ARCHIVE: Fool is only fooling himself

[Granite]

Yes and no.

If you know that bombing a factory will result in the deaths of non-combatant, non-support personnel, then no, no difference. In each case you are directly and deliberately causing the death of an innocent.

"Yes and no"? Well that strikes me as...as..as downright relative!:noway:

The distinction is between the needless death of infants after the surrender of an opponent and so-called "collateral" damage to those contributing to the war effort. Does that make sense?

 

[PureX]

Person "A" has a hidden agenda, and poses a question to person "B." Person "B" answers the question in a manner that does not promote the agenda of person "A." Person "A" tries to shift the question around to get person "B" to answer in the manner person "A" wishes. Person "B" does not follow person "A's" hidden agenda, but says that there is no problem that can be seen. Person "B" tries to show person "A" proof about the this, but person "A" shuts his eyes tight, and says there is no proof.

Person "A" becomes frustrated that person "B" doesn't follow the hidden agenda.

Person "B" starts asking person "A" what person "A" is attempting with the question that keeps changing.

Person "A" never tells his hidden agenda, so person "B" declares victory because person "A" is proven to be deceitful.

But if person "B" really knew there was a hidden agenda, and what it was, then all he had to do is point it out.

Why didn't he?

Or could it be that person "B" imagines that anyone who disagrees with him must have a "hidden agenda", and that this "hidden agenda" is to show person "B" that he's wrong. Which in fact was never a "hidden agenda" at all, but person "A" simply trying to show person "B" the error in his thinking.

 

[fool]

And we don't have every detail of every story in the Bible.

I think the "detail" that justifies genocide would be a real important link in the chain.

We don't know that there wasn't efforts or prayers made to stop the slaughter.

If that many people couldn't talk Yaweh into sparing someone then they couldn't have tried very hard.
How hard did you try?
You told me you'd be stupid not to do what the "All Powerful Creator of the Universe" told you. Where was your appeal?

Had the cities and nations been repentant it's very likely they would have been sparred (like Nineveh) except of course for for Og but that's a topic for another show.

If your working for God you should be able to find a way to deal with the wicked without having to kill "everything that breathes" in a certain location.
If thru your use of force you wind up killing everything that breathes that's one thing.
If your goal was to kill everything that breathes then you killed them because they were breatheing.
How can breatheing be wrong?

 

[genuineoriginal]

I appreciate what you are saying, but it doesn't really address my concerns. I am not saying I'm shocked at what humans can do. I'm not. We can do terrible things.

My problem is with the justification of some of our worst acts in the name of God, such as the defense of genocide which is occurring on this thread.

Which shows that Fool's question was relevant, because modern day Christians are indeed using the Bible to defend these acts in principle.

Okay, I'll play stupid for you.

Your profile says you are a Buddhist. Doesn't Buddhism believe that Karma dictates what happens to a person, and whether they are reincarnated as a cocroach or a vulture if they have bad Karma and as something better if they have good Karma?
If that is the case, then the only defense your religion has against genocide is that it is bad Karma, and you might be reincarnated as something unpleasant.
Please correct me if I am misrepresenting the beliefs of your religion.



In Judeo-Christianity, the God of the Bible has the responsibility for destroying wicked nations. He has given the responsibility for destroying wicked individuals to the various governments of the earth.

As servants of the God of the Bible, we share in the responsibilities of our God, and have the obligation to destroy wicked nations with the sword (or other weapon of war) when ordered. Because our God is merciful, we can plead for the life of the wicked (as God told Ezekiel), and we can plead for the lives of the non-wicked that would be killed with the wicked (as Abram did). But, we are obligated to be prepared to carry through with the orders of God (as Abraham was prepared), or there can be worse outcomes (as when Saul refused to kill an enemy king).

I will stand for the principle that wickedness demands destruction by its very existence. Wickedness is a social disease, which infects everyone who witnesses it. This demands greater destruction than you are willing to approve of.

The Bible does not allow individuals to become vigilantes, and hunt down wicked people. That is classified as murder. The wicked individuals are to be judged against the law before they are killed. In the same manner, wicked nations are to be judged by God before they are destroyed. IF GOD determines that a wicked nation is to be destroyed completely and utterly, then the blood of the wicked nation is on God, not on His servants. Yes, this sounds a lot like the "I was only following orders" defense. That is because the only one who can correctly determine whether the killing was done in order to comply with His orders is God.

Because there can be confusion about whether God is ordering a wicked nation to be killed, a Christian should plead the case of the wicked nation in front of God in sincerity. If a Christian cannot do this, then the Christian should tell God that they have hatred for the wicked nation in their heart, and that is the reason they cannot take part in the destruction.

God does not destroy the wicked nations with glee. He does it with sadness. Great sadness. He does not do it because of a whim, He does it when He must. God, more than anyone, wants an excuse for not destroying the wicked. If there is no one to plead the cause of the wicked nation, then He will do His duty and destroy it.

