No need to go into that topic. Apparently you'd consider a father morally blameworthy for saving his child (showing preference) over a random child be...
As a rule, I only take life advice from people who I would actually want to be. Arthur Schopenhauer does not fall within that category. I don't think ...
Benkei, are you able to actually abide by this morality or are we ruminating in theoryland? If your son and another random child were drowning at sea ...
I think of it like inverse Judaism in a way. There are general trends. In the Talmud grey hairs are seen as a sign of reverence and dignity. This isn'...
It's really just a love affair with a character. I know of no other character who jumps off the page like J. I spoke with a rabbi once who told me tha...
Have you ever been there? I mean actually stepped foot in the country. Or are you going to come at me with Al-Jazeera? There were no "no muslims" or "...
We clearly differ in how we view international politics/legal organizations. If the UN & ICC existed in the early 40s (or the 50s and 60s) and focused...
And if your far right isn't stopped things will surely get worse for the muslims too. Is the Netherlands an apartheid state because of the burqa ban? ...
If the goal is to remove all Palestinians from Palestine then that would mean purging Israel's own Palestinian civilians. Why hasn't Israel done this ...
Yes. Maybe it happened differently or is theoretical, the basic issue is purity and not washing hands. I don't believe Job actually happened exactly a...
If you have a criticism about the basic premise I'm open to hearing it. I will take the scenario as gospel until shown otherwise. E.g. if handwashing ...
I'm not sure how we would go about "deconstructing" this. I believe handwashing was a ritual at this point so it doesn't seem out of the question that...
It does give the context. The Pharisees chide Jesus's followers for eating with unwashed hands and this is J's response. At first glance, for me at le...
Sure. Yet according to the Bible Japeth (progenitor of the Greeks) and Shem (progenitor of the Hebrews) are both sons of Noah. "God shall enlarge Japh...
They are not my culture because I am neither Greek nor Roman nor even Mexican. Yet my culture interacted with & still, to an extent, interacts with th...
All right, you've convinced me that Achilles wasn't gay. Point taken. To my understanding, however, pedestry was an institution within ancient greece ...
Rarely mentioned, and when it is mentioned never really expanded upon. Possibly just means "the grave." Or perhaps some shadowy underworld. Not at all...
:up: I can avoid the word and re-state my position. I was simply discussing ancient Jewish and biblical perspectives towards fornication -- sex before...
I hope I was. Feel free to point out what you think is out of line on my part. Deut 22 deals with a woman maintaining purity before marriage. Men are ...
I certainly don't fully understand fully Paul. I wasn't raised Christian. Happy to be corrected. In ancient Judaism fornication -- sex outside marriag...
He is remarkable. I read Paul as a man deeply concerned about his own salvation. When I look at his biography, I find myself thinking that this man is...
According to Robert Alter Elijah is the template for Jesus. There are shared miracles (raising from the dead) and both are largely itinerant among oth...
Really? Those Romans and Greeks weren't deviants? I suppose as long as you kept your forays, as an upper class member of Roman society, to the lower c...
Nahum Sarna in "Understanding Genesis" traces the Mesopotamian origins of the Hebrew Bible, but where Mesopotamian polytheism is reworked under a mono...
Do you know of other Jewish thinkers in that period who liken soil to a mind in their parables? Or who emphasize the role of the child as something to...
Presumably it would only be on the landing force which has stormed an isolated beachhead? With collateral damage that's a different scenario. I'm just...
We're dealing with a hypothetical here posed by @"RogueAI". Nor do rules created in the 1920s always maintain the same character that they did as year...
It's irrational for a few reasons. In-group bias is common among humans. As humans we have an inborn bias towards our own race/ethnic group. We all wo...
The one that we both agreed upon for this dialogue -- that humans have no objective value above that of a cockroach. That it's all just our minds favo...
Do you believe there's better and worse ways to interpret a text whether be e.g. Cicero or a Buddhist text? Jews have the Talmud for guidance on this,...
Sure, ok. But you're deflecting here. My point is that it is utterly absurd for a devout Nazi to declare himself a "good Christian." The Nazi is outsi...
I am discussing it. See the descriptive/prescriptive distinction. On a descriptive level we have a pro-same species bias. That says zero about whether...
Tom, these are not good Christians. "All Jews are cockroaches" necessitates that Jesus is a cockroach. :sweat: One can believe themselves to be a good...
Yes, it's just another bias. There's a million of them that we have and we generally strive to overcome these cognitive biases in our thinking. If our...
I'm quite capable of thinking atheistically. If so we're on the same page then -- no objective reason for valuing human life over cockroach life. We j...
I'm curious, what do you see as the main differences between the original sect headed by Jesus and Paul's take on things? I see Paul as making certain...
He could abdicate and go to the English countryside, and a few weeks later him and the undesirables of his countrymen will be rounded up and likely mu...
Interesting that you mention Galatians as opposed to Romans regarding Paul's complete thinking. Yes, I also don't see Paul as anti-semitic seeing as h...
So you think life and death decisions re: human life should be made lightly (i.e. that it is an unserious matter)? It's not like it's sacred. Who's to...
Interesting tension here. You say there's no fact of the matter about what morality is, yet you hold immutable opinions towards it. :chin: It's like y...
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