But the more important truth is that *the Bible* says many different things, some of them wonderful and certainly beautiful, and some of them completely horrible and extremely ugly -- and here I refer to those quotations of Yahweh's words.Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Sep 21, 2022 5:04 pmWell, we'll see if that turns out to be true. The Bible says one thing, you say another. And Harry insists that what the Bible says cannot possibly come true, because his understanding of it offends him.
One version of the truth is going to win. That's for sure.
And I have not cited to the actions that Yahweh commanded his subjects to undertake. Some of these are simply ghastly.
Yahweh -- let me make a bold declaration -- declares himself to be the author of the Shoah. When Yahwey is displeased with his people-subjects he stimulates surrounding peoples, those he has commanded in other declarations to be neutralized, to raid, destroy, cut up, rape and enslave his own people.
There is a very very ever-so-slight need to begin to examine some of these declarations. To step back from them. And to examine the Biblical texts as creations of priest-classes who handle narrative and its manipulative potential. You do this at least when you critique Catholicism. But you do not seem to see the fuller and the larger picture.
So, right at this point we deal with problems and contradiction that must be thought about, must be resolved. And one of the ways that these things are thought about and resolved is by dealing with their moral implications. Then their immediate political and social implications. To do that one requires a philosophical attitude and method.
Who can really see our world right now?
What you want to say here needs to be isolated and accentuated. You have taken one element -- the prospect of a hell to be lived eternally in an after-world -- as being an absolute, irrefutable picture of a true outcome. You have done nothing in terms of exploring why you believe this aspect, and you do not have and did not have any intention at all of philosophically examining it because performing philosophy is not in any sense what you are doing!
So at least the philosophical pose can be dropped, no?
The reason you have the stance that you do is because you are a Christian Bible literalist. You are also a Christian Zionist, and Christian Zionism is a recent political-social creation (or interpretation for specific activism). Once one has begun to intelligently and let's say to fairly examine the over-arching edifice of Christian belief, and then of your specific derived belief (modern Christian Zionism), at that point a thoughtful person, and certainly a philosophical person, must pull back from 'forced' or 'requisite' belief. That is, blind belief.
But blind belief is what you recommend. You are a blind believer and, seemingly, you believe it morally and metaphysically necessary that those you communicate with become the sort of believer that you are.
This is why you are seen as acting out of psychologically coercive methods.
Do I expect you to get any of this? Of course not! In my view you are something (a phenomenon) that has to be seen, understood and dealt with.