God has used many different means to destroy wicked nations. He has used the flood. He has used the Red Sea. He has used fire and brimstone. The method used the most often has been War.

When God ordered the Children of Israel to kill everything that breathes in certain cities, they could have pled with Him. If they had, I believe that it would have been written. They had the examples of Moses and Abraham. Both were written in the Torah and spoken to them within a month of their attack on Jericho. The Children of Israel did not understand the mercy of God, or they did not understand the examples of Moses and Abraham. They did not plead for the lives of the wicked nations. They did have the example of the hundreds of thousands of deaths in the forty years in the desert, followed by the example of the parting of the Jordan. This was followed by three days of pain as their new circumcisions were healing, and then God orders them to do the strangest siege of a walled city in the history of mankind. When the walls fell down, they followed the orders.

The Children of Israel had been attacked needlessly by several nations on their way to the land God had promised them. They learned that they could fight against large armies. Jericho was an example to them and to the surrounding nations because it was one of the largest and best fortified cities in the promised land. After the war against Jericho, God turned against the entire nation of the Children of Israel because of the actions of Achor, a single soldier in their army. The Children of Israel were being taught by the most graphic means that the sins of an individual are counted against everyone in a nation. Corporate punishment is the rule, not the exception. This includes infants.

The examples of Jericho are meant to show that a nation cannot afford to tolerate wickedness. The Laws of Moses spell out plainly that cities are to remove the evil from within their midst through capital punishment in order to ensure that God has no just cause to destroy that city. This is a lesson that was quickly forgotten.

 

[genuineoriginal]

You keep trotting that horse out and I'll keep shooting it.

(genuineoriginal watches in amazement as fool aims his gun at a horse and ends up shooting himself in the foot.).

What D2i brought up was not the same.
It's as if after you nuked the city and Japan surendered you went in there with your bayonet and started spearing infants.
Get it?

(genuineoriginal watches in amazement as the American Army gathers up a thousand infants and orders fool to feed them, change them, and raise them as his own children. What will fool do with a thousand orphaned infants?)

Vaporizing infants when you nuke the city is not murder.
Bayoneting infants in the aftermath is murder.
I'm sure I'll need to say this a couple of hundred more times.

(genuineoriginal holds his breath waiting for fool to say it a couple of hundred more times, gets tired, and starts to breathe again)

I see that D2i already has that distinction set in his mind, so I doubt your canard will confuse him.

(genuineoriginal reads fools coments and leaves confused )

 

[koban]

"Yes and no"? Well that strikes me as...as..as downright relative!:noway:

Hey - I'm a relative kinda guy! :banana:

The distinction is between the needless death of infants after the surrender of an opponent and so-called "collateral" damage to those contributing to the war effort. Does that make sense?

I understand your distinction. I have never bought into the "collateral damage" concept, especially when it is expected. If it is unknown or unexpected, I can accept it as being a cost of war. When the decision is made to knowingly kill innocents, for whatever reason, I don't know what else to call it except murder.

 

[genuineoriginal]

I believe just wars can be fought but the cause of them has nothing to do with "corporate" guilt. German civilians weren't our enemy in World War II: the Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS, Kriegsmarine, and Luftwaffe were. Likewise Japanese civilians were not our enemy; the armed forces of Japan were. When "corporate guilt" takes over you see things like the Rape of Nanking, where everyone's treated as ruthlessly as a combatant.

"Corporate guilt" removes individual responsibility, which is where it belongs: national leadership is to blame and is the true target.

The Bible makes clear that the nation that does not remove wickedness from within itself is Corporately guilty. It is the responsibility of the nations to remove the wickedness through public capital punishment of the wicked. The nation that refuses to remove the wickedness from its midst is Corporately Guilty for tolerating the wickedness, and the death of the citizens are solely the responsibility of the government that tolerated the wickedness.

 

[genuineoriginal]

So you're saying that an entire nation can be found guilty as a whole.

I wouldn't say that we're guilty of murder at Hiroshima.
I thought that God wouldn't punish a child for the sins of their father. Destroying a nation and the children therein seems like that's what He's doing. Or is this not considered punishment? Does the Bible ever make the distinction that babies are guilty if the nation is guilty? I suppose as a nation everyone is guilty regardless of personal fault.

I believe that the Bible makes it clear that a nation that tolerates wickedness in its citizens is guilty as a whole, but that a nation that actively enforces laws against wickedness through capital punishment is clear of the guilt of the wicked individuals.

 

[genuineoriginal]

I would. We deliberately and knowingly targeted non-combatants, including women, children, infants, the elderly and infirm....

I would posit that our guilt was shared by the Japanese, for putting military targets in a populated area. I would also posit that that is a cost of war and the burden modern countries bear for waging it.

Too true. The costs of war go far beyond the monetary costs. Waging war is a burden and a tremendous responsibility, and should not be undertaken lightly.

