Christianity

[Harry Baird]

*I'll beat that (or any) ass if it deserves it.

You should have saved that as a great comment for a photograph on a BDSM website.

It's never too late: direct me to your favorite site, and I'll go post it there.

Haha. I'm not into that sort of stuff. Pretty conventional guy here. It just seemed like a good joke to make.

[Nick_A]

Don't you go beating up on donkeys, henry quirk. Animal abuse => ticket to Valhalla cancelled.

*I'll beat that (or any) ass if it deserves it. I ain't waitin' on God. And if He has a problem with it: He can take it up with me now cuz there doesn't seem to be a later.




*This, it seems to me, is as it should be. We have this clear-cut sense of when we're wronged. We ought act on it now rather than leave it to other, supposedly wiser, men to deliberate on. And The Creator, I think, wants no part of scale-balancin', not directly. Justice -- to go gunnin' for the man who stole your water -- is for today, as you can and will.

-----

Nick,

I didn't think anyone could answer my question on objective justice.

What was the question?

*

The only thing you left out is the cute wench whose behind you could play with.

No, I didn't. You need wenches to wench.

*

Justice is defined as "might makes right."

Nope. Justice is redress. Might can help in redress (an obese agoraphobic will have a harder time gettin' the water-thief than a trim, outdoorsy type) but, no, might, in itself, is not the measure of right.

*

Philosophy has served its purpose.

Philosophy, for the most part, is nit-pickin' and self-castration. Philosophy is reducin' a painting, with its embedded meaning, to meaningless dabs of color on canvas.

Sensible folks ought to avoid philosophizin'.

No one has argued against "might makes right" as the ultimate definition of justice. It is a man made construct. It requires a change of mind from the usual discursive mindset to understand why. But who thinks in a new way?

[Lacewing]

So: when thy neighbor offends, beat his ass today, cuz there may be no tomorrow.

Although I agree with you about living and handling life now, rather than assigning value and balancing to an afterlife, your ass-whippin' philosophy could destroy the world real fast.

[Immanuel Can]

I really don't want to revisit our lengthy debate on the grounding of morality

But you have to

No, I very much don't, and I won't.

Then your allegation amounts to this:

The God Harry doesn't believe in...

...will [actually, will not] do...

...the thing Harry subjectively doesn't like...

So what is your claim that "God is unjust" grounded in?

Uh, the meaning of the word "just".

Nope. Because the simple definition of the word, even if right, doesn't tell us anything about whether or not the concept has been "violated" by one or another action.

So it does not follow from the mere fact that you invoke the word "just" that God is in any way afoul of it.

Some demonstration is required that you have reason to know what particular sins, the sinful nature and defiance and rejection of relationship with the Supreme Being deserve, and that it is all insufficient warrant for God to allow a person to choose eternal condemnation.

Dude,...unrelated, ad hom blah, invoking emotive terms

No real answer, then.

[Harry Baird]

So, your having descended into shamelessness, let's briefly recap, and then I'll leave it at that, because you really are shameless:

According to Immanuel Can, the Bible is free to use words - in particular, "just" and "loving" - in their exact opposite sense, and this is perfectly reasonable, because it's the Bible that defines words. In particular, according to Immanuel Can, God is "loving" and "just" but just happens anyway to f*** people over for eternity. According to Immanuel Can, this Biblical doublespeak is nothing to worry about, because it comes from God, and who could doubt Big Brother? Now, everybody, it's time for the two-minute hate. Ooo, that Goldstein!

[Lacewing]

I emphasise the bottom line though: you affirm a conception of justice based in the Bible that is the polar opposite of what the word actually means.

I don't see that's true at all.

And that's because you're motivated not to by your presumption that the Bible is true - a presumption which you are unwilling to challenge or have challenged.

Well said. That unwillingness (especially on a philosophy forum) reveals that the presumption is of and for the ego rather than truth.

[Lacewing]

So, your having descended into shamelessness, let's briefly recap, and then I'll leave it at that, because you really are shameless:

According to Immanuel Can, the Bible is free to use words - in particular, "just" and "loving" - in their exact opposite sense, and this is perfectly reasonable, because it's the Bible that defines words. In particular, according to Immanuel Can, God is "loving" and "just" but just happens anyway to f*** people over for eternity. According to Immanuel Can, this Biblical doublespeak is nothing to worry about, because it comes from God, and who could doubt Big Brother? Now, everybody, it's time for the two-minute hate. Ooo, that Goldstein!

