Willravel

Sure. Below are central conservative standpoints and i'll provide Biblical accounts which run counter to each standpoint:

Economics:
Pro-property (Luke 14:33, Matthew 6:19-33)
Self-centeric (Mark 9:35, James 3:16)
Pro-rich/Anti-poor (Matthew 19:16-30/Mark 10:21-25/Luke 18:18-30)

Society:
Materialism (Matthew 19:16-30/Mark 10:21-25/Luke 18:18-30)
Exclusion (Mark 2:13-17/Matthew 9:9-13/Luke 5:27-32)
Economic class divergence (John 13:12-17)

Government:
Proportional response doctrine (Matthew 5:39)

Wasn’t Jesus A Liberal?

The Biblical Jesus would absolutely be liberal by modern standards.

matthew330

with the exception of the loving your enemies part (unless they're the conservative kind of course), none of that even comes close to describing the standards of liberalism today. I do understand that's how you like to see yourselves, but it's just not the case.

Willravel

As a neoconservative Bush apologist I'm sure your opinion of liberalism is totally objective.

roachboy

On Faith Panelists Blog: Why the Faithful Approve of Torture - On Faith at washingtonpost.com

this goes to a kinda lame column in the washington post about this poll: the author is one of a no doubt huge range of christians who do not see this question in the way protestant evangelicals might...the interpretation in the column culminates in the last paragraph--but the commentary is interesting, though, and raises many of the questions that seem obvious (for example whether there is a correlation between religious practices and support for torture that makes sense independently of political viewpoint--in other words, the argument is that one might be conservative politically and have supported the bush people and their rationales for torture usage independently of religious affiliation....or it could be the case that (for example) evangelical protestant churches are effectively conservative political organizations (which i am inclined to see them as being, and which i personally think should cost alot of these churches their tax exempt status--but that'll never happen)...

there's a link at the start of the column to some more extensive information about the poll as well.
the question of representativeness really should have been addressed with respect to this particular poll--but instead you find a generic page about methologies. i looked around a bit on the pew website but didn't find anything that would speak to psychodad's objections about sample.

what's obvious is that there are many types of christianity, a bunch of demoninations, and it isn't at all clear that it makes sense to talk about christianity in general, or only particular types of christianity---methodists aren't particularly like evangelical baptists aren't particularly like catholics, etc. but that would have made for less meme-friendly results.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

FoolThemAll

Missed my hint, huh? It wasn't that subtle.

What does that have to do with a reluctance to force others into this mindset? How does this show opposition to notions of property rights?

Where in this passage is it indicated that the government should incentivise this edict or penalize those who wouldn't follow it?

How do you go from "you should behave this way" to "the government should penalize those who don't behave this way"?

What?

Should I give your other cites a chance, or do you repeat your mistake in those as well?

So long as you ignore the socially conservative aspects of his teachings, and so long as you imagine a political bent that simply isn't there.

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I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

Willravel

How does Jesus telling people to not store earthly possessions show opposition to property? Really?
What was it you said above? "Now you're just being silly". You should meet the same standards you require in others, lest you become a hypocrite.
I don't. The particular flavor of free market capitalism that modern conservatives support mean that you primarily serve yourself and yourself alone. As we have seen, this leads to class divergence. Compare that to the idea that no one person is better than anyone else and that you should serve others regardless of their place in society.
The only mistake is in your reading of what I posted. Unfortunately, I can only make my posts so clear, eventually the responsibility of comprehension falls to you, the reader.
Your post is a little light on Biblical references. Maybe you'd like to make an attempt to support your not so subtle point?

FoolThemAll

No, not really. How does it show opposition to property rights?

Now you're just being dodgy. I'll put it another way: where in that passage does it indicate that conservatives are wrong to keep matters of charity voluntary?

But as I pointed out, you're comparing apples and oranges. You're comparing what Jesus says people should do to what modern conservatives believe people should be allowed to do. If you aren't making the jump from one to the other, what are you doing? Exactly what kind of contradiction do you see here?

I read your post with the assumptions that (1) you appreciate the difference between "do this" and "make others do this", and (2) you were aiming to give me irreconcilable differences between conservative politics and the teachings of Jesus. Let me know which assumption was unwarranted.

You claimed contradictions. Burden's yours.

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I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

Willravel

Fortunately, I don't have to demonstrate that at all, as I never made mention of property rights, but simply property. Remember? "Pro-property"? Besides, liberals aren't anti-property rights, they simply don't have materialism built as strongly into their/our economic models. We're okay having a little less so that others can have a little more.
This isn't speaking to the ideology I was referencing, though. When I was talking about class divergence, I was talking about being okay with some people being incredibly poor and some people being incredibly rich, but moreover the fact that conservatives prop up the rich as if they are better than everyone else, not having to pay their share of taxes, not being prosecuted for serious crimes, getting away with more than any poor person ever could hope to. When, in the passage (John 13:12-17, iirc), Jesus was washing their feet, he was symbolizing the fact that even those in the most laudable positions in society are still servants of that society and they are not truly greater than any "servant", or poorer person. That kind of equality is better represented by the left today than it is by the right.
No, most conservatives I know believe that everyone should behave in that way in order for the free market to work correctly. If some people are pushing for the government to help the poor more or for more socialized programs, they, according to what I understand to be a conservative mindset, are hindering the market. So it is, in fact, what one "should" do when discussing conservatism.
I said I was flabbergasted. I still am. I've met the burden to convince myself.

