> Ben Goren wrote:
>>> Lord Calvert wrote:
>>>> ComandanteBanana wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> "Will Christians who kill in battle be saved?"
>>>>
>>>> Yes, for Jesus did indeed say in the book of Luke, "But those
>>>> mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them,
>>>> bring hither, and slay them before me." Jesus has expressly
>>>> commanded Christians to kill His enemies so all Christians
>>>> must follow His commands. Christians who do not kill those
>>>> who do not embrace Christ are openly defying Jesus' command
>>>> and become His enemies as well.
>>>
>>> You have taken this quote out of context.
>>
>> Oh, he most certainly and emphatically has *NOT.*
>>
>>> This is the ending of a parable and the context of the ending
>>> of this parable was correctly understood by its audience.
>>
>> The parable was about a king dealing with a rebellion. The
>> audience was meant to understand that the king represented
>> Jesus and / or YHWH. And the king's solution to the rebellion
>> was to have the freedom fighters brutally slaughtered at his
>> feet.
>
> Actually no. This is a parable of the talents.
No, that's what your Cliff's Notes ultra-redacted Sunday School
version says it is.
Why is it that no Christian has ever actually read the actual
Bible?
> The stories ending was most likely a reference to a king that
> was a contemporary of the time and meant to remind them that a
> king had the authority to enforce his rules
Oh, what bullshit. The very opening of the parable even makes
clear that it's about citizens who hated the nobleman / Jesus and
wouldn't submit to his reign.
Look, if you're going to pretend to be a Christian, can't you at
least have the decency to have at least as much familiarity with
the Gospels as the typical atheist?
>>> This was not a commandment but rather a warning of a future
>>> judgment. Just as characters in the parable faced future
>>> consequences for their actions and then faced judgment, so we
>>> also face judgment from God for our actions. Those who stand
>>> in opposition to God (his enemies) face his wrath.
>>
>> Gods who have wrath -- let alone those who can't control it --
>> are to be despised and dethroned. They are profound enemies,
>> not loving, caring parental figures.
>
> This emphasizes the final point of the parable. Your
> "hypothetical" rejection of God's rule does not lesson his
> authority.
Sorry. Your imaginary abusive father figure has no authority to
teach. (And verbing nouns weirds linguistics; please don't do
it.) Or did you mean diminish?
Besides, if this monster of yours were real, its authority could
stem from nothing other than sheer force of terror.
>>> If these words were intended to be a call for action to
>>> start killing people, you would expect to see this activity
>>> in the accounts that followed and you would expect to
>>> see corroborating commands indicating this was God's will.
>>> Neither of these occur.
>>
>> First, every single word of the Gospels is pure fiction. Jesus
>> is every bit a mythical being as Orpheus, Mithra, Dionysus,
>> Krishna, Bacchus, Dionysus, Adonis, and the rest of the
>> innumerable death-rebirth gods of the same mold throughout
>> history.
>
> Are you saying that you do not believe a man named Jesus lived
> from about 0 to 33 AD?
Oh, there were lots and lots of Jesuses who lived in the early
first century. Josephus mentions a dozen or more of them. It was
quite the popular name -- and remains popular to this day. In
Latin America, the spelling is ``Jesus'' and the pronunciation is
``Hay Seuss.'' In the English world, it's ``Joshua.'' Back then,
it would have been pronounced something like ``yeh hou shou ah.''
But a miracle-working Jesus ben Joseph aka ``The Christ''? Ha! Get
real. Might as well claim that Jason or Hercules or Odysseus were
historical figures.
>> Second...Christians *HAVE* killed heretics by the millions,
>> precisely because they wouldn't submit to Christianity. The
>> Crusades, the Inquisition, the Conquistadors, the Witch trials,
>> the Holocaust...all acts of Christian brutality performed
>> by Christians who justified their actions with extensive
>> quotations of Christ's words. And using the plain meaning of
>> those words, not taken out of context.
>
> You seem to imply that only those professing Christian
> values/reasons have committed atrocities.
Typical Christian, spinning an atheist's words into bizzaro land
rather than attempting to refute them.
Lots of people, Christian and non-Christian alike, have commited
all sorts of atrocities over the millennia.
Christians have been a particularly bloodthirsty lot these past
couple dozen centuries. And they've drawn their inspiration from
the plain language of the Bible to do so.
And -- before you drag out those bagpipes, we're frequently
talking about the entire body of the Church from the head honcho
on down. You could maybe make an argument about the occasional
rogue here and there, but when it's generation upon generation
behaving like monsters, it's pretty clear that your gods either
don't give a fuck, are powerfully malignant, or -- and let's not
forget Occam's razor -- the deluded insane ravings of a bunch of
genocidal bronze-age goatherders.
> In truth the one common denominator behind all atrocities
> (of the type you mentioned) is that they were committed by
> men/women. Mankind is by his nature is evil (pre-disposed to do
> bad things).
Oh, really? I thought one of your perfect, all-loving gods was
supposed to have created mankind in its own image?
The only logical conclusion is that your gods also are, by their
very nature, evil and pre-disposed to do bad things.
And you still worship them...because...?
> Throughout history men have used many reasons to justify their
> evil actions.
And where have your gods been while they've been doing all this
evil? These people claim to have been in direct communication
with them. Overwhelming majorities in virtually unanimous
consensus that it was their divine duty to murder, rape, and
pillage. If any your gods actually existed and had but a mere
fraction of the powers ascribed to them, don't you think that they
would have at least had the courtesy to correct what was being
said about them?
After all, what good is a supposed love god who can't even tell
its followers to stop killing each other?
Oh -- wait -- that's right. If you had actually bothered to read
the Bible, you'd know that the gods are commanding murder, rape,
and pillage on pretty much every other page. The only stuff
inbetween is when they're doing the murdering, raping, and
pillaging, or when we get fanciful and mind-numbingly boring
genealogies.
> In fact it appears that most of your angst is directed towards
> one particular group that calls themselves Christians. Since I
> am not Catholic I would not attempt to answer for them.
> However, if I were I would point out that I am not responsible
> for the failures of my ancestors/predecessors, I am only
> responsible for my own actions.
Here's a clue for you. For the first fifteen centuries or so
of its existence, there weren't any ``denominations.'' There
was only one Church. To suggest that only Catholics and not
any other denomination were responsible for the Inquisition,
the Crusades, the Conquistadors, and the like...well, that's
Orwellian revisionism at its worst. Those were failures of Christ
and Christianity on a massive scale, not the fault of some
insignificant bunch of rogues.
And while it's true that you're only responsible for your
own actions, those actions are no different from a neo-Nazi
revisionist, suggesting that it all ``wasn't that bad'' and
that Hitler had merely been misunderstood. You've done that
by pretending that the Bible isn't the vile and repulsive
hate-mongering ``Kill 'em all and let YWHW / Satan / Elohim /
Jesus sort 'em out'' piece of trash that it is. You did it again
when you tried to pretend that the whole of Christendom following
the plain language of the Gospels drew their inspiration from some
vague inner corruption. You've just now done it by pretending that
the hundred or so years of whatever branch of the cult you
subscribe to amounts to a do-over for the first 90%%+ history of
the religion. And I'm sure you'll do it again plenty more times
before the thread is through.
Cheers,
b&
--
EAC Memographer
BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
``All but God can prove this sentence true.''
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