More from the Jolly Nihilist

Hi JN,

I'll post this same comment here and on the relevant post at my place.
First of all, you're not on the Wall of Shame b/c you actually answer questions! You're not afraid of a good tussle, you don't run away, you respond to charges made against your position. You respond with stuff that's on-topic. You don't moderate dissenting comments into oblivion. You don't confuse attacks on your position with attacks on YOU. Those are what have earned the denizens of the WoS their hallowed place. I appreciate your modus operandi a great deal.

The point I've been trying to make about Irony #1 is, if you will, a meta-point. Let me try to explain better, since I doubt I'm doing an adequate job. In arguing against the possibility of making overarching moral claims (like my position does, you're 100% right), you yourself make the same kinds of claims.
However, I think your latest offering might have clarified what you mean and so my argument would need to be revamped. Now, I'd argue that I am 100% justified in taking what I took from your original post, given the way you worded it, but now everythg changes. The irony is more or less removed to a different spot, one that's slightly less obvious.


Moving on to irony #2 (which I found, unfortunately, to be the less interesting of the 2, haha):

Nobody reading my essay could possibly think I was directly comparing suicide bombing with Alabama’s infantile law.

You yourself said this, though: "Of course, Rhology, you must recognize that my comparison was not of methods but of mindset."
But I agree that religious freedom (which I believe the US should have) should exist and that your statements about it are correct.

I readily admit that, at this moment and for the last few centuries, Muslims behave far worse than Christians do.

Well, I'm looking for more than that! :-D Islam behaved VERY badly its first 2 centuries of existence, as an institution. The medieval RCC was bad; institutional Islam was pretty bad too, enslaved and killed far more people, and took far more territory with the sword. In the name of God and in line with their religion (see the link I posted), as opposed to the Inquisition and Crusades, neither of which are fully justifiable on biblical grounds (though the Crusades are justifiable to a decent extent).
Does that make sense?

“But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God” [1 Corinthians 11:3 (KJV)].

But where do you get misogyny out of that? The New Testament also affirms the ontological equality of men and women in Galatians 3:28-29 and says this in Ephesians 5:

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

It's a distinction of role, not of nature.
And you're right - it's SERVANT leadership, much like Christ, the Lord and Creator of the universe, space, time, matter, and energy, washing the disgusting, dirty, and manure-encrusted feet of His disciples and then dying for them, abandoned by them. That's my calling as a Christian husband.

702 were tried and executed in Protestant territories

OK, I didn't realise that about Prot territories. Of course, the Salem trials were Prot, (and executed a whopping <20 witches) but this still compares very favorably with Islam. It's not as simple as this, though. The state and church were not separated or barely separated at that time. Principles like American religious freedom were more or less unheard-of; it's anachronistic to judge them by our modern standards. Finally, I'll just remind everyone that you said above that you can't extend moral judgments beyond yourself anyway.

OK, two more: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”

It's not that I deemphasise certain psgs b/c I feel like it. The key is that this law and so many others in the OT Law were CIVIL laws given for the governance of OT Israel, which was a nation, a theocracy. OT Israel no longer exists. Those civil laws don't apply.
Tell you what, I'll post on that issue fairly soon and you can read and learn a bit.

1)“Neither [witchcraft nor sorcery] exists and neither ever has.” I also would like to grant you the opportunity to declare, for all to read, that 2) the pious people who tortured and murdered “witches” centuries ago, in your judgment, are presently in that place where there is “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

1) I disagree with this statement. They do exist. Why else would the OT Law prohibit them?
Shoot, they exist TODAY! Have you never heard of a séance, channeling, Ouija boards, mediums, Tarot card readers, thaumaturgists...?

2) I can make no statement of certainty on the state of most anyone's soul. What I can say is that those who participated in these persecutions were not wholly justified in doing so. It's not as clear-cut as I think we like to make it in modern times, but I think you wouldn't want to be judged by the standards of 24th-century people when they dig up a hard disc drive with your blog contents saved on it, someday. You'd want to be judged in the context of your thoughts, your environment.
Witchcraft was illegal in those areas at that time and was (I'd argue more or less rightly) considered a threat to civil security, so it was treated as a crime. It's not how I'd do it, but it has a fair amount to commend it - the nation would be freer of the evil influence of the occult, the people would be holier in conduct, the gross immorality that usually accompanies witchcraft would be less present, etc.
"Murder" is never justified, so I grant that. Executions after trial are quite another matter.
I don't see why torture would be justified, so I grant that.
On a related note, I believe it is documented on better-than-urban-legend grounds that Jeffrey Dahmer converted to Christianity shortly before his death. If that is true, if he placed his faith and reliance on Jesus Christ to forgive him of his sin and give him eternal life, he is my brother in Christ and will spend eternity in heaven in the presence of Jesus. I am a great sinner, Jesus Christ is a greater Savior. These Inquisitors, if they had saving faith in Christ, will be saved. If they didn't, they are condemned and stand in the exact same place as you do - hellbound. I urge you to turn away from your sin and repent, believe in the Savior. You won't regret it; I can promise you that much.