You really can't list anything?

sprocket

I honestly don't get this absolutism that many on the left start parroting when it comes to torture... they sound just like the Christians they criticize.

I can think of plenty of scenarios where torture would be the moral thing to do, perhaps even when the chance of receiving reliable information is miniscule... they might not all be likely, but definitely possible.

Perhaps torture is mostly ineffective and unreliable (anyone have some good solid studies that attest to this?) .. but it may be extremely effective and very reliable in certain situations, with certain people.... or the stakes might be so high that even a slight chance to receive truthful information would render it justified.

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filtherton

What's not to get? It sounds like you don't really understand what you're talking about. Did you know that many Christians on the left are absolutely opposed to torture? Or that absolutism isn't always bad?

So you just, like, sit around and fantasize about situations where torture was morally justified? That can't be good for your mental health.

This is ridiculous. This has nothing to do with the kind of torture that was the standard operating procedure of the previous administration. You're talking about some sort of fictional fantasy world. In Real Life people were tortured when there wasn't really anything at stake, when they didn't have any useful information- that's how torture happens In Real Life, when people decide that some sort of abstract notion of personal safety is more important than a commitment to human rights.

That's what this whole torture thing is really about- making people who are fundamentally insecure feel secure.

This Jack Bauer bullshit needs to die.

And I'm pretty sure that you won't find any studies concerning the effectiveness of torture because any scientist who attached his/her name to the study would be stripped of their credentials and compared to the nazis.

shakran

OK. Tell them to us. Not generalizations like you already did, but specific examples. Bear in mind that "the chance of receiving reliable information is minuscule" is a meaningless statement. Since torture is known to extract unreliable information, even if the person you torture gives you reliable information, you won't know that it's reliable.



I'm especially interested to know when you think torture would be /moral/ and why.

FoolThemAll

I think you need to define this 'pro-property' thing you attribute exclusively to conservatives so that I can see how it doesn't apply to... just about anyone at all.

You need to bring this down to earth. Are there any intrinsically conservative policies that you can point to and say, "Jesus hates this"? Can you point to something a little more universal than the corruption of some conservatives? Or are you just saying that conservatives have some bad attitudes?

And if that happens to be it, could you be less flabbergasted by the idea that Christians might vote for those who hold similar policy goals and dissimilar mindsets?

Barring an incredibly poor amount of anecdotal experience on your part, that's not really what you mean. Conservatives don't insist on selfishness from everyone in order to maintain the free market - yeesh, even Ayn Rand didn't do that - they insist on the government holding a neutral position toward selfishness.

You're still making - without stating - the jump from "people should do this" to "the government should compel assistance in doing this". Jesus wants charity. Conservatives want charity to stay voluntary. That's not a contradiction, no matter how many times and ways you try to shroud the leap from "do this" to "make others do this".

Again: Jesus clearly wanted charity. He did not, in any remotely clear way, want forced charity.

Implying contradictions. If you meant to make a baseless statement, then sure, you've met the burden.

List what? All the places where Jesus doesn't contradict conservative policies?

That really isn't how the burden of proof works.

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I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

roachboy

geez, fta, you'd think this would be obvious--but given that xtian denominations position themselves against each other by generating differing amalgamations of interpretations of biblical texts--and so different priorities, different combinations--so evangelicals who happen as a denominational matter to also be reactionary tend to generate these strange analgamations of old and new testament texts in that selective-to-arbitrary reading kinda way that apparently is authorized by the descent of the holy spirit or whatever that emphasize the more martial aspects of the old testament processed through collages of prophetic texts--you know, revelations/apocalypse isiah, ezeliek about the end time that in turn get laid over the gospels in order to create the version of jesus that best suits their politics. so alot of evangelicals fancy themselves like the jesuits did in the 17th century, the army of jesus engaged in trench war against satan and his minions, holding down whatever they imagine themselves to be holding down until that dramatic moment when the Giant Vacuum gets turned on and the Righteous get hoovered into the Bag of Heaven and then the Shit Will Hit The Fan. the evangelical message--the conversion narratives--emphasis the peace love and understanding aspects--helping you or i to join the InCrowd and pitch ourselves toward various moments of Recognitions like you see in that fabulous film "freaks"--you're one of us, you're one of us....which presumably is then confirmed in a wholesale breakdown of musical taste and sudden affection for that particularly nasty strata of mediocre pop they call "christian music""---but in the stories that concern the relation of the Faitful to the evil fallen world, it's entirely adversarial.

