on the problem of sanctimonious attitudes expressed by...

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"Caligula probably thought that history was with him when he fed us Christians to the lions" versus "I made no statement about Caligula's supposed atrocities against Christians. I only stated that he killed them" sounds more bombastical of misleadings than "immutable not meaning not being subject to change".

I could twist how "immutable" gold could be "changed" into different shapes, but understanding how "feeding people to lions" is "not an atrocity" seems a possibly insurmountable challenge. The "torn in the paw" was about the nice cat-human-bond, but the cat-eat-human bond is totally different.

Is this another "William Lane Craig" anti-atrocity pitch along the lines of Caligula being God's victim in a very twisted way???::::

A "one star" review of William Lane Craig's book "Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics" at amazon-dot-com includes the nearly identical "opposite" quote from Craig's website:

"So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgement. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalizing effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing."

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/New ... le&id=5767 around the 7th paragraph from the bottom of the long web page.

Tadzio

"Nobody has any business to use the word "progress" unless he has a definite creed and a cast-iron code of morals. Nobody can be progressive without being doctrinal; I might almost say that nobody can be progressive without being infallible --at any rate, without believing in some infallibility. For progress by its very name indicates a direction; and the moment we are in the least doubtful about the direction, we become in the same degree doubtful about the progress. Never perhaps since the beginning of the world has there been an age that had less right to use the word "progress" than we. . . .I do not, therefore, say that the word "progress" is unmeaning; I say it is unmeaning without the previous definition of a moral doctrine, and that it can only be applied to groups of persons who hold that doctrine in common. Progress is not an illegitimate word, but it is logically evident that it is illegitimate for us. It is a sacred word, a word which could only rightly be used by rigid believers and in the ages of faith."--Heretics (1905)

Again, true-believers believe that only true-believers have the right rigid belief in the only right faith to judge all others and to determine the only direction that is progress, per their own rigid set of beliefs.

Now, Funk & Wagnall say something else about the concept of progress, as do everybody else, with plenty of general agreements totally distinct from vagaries of "religious faith".

Tadzio

God, I almost miss Philogos, where did he get off to?

@ Tadzio

It seems you may have missed a more interesting historical parallel. Every time Cato the Elder would speak, he would mention that 'Carthage must be destroyed', it did not matter what he was talking about, pensions, citizenship, no matter what, he would close with Carthago delenda est. It seems that both you and he have something in common, every time you respond to one of my posts, you always mention the Canaanites; it does not matter what I speak about, secularism, the Kalam Cosmological Argument, its always the Canaanites.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOgSxv37SbE&feature=g-u[/youtube]

So killing children is ok at times (in God's sight).

^^^^^^^Hi 91 with another Craig Video,

No 91, it is that you always seem to parrot phrases, to paragraphs, to pages, to very long videos from William Lane Craig, and that you follow & use/abuse his very defective presumptions in flawed logic loaded with fallacies that easily catch unwary individuals off guard.

Tadzio

@Tadzio

Or you could, as I mentioned a while ago, you could real Paul Copan's book 'Is God a moral monster?' You do really seem to have it in for Craig, I tend to focus on his work but not really all the much more than I work from Plantinga, Swinburne or Van Inwagen.

@MCalavera and Tadzio

I note with interest that you both responded within 20 mins. Which means that neither of you watched the video.

Here is the argument:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/New ... le&id=5767

@Dox

Yeah, I miss Philologos, he was cool.

I watched a bit of the video and then stopped because it was getting ridiculous.

By the way, Dawkins doesn't support infanticide. Abortion is not infanticide.

Putting abortion aside for a moment, Dawkins does approve of infanticide in the same way that Peter Singer does (Singer is the one performing the interview in the video I posted). He 'sees no objection' to the idea that a child with an incurable illness, that would die 'in later life' can be killed up to around the child's second birthday. He quote 'would be in favor of infanticide'.

Ok, fair enough.

Now let's compare God's infanticide to Dawkin's infanticide. Which one is harsher in the method of killing?

Slashing them to death by the sword or by some harmless "anaesthetic" method?