Peace,
Rhology

The irony hardly gets richer

This post will consist of 2 parts, each on irony.

Irony #1 - See if you can pick out the irony in the following statements from the Jolly Nihilist:

-I argue that, because our species is ignorant of moral truth—or, at the least, no moral code has been proved correct—it is incoherent for any individual’s moral opinions to be inflicted upon other individuals.

-As such, in the comment box, I rail against moral authoritarianism, taking both Islamofascists and Christofascists to task for their attempts to inflict their arbitrary views on others.

-(Comparing perception of morality with perception of colors) In the face of factual ignorance, everybody should be entitled to create an opinion vis-à-vis best color.

-...for both Christofascists and Islamofascists, there is an assumption that they have a right to inflict their arbitrary moral opinions on those around them.

Irony #2 (this one might be a little tougher) -

-Rhology took exception to the comparison, and wrote the following:
“Yeah, the biggest difference might be found in the fact that Christians don't strap bombs to their bodies to blow other people and themselves up. But that's probably just a piddling, minor issue.”...Of course, Rhology, you must recognize that my comparison was not of methods but of mindset.

-If you, Rhology, as a Christian, find sex toys to be immoral, you have every right never to buy or use them. However, if other people find them morally acceptable—and, dare I say, pleasurable—they would be allowed their (in your mind) “deviance.”

LEGEND:

#1 - The JN would inflict his moral views on the rest of us, just as he says we should not do. In making the very statement that one should not inflict one's moral views on another, he does the same. As James White says, "Inconsistency is the sign of a failed argument".

#2 - He challenges my comparison between "Christian" violence and jihadist suicide bombers with an illustration of a law in Alabama that prohibits the sale of sex toys.
I love it - the West, for all its faults, faces an enemy that wants to impose sharia law on all people. It wants women to walk 10 steps behind men, never to show their faces in public, to be prohibited from shaking hands with men, to be worth 1/2 of a man with respect to lawful testimony in court. It wants to charge a heavy tax on/kill those who will not convert to Islam. It wants to behead those who insult Islam or Mohammed. Virtually all of its earliest expansion, both under Mohammed and after him, came through military activity and forced conversions, to the point that all of the Iberian Peninsula, much of France, all of the Balkans, up to Vienna, was taken and held by Muslim forces. The number of men AND WOMEN who strap bombs to themselves every year to blow up civilians and children is almost too numerous to consider. And the JN is concerned about the imposition of a few laws banning the sale of sex toys?

Further, I specified even further a big difference between jihadist violence and Christian violence in response to a commenter's mentioning abortion-related violence.
The JN, in his post, goes on and on about "the church" committing the Inquisition and Witch Trials and such. It's hard to imagine how he could be so uninformed as to think there could be any connection beyond a simple name (ie, they were part of the "Christian church" and I am part of the the Christian church) between my position and that of medieval Roman Catholics. Apparently he missed the multiple posts I've written against the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox positions and the fact that I'm a contributor at Beggars All Reformation Apologetics, which would be hard to confuse with medieval Roman Catholicism.
Anyone can claim to "clutch the Bible" as JN puts it. "Who follows its teachings?" is a far better question for two reasons:
1) You're making a claim that the Bible teaches such.
2) You're talking to a guy who claims to follow the Bible in everythg it teaches.

Given all this, perhaps the JN could enlighten us as to how he comes to these conclusions:

-If torture and murder cannot be laid at the Bible’s figurative feet, that tome certainly can be said to have inspired some of this.

-“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” is just begging for trouble, especially when there are nonconformists, heretics and ugly crones about.

Ie. What is the context of this command? To whom was it given? When? What connection does that have to the New Testament church, of which I am a part?

The JN is always an interesting guy; I'm very interested to see the depths of his understanding here.