself here. Instead, I’ll share a personal anecdote. My high school German teacher was a WWII war bride. <br /><br />Now, for all I know, she genuinely loved her American husband. Still, why do you think she married him? Don’t you suppose he was her ticket out of war-ravaged Germany?<br /><br />You might say it was consensual, and–in a sense–it was. But what viable options did a German girl of her generation really have? Practically an entire generation of German men had perished in the meat grinder of a total war and total defeat. Germany was in shambles after the war. Poverty. Despair. <br /><br />In ordinary times, don’t you think her preference would have been to marry some nice eligible German boy rather than getting hitched to an American GI, moving to a strange land, thereby leaving her native land and surviving relatives behind?<br /><br />So, to some extent, I expect it was a marriage of convenience. He may have married her because he fell in love with her while he was stationed overseas, but don’t you think she probably married him in part out of desperation born of desperate circumstances?stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-86707061205756295492010-03-20T20:41:40.523-04:002010-03-20T20:41:40.523-04:00"Thinking that you can set up your own standa..."Thinking that you can set up your own standards of morality without dependence upon Him is the height of arrogance"<br /><br />Say I realized I had no sense of morals and I wanted to understand what God sees as moral. Should I pray and ask for guidance, or does God not reveal His will that directly to us anymore? <br /><br />Okay, so He doesn't "speak directly" outside of Scripture anymore. We're not prophets, after all.<br /><br />Should I just open the Bible, hoping for moral clarity on this or that situation?<br /><br />Say I was a soldier in Iraq and saw this attractive woman who I thought was a virgin and, feeling desperate, wanted to make her my wife (whatever she thought about it). Say that I wanted to kidnap her, shave her head and keep her in the cellar of my basement for a month. What would the Bible say?<br /><br />Well, I open up to Deuteronomy 21:10-14.<br /><br />"When you go out to war against your enemies and the LORD, your God, delivers them into your hand, so that you take captives, if you see a comely woman among the captives and become so enamored of her that you wish to have her as wife, you may take her home to your house. But before she may live there, she must shave her head and pare her nails and lay aside her captive's garb. After she has mourned her father and mother for a full month, you may have relations with her, and you shall be her husband and she shall be your wife. However, if later on you lose your liking for her, you shall give her her freedom" <br /><br />Now, before I'm scolded for being ridiculous and banned, why should I <i>not</i> take this passage at face value? <br /><br />If you mock me, isn't this an implicit acknowledgment that God's commands might sometimes be seen as morally offensive: therefore, you're sitting on judgment upon His decrees, no?<br /><br />Here I am, on a "God-ordained" mission in Iraq started by a Bible-believing President (well, at least before that Communist took office). Is there a passage from Scripture that clearly suggests such actions would be immoral? If so, I'm not aware of it.Rob Zechmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05369463377497705313noreply@blogger.com