Well, you still haven't engaged in any real sense with what I have put forward. I have already made a substantial effort to describe my position on this matter and not just in this thread. God gave the Caananites four hundred years, before he judged them. During that time, they engaged in child sacrifice, bestiality and the wholesale betrayal of civilized principles. God's judements are unique events and are not for us to repeat. He ended the cycle of debasement of the Caananites, not by killing the, but by slowly moving them off their land. They were not destroyed and many became senior members of the nation of Israel.

Further, the taking of a child's life is not ever 'harmless'. I don't trust a human being to decide when another should die.

I should've said painless to be more accurate.

So what's your answer. Which is harsher?

Does it really matter?

In answer to your question, what the Canaanites did. Topheth; a place so terrible, it is synonymous with hell. It is a place in Jerusalem, from the Hebrew Toph, meaning drum, the cries of the burning Children being sacrificed were drowned out by the beating of drums.

You avoided my question.

You know my question wasn't whether what Canaanites did was harsher or not.

Time to repeat.

God's infanticide vs. Dawkin's infanticide. Which one is harsher in the method of killing?

Slashing them to death by the sword or by some harmless "anaesthetic" method?

Hi 91,

This forum thread is "on the problem of sanctimonious attitudes expressed by people with strong religious
convitions", which has seemed to have been contested as a "loaded question," and you added your view that
"Sanctimony is not a universally religious issue".

To this, you added: "Caligula probably thought that history was with him when he fed us Christians to the lions."

To my response of:
Your school's allegations against Caligula make presuppositions that are not supported by historical evidence. The religious beliefs of your school may hold such suppositions as historical "facts", but, please don't denigrate any schools that do not share your school's rather baseless religious and "historical" presuppositions.
That Caligula was also a "horse whisperer", famous with Incitatus, and Caligula's Temporal Lobe Epilepsy of being blessed by the Gods and also on The Spectrum of Autism, your "Your God versus Secularism" abuse of distorted portraitisms of Historicism, does not offer great support for diatribes from fringe Christian Apologetics.
You seem to have forgotten the best of the betters in your judgements of every "it".

You added your statement: "I made no statement about Caligula's supposed atrocities against Christians."

This triggered a memory from testimonials mentioning Chesterton, and the claimed utility of "plagiarized"
William Lane Craig tid-bits to catch the prey, all from WLC's "testimonials" (Surprise!! !,,,Surprise!! !
~~again~~, and ~~~again~~~). That brought up your abridged quote to GK, and the shock of reversed logic of
"brutalizing effect" being "wrong" not to the victim, but to the perp, as reasoned by WLC, but here as your
unusual line of "people being fed to lions is not an atrocity" reasonning.

Then, you cited my reference to WLC's statement back to me again:
"So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgement. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalizing effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing."
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/New ... le&id=5767 around the 7th paragraph from the bottom of the long web page.

But you thought the video by WLC would change the reading of your citing the very same http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/New ... le&id=5767

For "Is God A Moral Monster", I'll say again:



This states part of a few of my concerns also:

"Contemporary popular apologists tend to look for any way to salvage the text, no matter how unlikely or untenable the argument. They’ll use scholarly sources selectively, or pounce on one scholar’s argument and run away with it, without any concern for the fact the vast majority of scholars haven’t been persuaded by it. They don’t often make arguments for what’s plausible, preferring to argue for what’s “possible,” if it serves their immediate purposes. They trade in eisegesis, wild speculation, and fanciful interpretations, reading into the text what isn’t there, indeed, what’s often contradicted by the very passages they cite."
From "Is God a Moral Compromiser? A Critical Review of Paul Copan’s 'Is God a Moral Monster?'" by Thom Stark (2011), page 1.

While Stark says to buy Copan's book (since Copan's "publisher" prohibits even moderate quotations) to follow his (Stark's) critiques, I am not going to purchase any more Copan's/WLC's books (for now), as WLC, et al. WLC's clones & groupies, have played way too many Mutt & Jeff games with the same old rehashed noxious balderdash with numerous others, back-and-forth, and even at nominal prices, prices add up to too much money for so little worth, and then, the vast amounts of such commingled & toxic trash.

Stark's review is available for free at (and elsewhere):
http://arizonaatheist.blogspot.com/2011 ... stark.html

The concepts of "Renaissance" and the "Christian Thought" of, and threatened violence from, fanatical apologists, are not compatible, except for "Bible-Thumping" propaganda purposes for the fascist apologists.

Tadzio[/quote]