The Divine Command Theory

Oh, I get it. Rules in the context of actions and not actions in the context of rules. So there are rules, except they're not absolute, and the judicial system should take into consideration both values and rules. That's smart, but still tricky. What would trails be like? "Let's see he murdered, but in the name of The Party, so it's OK... but this guy murdered in the exact same circumstances but in the name of Socialism in general, so we should punish him a little..." You'll have a trial with both a hierarchy of rules and a hierarchy of values? That would be difficult. Also, it's difficult enough to prove the truth - proving the 'value' of your actions would be twice as hard.

Also, who decides what these values are? The soviet government, for example, would not be guilty at all according to that - after all, it murdered in the name of 'values'...
 
Oh, I get it. Rules in the context of actions and not actions in the context of rules. So there are rules, except they're not absolute, and the judicial system should take into consideration both values and rules. That's smart, but still tricky. What would trails be like? "Let's see he murdered, but in the name of The Party, so it's OK... but this guy murdered in the exact same circumstances but in the name of Socialism in general, so we should punish him a little..." You'll have a trial with both a hierarchy of rules and a hierarchy of values? That would be difficult. Also, it's difficult enough to prove the truth - proving the 'value' of your actions would be twice as hard.

Also, who decides what these values are? The soviet government, for example, would not be guilty at all according to that - after all, it murdered in the name of 'values'...
 
Scourge of God said:
It doesn't seem to me to be a question of 'no rules' or honor-based morality. It's just that in healthy value systems, the rules are interpreted in the context of actions, not actions in the context of rules.

You might meditate for a while on the story of Odysseus in this context...
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d'you care to explicate that one? I know the gist, but haven't gotten around to reading the fuckin poem. it sounds vaguely like something I'd agree with Oydyssues seeming a bit like my Ubermensche lmao n all
 
Seditious said:
d'you care to explicate that one? I know the gist, but haven't gotten around to reading the fuckin poem. it sounds vaguely like something I'd agree with Oydyssues seeming a bit like my Ubermensche lmao n all
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If we just look at the isolated details of Odysseus' story, the picture that emerges is rather distasteful. He was a murderer (one might say mass murderer, given that his stratagem led to the sack of one of the great cities of antiquity), an adulterer, a blasphemer (for blinding the son of Poseidon) and a liar. But IN CONTEXT his 'evil' acts are the acts of a hero, violations of taboo that serve to advance his noble purposes and fulfill his holiest duties (to his overlord Agamemnon, to his family and to his people). Contrast this with the 'sinless' ideal of Judeo-Christian moral thinking (exemplified by Jesus, a man who ultimately accomplished nothing but posthumous sainthood). One is the image of vital power AND true honor (that is, the image of the Overman), the other the image of passive weakness and deceptive marketing (that is, the image of the Crowd).
 
Brilliant observation Scourge.

Jesus urges people to do as little as possible, since it is only by our actions that we sin and by our lack of sinning that we become virtuous (although never entirely free from sin) but the pagan idea is that it is not sufficient to avoid doing "immoral" things - to be virtuous you have to do something admirable.
 
Just wondering...who has fed you all this terrible portriat of Jesus? It's not the one found in the gospels, or Paul. The only place you could find something like this is, say, in the Gospel of Thomas, or something likewise that is simply a disconnected group of sayings.
You have actually got it completely reversed Norsemaiden. It was a Platonic and Stoic idea that advocated this concept of non-action. This was because body was bad and spirit was good. What use are physical actions when that is true? So the goal ends up being to get to the completely abstract realm of spirit. The extent that this is true of Christianity is only the extent to which Platonism and Stoicism have invaded it.

True Christianity, that advocated in the New Testament, is not about escaping to the abstract or non-action. It is also not about 'going to heaven when you die'. You won't find that too much in the NT. It's about God creating a new earth. It's about God renewing his creation and actively establishing a reign of total and complete justice. You won't find a lot about being sinless in the NT either. It's mostly about bringing about the above, through working actively for justice. That's the Christian mission.
 
JColtrane said:
Just wondering...who has fed you all this terrible portriat of Jesus? It's not the one found in the gospels, or Paul. The only place you could find something like this is, say, in the Gospel of Thomas, or something likewise that is simply a disconnected group of sayings.
You have actually got it completely reversed Norsemaiden. It was a Platonic and Stoic idea that advocated this concept of non-action. This was because body was bad and spirit was good. What use are physical actions when that is true? So the goal ends up being to get to the completely abstract realm of spirit. The extent that this is true of Christianity is only the extent to which Platonism and Stoicism have invaded it.

True Christianity, that advocated in the New Testament, is not about escaping to the abstract or non-action. It is also not about 'going to heaven when you die'. You won't find that too much in the NT. It's about God creating a new earth. It's about God renewing his creation and actively establishing a reign of total and complete justice. You won't find a lot about being sinless in the NT either. It's mostly about bringing about the above, through working actively for justice. That's the Christian mission.
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That's one variant of Christianity that you're talking about. Most Christians believe in the idea of a Heavenly reward for not sinning (or repenting sufficiently before it's too late) but are you a Jehovah's witness JColtrane? I know they don't believe in Heaven but that God will create a new earth where the lion lies down with the lamb and predators become vegetarians and everyone lives in peace. But this is still "Heaven" just that it is not somewhere in the sky. It's not that different.
Do you know that the Revelation seems to say only (I can't remember how many, but a set number) of circumcised males (Jews) will be saved at the end? Also I'm curious to know: do you believe that it possible not to be a sinner?
 
