Stormy Waters wrote:I already answered the second question.
Stormy Waters: “In case you intend to derail this thread with a discussion on whether or not it is moral when children die in a war situation, let me clarify what I mean. I mean the completely deliberate and intentional slaughter of children. That is the charge for which your God is guilty. The death of those children wasn't collateral damage or incidental. Your God specifically called for those children to be murdered.”
You haven’t answered my question, here, Stormy. You asserted that it is irrelevant to your objection and apparently indicated that you’re unwilling to give an answer.
I believe the detonation of “Little Boy” over Hiroshima is more analogous than you’re able to admit. Truman is reported to have said that the first explosive was detonated over Hiroshima, a military base, in order to minimize non-combatant casualties. But, the fact that Truman’s intended target was, indeed, a military base has some significance for your objection, even if you don’t realize it. Thus, my question.
I know you're bringing abortion into this in hopes that you'll be able to charge me with hypocrisy, but no dice.
I’ve brought a certain subset of all abortions into the discussion in an attempt to make you commit to a definable, and thus interrogable, position. Indeed, “no dice.” You’ve indicated that you’re unwilling to commit yourself to a position from which you have to argue consistently. You appear to be afraid that actually defining your position on pertinent issues would expose you to charges of inconsistency. And well it might. But, I find it odd that you are so willing to lob bombs at others, while exempting your own views from analysis, or even definition. That’s a sign, to me, that you’ve not actually thought deeply through your own commitments and don’t have any desire to do so. It’s much easier to snipe from an unknown position.
I don't like abortion.
So what? Your
preferences actually are irrelevant to the question I asked. I’m sure that almost every person on this board, no matter his or her religion commitments, or lack thereof, would state that she doesn’t
like abortion and would prefer that it never happened. That’s not the issue.
Mentioning abortion only serves as an attempted attack on my credibility.
I haven’t accused you of lying, Stormy. Your credibility, in that sense, is not at issue. I do believe you are ill-informed about a great many things, but I don’t believe you’re lying about it. Being ignorant, even blithely ignorant, is not the same thing as being dishonest.
My question, of course, does go to your consistency. It’s impossible to tell whether or not you’re consistent, however, since you’re unwilling to commit to a definable position. But, you know that.
The reality is that it highlights your inconsistency. You believe the murder of a child is wrong, unless God does it. It's odd that you hold God to a lower standard then you hold yourself.
I have already stated that I believe God holds the absolute right to dispose of humanity as he sees fit. And, that humans do not. I’m quite consistent, in that regard.
If God commanded you to kill every man, woman, and child of a race or culture, would you be willing to do it?
Could you kill the women as they begged for mercy? Could you kill the children as they cried for their mothers? Could you kill the elderly? Could you kill the infants as they slept in their cribs? Because your "God" commanded his people to do exactly that.
This is a blatant appeal to emotion, Stormy. Now, I don’t believe that such appeals are
de facto worthy of censure. They may or may not be, depending on context. Yours appears ham-fisted, however. Here’s why: You appeal to emotion to mask the fact that you are unwilling to argue your position reasonably. Indeed, you refuse to commit yourself to arguing from a definable, much less, defensible position.
But, as well, you appear to be utterly ignorant of the growing body of literature regarding war in Old Testament—its rhetoric, its limits, its targets, its exceptions, etc.
I suspect you consider Christian beliefs to be irrational, but, as it turns out, you’re the one who won’t rationally commit to a defensible position and the one who insists that your own beliefs remain unknown and unquestionable.
You’re just not an admirable thinker, that I can tell, Stormy. You’re superficial, and, well, "stormy."