Here we go again

More love from God Hates Fags. As a judge has overturned a law prohibiting protests at funerals, the most blessed flock from Wesboro Baptist Church (aka God Hates Fags) will descend upon the pastoral fields of Pennsylvania Amish country to remind the grieving that God is happy the little children were murdered.

Originally posted by kirksey957
More love from God Hates Fags. As a judge has overturned a law prohibiting protests at funerals, the most blessed flock from Wesboro Baptist Church (aka God Hates Fags) will descend upon the pastoral fields of Pennsylvania Amish country to remind the grieving that God is happy the little children were murdered.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
Not--- if it turns out--- that the killer was a fag.

Originally posted by kirksey957
More love from God Hates Fags. As a judge has overturned a law prohibiting protests at funerals, the most blessed flock from Wesboro Baptist Church (aka God Hates Fags) will descend upon the pastoral fields of Pennsylvania Amish country to remind the grieving that God is happy the little children were murdered.

throughout history there were enough idiotic, pshycotic zealots claiming God says this and God wants that. Torquemada, the kkk, a large number of popes, the muslim radicals, the baptist radicals and so on. one cannot stop them, one can only agree or preferably disagre with them

some people are stupid

Originally posted by lucifershammer


(Before you ask, I don't endorse picketing at funerals and I don't endorse a "God hates [insert any group of people]" message either.)

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
Did God love the Canaanites, whose slaughter he ordered?

How about the Sodomites whose slaughter he ordered? Did he love them?

How about those in Jericho? Did he love them?

Did God love the Egyptians whom he plagued as a means to manipulate the pharoah?

Did God love the Midianites?

Originally posted by lucifershammer
Yes to all of the above.

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
I see. So, your notion of love is such that it is consistent to order the slaughter of people you love? That's quite a bit more characteristic of my notion of hate.

Originally posted by lucifershammer
I'll repeat what I wrote above:

"Of course, all your questions presume that the events described actually took place as described."

Within the context of people with immortal souls and the consideration given to human freedom, yes, permitting slaughter can be an act of love.

Besides, if killing people you love is more consonant with your notion of hate, does that mean you are opposed to euthanasia?

[/b]Of course, all your questions presume that the events described actually took place as described. Your questions also presume that God could've willed otherwise.

And that the Israelites and/or the writers did not ascribe their actions to God’s command ex post facto, for purposes of “justification” perhaps.

When one reads these ancient stories mythologically, or midrashically—or just as stories—one can freely bring one’s own moral convictions to them, and call such actions (real or storied) atrocities. One can also, if one is a theist who does not idolize the text, simply say: “Those stories do not reflect my understanding of God.”

Theists or nontheists, if those stories are part of their “aesthetic” or their cultural heritage, can argue, for example, that they show what evils certain attitudes of religious fundamentalism can lead to and have led to.

One can also, of course, reject the texts themselves for presenting immoral actions in some (divinely?) positive light. I would suggest, however, unless this is done either (1) because one has implicitly accepted the literalist/historicist interpretations of the texts (in my view, a “modernist” error), and/or (2) because the literalist/historicist interpretations have become so prominent as to render the stories dangerous—then one has to reject most mythologies on the same basis, and not simply allow them to stand as just that: mythologies and stories. (I could probably find morally objectionable things in The Lord of the Rings without feeling compelled to throw it in the garbage. On the other hand, I can imagine some people in a distant future discovering an LOTR that was lost over centuries, and imposing a religious literalism of sorts on it—“Frodo Lives!” )

People have always told stories (and a story-myth can be woven around some historical event, without pretending to be an accurate record of that event—like historical novels, say), and reworked old stories—the good, the bad and the ugly ones—for good, bad and ugly purposes; and the good, the bad and the ugly ones all can become part of a cultural heritage without requiring that the heirs suspend their own moral judgments in reading and interpreting and reinterpreting them. The whole rabbinical/midrashic tradition has, for a couple of millennia anyway, taken these stories and freely interpreted and reinterpreted them—and argued about them—and continues to do so.

[I recall, for example, a rabbi I met who said that, Yes, Abraham’s faith was tested when he was commanded to sacrifice Isaac—and that Abraham failed the test! No tzaddik would assent to such a thing, even if (he thought that) it was commanded by God. Real faith—a “torah faith”—required him to say, No! And that became part of the moral lesson that that rabbi taught from that story.] Rejection of this open, interpretive engagement with the texts is a fairly modern development.

In my view, there are two errors:

(1) Reading the texts without engaging the moral challenges they present (e.g., simply accepting that if the story says God commanded X, then X, at least in that case, must be accepted as morally unchallengeable); and

(2) Rejecting the texts out of hand because of the moral challenges they present (whatever other reasons one might have for rejecting them).

Both errors seem to stem from the literalist/historicist fallacy. DoctorScribbles’ challenge is a fair one—when leveled against that fallacy.

Within the context of people with immortal souls and the consideration given to human freedom, yes, permitting slaughter can be an act of love.

That’s a pretty broad statement. Can you justify (any of) the biblical examples provided by Dr. S. in such terms? And what kinds of “slaughter” would you not justify? And what are the criteria? Dr. S.’s examples do not seem aimed at Euthyphro’s dilemma, but at the justification of mass slaughter based on God’s will. So the question seems to become: “Can a loving God (or even a moral God) will (or command) such mass slaughter?”

"I think she's (Shirley from God Hates Fags) just mad at God because he gave her a horse face."

Howard Stern

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
Identify all of the equivocations in your post, resolve them, and I will consider responding.

You are a goof.

Originally posted by lucifershammer
Within the context of people with immortal souls and the consideration given to human freedom, yes, permitting slaughter can be an act of love.