:erk:

You have been getting some seriously false information. Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming you. I think it probably has to do with the fact that fundamentalists, while a minority in the Christian church, are a very vocal minority. So it's very easy to repeatedly here this fundamentalist message bellowed out and assume that that's what all Christians think.
First of all: No, I am not a Jehovah's Witness.
I do in fact believe that there is such a thing as heaven, but I view it as a place of anticipation for the final goal, which is heaven on earth, the re-creation of earth, the coming of the kingdom of God.
As the Bishop of Durham N.T. Wright says, "Heaven is important, but it's not the end of the world".

That Revelation thing is more of a combination of a misinterpretation of Romans and a misinterpretation of Revelation. Fundamentalists take Paul's statement in Romans 11.25-26 and mash it together with Revelation 7, thus creating this crazy doctrine that all of a sudden for no reason there will be a last-minute saving of a large number of Jews, whom obviously God had shut out until then. Obviously, I think this is a misinterpretation. God's New Covenant (Testament) represented by Jesus is rather a broadening of the covenant to include not only the Jews but the entire world; and that was at the very beginning, not simply the end.

I do believe that it is impossible not to sin. Acknowledging this is, to me, key to acknowledging the reality of evil. In my view, evil is real and powerful and has an affect on all of us, which is precisley why God's message of justice and peace on earth is so incredibly profound to me. To me it is the message of hope; the only message that successfully both acknowledges and deals with evil.
 
Just wondering...who has fed you all this terrible portriat of Jesus? It's not the one found in the gospels, or Paul. The only place you could find something like this is, say, in the Gospel of Thomas, or something likewise that is simply a disconnected group of sayings.
You have actually got it completely reversed Norsemaiden. It was a Platonic and Stoic idea that advocated this concept of non-action. This was because body was bad and spirit was good. What use are physical actions when that is true? So the goal ends up being to get to the completely abstract realm of spirit. The extent that this is true of Christianity is only the extent to which Platonism and Stoicism have invaded it.
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You clearly know absolutely NOTHING about Stoic philosophy. Stoicism was an intensely active intellectual discipline that demanded of its followers not abstention from taboos, but the practice of virtue (which, in this context, was the fulfillment of the duties of a man's station - Stoic 'virtue' was very much in the image of Vedic dharma). Stoics never viewed the body as evil, though most did practice some mild forms of asceticism (what we today would call 'moderation') as a physical means of mastering the art of self-discipline. Might I recommend that you bone up by grabbing a copy of Meditations?

The belief in the evil or corrupted nature of the body was a part of some Neo-Platonic belief systems, but only a small subset. This school of thought was centered on Alexandria, where it picked up much of it's anti-material bias from the huge local Jewish population. It's worth noting that the most dualistic varieties of Platonism never really caught on with the wider Hellenistic world, but were fairly successful at penetrating early Christianity, which, after all, was already the heir to a tradition where the denial of the flesh remained central to its religious experience.

And, of course, the sinlessness of Jesus (which you seem to be trying to minimize) was central to all Christian doctrines, but most especially to the dogma of what would come to be 'orthodox' Christian belief. It was and is the linchpin of the entire salvific scheme of traditional Christianity.
 
Scourge of God said:
You clearly know absolutely NOTHING about Stoic philosophy. Stoicism was an intensely active intellectual discipline that demanded of its followers not abstention from taboos, but the practice of virtue (which, in this context, was the fulfillment of the duties of a man's station - Stoic 'virtue' was very much in the image of Vedic dharma). Stoics never viewed the body as evil, though most did practice some mild forms of asceticism (what we today would call 'moderation') as a physical means of mastering the art of self-discipline. Might I recommend that you bone up by grabbing a copy of Meditations?

The belief in the evil or corrupted nature of the body was a part of some Neo-Platonic belief systems, but only a small subset. This school of thought was centered on Alexandria, where it picked up much of it's anti-material bias from the huge local Jewish population. It's worth noting that the most dualistic varieties of Platonism never really caught on with the wider Hellenistic world, but were fairly successful at penetrating early Christianity, which, after all, was already the heir to a tradition where the denial of the flesh remained central to its religious experience.

And, of course, the sinlessness of Jesus (which you seem to be trying to minimize) was central to all Christian doctrines, but most especially to the dogma of what would come to be 'orthodox' Christian belief. It was and is the linchpin of the entire salvific scheme of traditional Christianity.
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What a thorough misunderstanding of everything. You seem to be on attack mode as it comes to me recently.
It is true that I was wrong to put Stoicism in the category of non-action. It is more of a detachment from action than lack of it (as you point out, is a staple of the Vedic tradition as well, cf. particularly the Bhagavad Gita). But it does view the material world as essentially bad, as something to escape from. Therefore, my comparison still stands in most respects.
The rest of your "history" sounds extremely shaky to me. I would like to see some sort of evidence. In all of my research into C1 Judaism, I have yet to encounter an anti-materialist variety. Even the Essenes were expecting an earthly kingdom (See works from Wright, Vermes, Sanders).
I was in no way talking about Jesus when discussing sin. Of course he is a completely unique case, and as far as I can gather Norsemaiden was talking about mankind in general.
 
StocktontoMalone said:
Why do you ask? Is it not a 'worthy' topic for debate?
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Well, the concept of "God" is, for one, isn't backed by any verifiable phenomenon.

Johny C. summed it up pretty nicely: "If God is the creator, in my opinion it's both."

If. The topic is nothing but a hollow "what if?" concerning something with no existence in rational reality. So no, it isn't worthy topic. Also, the question is painfully obvious when the required "what if?" is assumed... It depends entirely upon the definition of "God." Basically, what you've asked is: If red is red is it red?

The only use of this question (your original question) is to point out a flaw in certain religious ways of thinking. (Something is god-loved because it is right, or else there would be no reason for it to be god-loved beyond the arbitrary. Yet there is no reason for said thing to be right beyond its being god-loved.)
 
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