 

[genuineoriginal]

War has always been a difficult concept for me to grasp as it pertains to God. The purpose of war should only be to neutralize an immediate threat. It should never be for religious reasons. The way I see it is that the army is the tool of the goverment and the government is either right or wrong as a whole. The people live under and tend to side with the government and are right or wrong likewise by proxy. Of course there are seemingly obvious and not-so-obvious exceptions to this generalization (that being babies...).

As for Hiroshima, I don't believe there is any guilt on our part. The Japanese put their people in danger when they attacked us. Our retaliation was for our own preservation. It wasn't murder.

I also see war as a tool used by God to destroy wicked nations. This is clearly stated in the many different Day of the LORD passages.

 

[genuineoriginal]

Easily: working in a factory is nowhere near the same as being trained to kill. Turning a knob or shooting a gun are apples and oranges. Whether or not our own civies should have been considered legitimate targets is a moot point considering our oceans protected us from such attacks.

That is not what America thought in WWII. Here is a LINK to some of the posters from WWII

Posters encouraged all citizens to participate in the war effort in every possible way -- growing, conserving, saving, Tproducing.

The one that says "Remember Pearl Harbor, Purl Harder" was very touching.

If America considers knitting a part of the war effort, then I guess that citizens are legitimate targets.

 

[genuineoriginal]

Dueteronomy 20;17
Read the whole chapter 20, it lays out how war should be conducted, with a more honorable version outside Isreal, and a list of peoples that should be smote to the last thing that breathes.
There prolly recaps of these orders elsewhere, but Duet. comes to mind first.

More honorable way to wage war? Maybe not. These were the ways to treat more honorable nations in war. The dishonorable nations were to be treated as they deserved.

 

[genuineoriginal]

If your intent is to kill the people that's murder.
If you kill the people while your destroying an enemy asset that's war.
Cities are assets, even if they have limited military or industrial use.
Now, if they had a city that was exclusivly orphans and old nuns, and you knew that was all that was there. Destroying that city would be murder.

If you are an individual that is intent on killing people, then you are a murderer.
If you are a nation waging war, then you must accept the cost, including casualties on both sides.
If you are a nation that refuses to use maximum force in war, then you are prolonging the war, prolonging the needless suffering, and increase the anguish of the soldiers who must do the killing. If destroying a city exclusively consisting of orphans and old nuns would end the war, then that is something the government should consider as a viable option.

 

[genuineoriginal]

Even if bombing a factory is considered "right" there is a world of difference between this and deliberately (and needlessly) butchering an infant, wouldn't you say?

I would say that there is a difference between needlessly butchering an infant, as is done in abortions all the time, and killing an infant in a time of war.
If a soldier goes out of his way to butcher infants against orders, then he does not deserve to be a soldier. He deserves to be killed. On the other hand, babies in Vietnam were ocassionally placed on top of fragment grenades, and the soldiers who tried to save them were blown up. After that happens once or twice, the infants will no longer be rescued by the soldiers.

 

[fool]

(genuineoriginal watches in amazement as the American Army gathers up a thousand infants and orders fool to feed them, change them, and raise them as his own children. What will fool do with a thousand orphaned infants?)

My sons shall be legion.

 

[genuineoriginal]

If we were at war, would you consider your residential neighborhood a legitimate target for the enemy? Or, if they bombed your subdivision into oblivion and wiped out all the families and children there, would you condemn the act as excessive and barbaric?

If we were at war, I would consider any and all residential neighborhoods as legitimate targets for the enemy. Because of this, I would support bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities before they produce any atomic bombs. We don't want 911 to be done with nukes instead of hijacked planes.

 

[Balder]

If we were at war, I would consider any and all residential neighborhoods as legitimate targets for the enemy. Because of this, I would support bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities before they produce any atomic bombs. We don't want 911 to be done with nukes instead of hijacked planes.

G.O., I saw your earlier post to me, and I plan to respond to it soon. With regard to this post, I just wanted to say, If more people thought like this, the world may already have ended.

 

[genuineoriginal]

Well, the Flood is another example of a ham-handed justice system. Got one species behaving badly? Destroy all living things and make 'em all start over. If that's not excessive, I don't know what is.

Excessive destruction is sometimes the only remedy for excessive wickedness.

Revelation 11
18And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.​

God's judgment is often against them which destroy the earth. Wicked acts do more than pollute the people, they also pollute the land.

 

[genuineoriginal]

If you've got one species which is acting poorly, why do you choose a method which will punish and destroy all species instead of just the one causing trouble? God created everything out of nothing. He could have simply killed off humans with a word, since he brought everything into existence with a word.

After Adam sinned, God said that the ground was cursed because of him. If the sin of a single person cursed the ground, then the sin of everyone on earth before the flood cursed the earth so much that it had to be cleansed with water.

 

[genuineoriginal]

Cause killing the children is not your intent.
If your nuke has a button on it that says "spare the children" you should push it.

(genuineoriginal shudders to think of all the radiation poisoned babies laying on the ground in pain slowly starving to death)

But nukes don't work that way,
niether does a catapult,
or a salvo of arrows,
but a sword is one thrust one kill and you gota be real close to use it.

And it is not easy.