It is a fascinating demonstration, is it not, of how people can create gods in their own demented image? And then they shamelessly defend that creation despite all to the contrary because it represents and serves their identity to a degree they cannot be without.

[Harbal]

some human beings DO agree with God's conception of justice, but because no amount of human agreement makes a thing objective or true. It just makes it popular.

Even so, one might trust one's own subjective judgement over God's subjective judgement. To be honest, I think God has sometimes let his temper get the better of him.

[Nick_A]

So: when thy neighbor offends, beat his ass today, cuz there may be no tomorrow.

Although I agree with you about living and handling life now, rather than assigning value and balancing to an afterlife, your ass-whippin' philosophy could destroy the world real fast.

What difference does it make as long as one is on the side which wins. Might makes right. Perhaps force wins as Simone Weil describes in the beginning of her essay on the Iliad. But understanding force requires contemplation but it gets in the way of argument so why bother. Just let force use you.

"The true hero, the true subject, the center of the Iliad is force. Force employed by man, force that enslaves man, force before which man’s flesh shrinks away. In this work, at all times, the human spirit is shown as modified by its relations with force, as swept away, blinded, by the very force it imagined it could handle, as deformed by the weight of the force it submits to. For those dreamers who considered that force, thanks to progress, would soon be a thing of the past, the Iliad could appear as an historical document; for others, whose powers of recognition are more acute and who perceive force, today as yesterday, at the very center of human history, the Iliad is the purest and the loveliest of mirrors.

To define force — it is that x that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing. Exercised to the limit, it turns man into a thing in the most literal sense: it makes a corpse out of him. Somebody was here, and the next minute there is nobody here at all; this is a spectacle the Iliad never wearies of showing us:"

[Immanuel Can]

According to Immanuel Can, the Bible is free to use words - in particular, "just" and "loving" - in their exact opposite sense...

"Opposite" only means "opposite to what Harry likes." It doesn't mean any more than that, at present.

You can't "define" your way into a justification. The term "unicorn" has semantic meaning, and a relatively agreed-upon definition, which is certainly more than "justice" has. But "unicorn" has no reference to reality. You have to show that "Harry's view of what justice is" does.

Here's what God says,

"So having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now proclaiming to mankind that all people everywhere are to repent, because He has set a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all people by raising Him from the dead.” (Acts 17:30-31)

Argue with that, Harry: because ultimately, your dispute is not with me.

[henry quirk]

So: when thy neighbor offends, beat his ass today, cuz there may be no tomorrow.

Although I agree with you about living and handling life now, rather than assigning value and balancing to an afterlife, your ass-whippin' philosophy could destroy the world real fast.

Depends on how it's implemented. Self-defense, defense of other, seekin' redress for injury, these are personal. They involve few. The world ain't involved. Now, when we step away from self-defense, defense of other, seekin' redress, we've left justice behind. We've become offenders. Then the world is involved.

[henry quirk]

No one has argued against "might makes right" as the ultimate definition of justice. It is a man made construct. It requires a change of mind from the usual discursive mindset to understand why. But who thinks in a new way?

As usual: you've lost me, Nick.

My mind just ain't supple or deep enough.

[Immanuel Can]

some human beings DO agree with God's conception of justice, but because no amount of human agreement makes a thing objective or true. It just makes it popular.

Even so, one might trust one's own subjective judgement over God's subjective judgement.

One might trust one's subjective feelings over the Supreme Being who created and grounds the very concept of "justice," and who gave you the power to feel things in the first place?

[Lacewing]

So: when thy neighbor offends, beat his ass today, cuz there may be no tomorrow.

Although I agree with you about living and handling life now, rather than assigning value and balancing to an afterlife, your ass-whippin' philosophy could destroy the world real fast.

Depends on how it's implemented. Self-defense, defense of other, seekin' redress for injury, these are personal. They involve few. The world ain't involved. Now, when we step away from self-defense, defense of other, seekin' redress, we've left justice behind. We've become offenders. Then the world is involved.

Well, imagine you've got a whole lot of half-witted people and misunderstandings. How does the ass-whippin' scenario play out?

[Harbal]

One might trust one's subjective feelings over the Supreme Being who created and grounds the very concept of "justice," and who gave you the power to feel things in the first place?

I just don't trust him, IC, what can I say?