28
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024
28 points (68.4% liked)
No Stupid Questions
35822 readers
1168 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
What do you mean when you say: "christian apologists"? I'm afraid I am not understanding your question and that's me speaking as a Christian.
Do you mean people defending Christian positions in thelogical debates? Or is it the name of some niche sect I am not aware of?
Apologetics is essentially "defending" something as opposed to say proselytizing (in the example of Christianity). It's frequently used for indefensible topics like rape apologists (the type to suggest the victim was asking for it or could have tried harder to say no) or Nazi's (the usual propaganda). Christian apologists tend to hand wave or ignore the atrocities because "god is an absolute "good"" therefore anything he does is by definition "good" and us mere mortals can't understand the divine plan. Babies dying? God is good. Babies dying and going to hell because they are unable to accept Jesus because they literally are unable to understand the concept? God is good.
I'm sorry that you felt the need to compare those who spread Christian doctrine with rape apologists and Nazis, but there are some things I don't like about your comment. Chances are you are not interested in hearing them (at least judging from the wording you used), but someone else in this thread might be.
Yes, God is an absolute good. Yes, we cannot understand Him. Most "atrocities", like you called them, come from men being given free will by God and drifting away from His teachings, thus doing stuff that isn't good. God is good.
If a baby dies and is baptized they go straight to Heaven. If a baby dies and isn't baptized we don't actually know for sure what happens (it is never explained in the Bible), but by interpreting other aspects of Christian dogma we can hope and assume that they too would be saved. On this topic I recommend the following read, by the International Theological Commission
If there are other "atrocities" that you can think of and you'd like to discuss, I'd be happy to.
EDIT: boy did this blow up. I'm sorry for the replies I have left unanswered but I don't have the time or energy to give any more nuanced answers on the topic. I am also not an all knowing expert of Christian / Catholic theology, I am simply trying to spread some awareness and a different view, on a platform that is evidently mostly Atheistic. If you have further questions the Internet will likely have the answers you seek, expressed better than I could anyway. Cheers.
I mean, I don't believe it but bible believers do; how about the global flood? Various plagues in Egypt as well as ending the whole party with killing off all first-born sons? Commending genocide (multiple times)? Enabling chattel slavery? Obliterating Sodom and Gomora(sp?). Ooh, on that same point, didn't he just turn Lot's wife into salt because he looked at her? All the stuff he did to Job to win a bet? And I think Jesus set a wild bear on a bunch of kids because they were bullying some guy?
Those are off the top of my head, but I know there's more.
There are some protestants who believe the literal words (usually in the King James Bible) are all literally exactly true, but I think the majority of Christians including Catholics and Orthodox believe that it can be metaphorical or mythical in parts. This is often couched in disclaimers saying it's true, but the truth is it didn't have to be literal or something like that
Those who believe everything literally happened have a much harder time defending all the "evil" stuff God did, while those who don't can at least say we probably just don't understand that bit.
Everyone believes it to be metaphorical or mythical "in part" the difference is where they draw that line.
Outside of YEC Flat Earthers everyone believes that passage in Exodus where the sun stopped moving to be a metaphor, but most evangelical Christians still take the creation story to be literal.
That is spot on. Contrary to Protestant (and in particular Evangelical) belief, the Catholic Church teaches that there are four senses through which one can read Scripture: one is literal, while the other three are spiritual (allegorical, moral and anagogical) and can help us interpret Christ's message and how we should or should not behave during our earhthly lives. This is the relevant section from the Catechism.
I am not familiar with Orthodox theology, but I would assume they would have a similar position on the topic.
So which sense do we use to interpret the rules set out on how to get/treat slaves? How is that interpreted? Is it a metaphor? And how do you know which is which?
What it sounds like is you have lots of leeway to account for what you choose to believe is truth or fiction to fit your needs at any given moment. And if you're not sure what, if any, is literally true, how do you know there's a god at all? And you're defending Catholicism, which is in for an even more uphill battle than most because it's been around longer and has to account for all the beliefs that have had to be updated as knowledge and culture had changed.