you could connect this relation inside/outside to the interpretation of the bible to the reactionary politics to the relatively heightened support for torture.
fact is alot of evanglicals at the level of doctrine formal and informal already spend alot of time imagining themselves persecuted and take that persecution as an Index of their Monumental Faith.

but i suspect you know all this.

it's also self-evident that this is far from the only interpretation of the bible, far from the only collage, that is possible--and that different denominations emphasize different versions. connecting collage to organization to politics is an easy peasy way to position in the same generally xtian grid unitarian univeralists or quakers to catholics to methodists to southern baptist evangelicals.

it isn't rocket science.

so it's not exactly a cohrent way to proceed to abstract the gospels from everything else and pretend that what's at stake are different takes on the bromides jesus is supposed to have issued as if they're free standing---it's more accurate to see in the bromides and frame stories elements that are situated in broader readings/relations to the bible which are symmterical with committments that are outside the text.

the problem with the poll--and with it in more detailed form--is simply that it make no particular differentiations amongst xtians, treating them as a bloc--but that's methodologically a pretty suspect move, if you think about it---but whatever, i don't have an iron in that fire so don't particularly care about it. nor did i find the poll particularly interesting, but for the same reason. suspect method leads to suspect results. happens every day.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Willravel

I did not present my position to convince anyone, therefore there is no burden of proof. The burden of proof is about shifting the assumed conclusion from yourself to an opponent or opponents, but in this I established no opponent or opponents, I simply stated an opinion. Read it again:
I was making a statement of fact about my own opinion, not a challenge to anyone's assumptions. The fact that you responded to this as if I'd laid out an objective truth in order to convince people tells me you ignored the syntax completely and were just looking for confrontation. The only logical opposition to my statement would be if you believed that my opinion wasn't that the Jesus character was liberal. Since me stating my own opinion truthfully is naturally assumed, the burden has been met.

Everything after that was me explaining my own opinion. Here's a question for you: if you're trying to change my opinion, who does the burden fall on? I'll give you a hint, it's you.

FoolThemAll

Fair enough.

Past that point, I asked you to explain your opinion. To an extent, you complied, but not very well. I pointed out that your listed contradictions weren't actually contradictions.

That's where we're at. What, if anything, is next? Do you have any good examples of why you're flabbergasted?

How would you propose I do that if I don't have an understanding of your opinion's basis? You gave me some examples, but they didn't help me to understand your opinion because they didn't support it.

If I were to say that I was flabbergasted that followers of Jesus could be political liberals, could you point out to me the passages where Jesus advocated liberal government? And for the love of that neocon-hating God, if you do, could you please do so without conflating liberal government and liberal behavior?

You want a list of examples where Jesus doesn't hate political conservatism? Take a Bible that puts the words of Jesus in red. Those words in red are my tentative list. I invite you to poke holes in that list.

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I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

Willravel

And you're welcome to that opinion. I disagree, but not strongly enough to do anything about it.

Cynosure

Perhaps. But what if that killer presented me with a child, and said, "Here... Sexually molest this child while I watch, or I will press the button on this device that will detonate the bomb your wife and your own child are strapped to." Would I molest the child? No way. I would not compromise my principles on this, even it means my wife and my own child will die.

Indeed, that scenario was ridiculous. And so was mine.

Then again, some people (myself included) believe that torture is among those evils that should never be committed, no matter what the circumstances.

sprocket

Examples of a reasonable form of absolutism are pretty lacking, in my opinion.

Not really... but questions regarding the ethics of torture should raise those kinds of thoughts, at least a little bit, if one is to claim they have actually given the issue due consideration.

Well, I wanst really commenting on torture as implemented by the previous administration.. but in general, there are possible situations where torture would be moral. I'm sure that any scenario I could posit to you, would be immediately dismissed as a "Jack Bauer" fantasy, but whatever.

If you can imagine a sliding scale, where the morality of an act of coercion is proportional with the severity of the risks involved with failing to acquire information necessary to prevent some disaster, you should be able to understand how I feel about it. On the low end of the scale, you might have a typical police interrogation... on the high end of the scale you might have more advanced torture techniques. On one hand though, I do think there is probably an upper limit on the type of torture that could be realistically ethically used, but I don't think waterboarding gets there... nor naked human pyramids.

If say, a million lives are at stake, and the best possibility to save them was through an act of torture, I think it would be morally questionable not to go through with it. Heck even if 9/11 could have been prevented with an act of torture...

This has nothing to do with me trying to feel "secure"... its about coming to a reasonable conclusion about the ethics of torture. I don't think the anti-torture absolutists have proven their case, that I have seen. I don't think I would really advocate that we actually permit torture as a matter of public policy... but I would be all for letting someone off the hook if they used torture reasonably.

Then why is there such confidence behind the claims that torture is unreliable? Do we have good scientific information to corroborate these claims, or can we dismiss them as unsubstantiated?

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Remember, wherever you go... there you are.

Willravel

This assumes there aren't better, more effective, more efficient methods of extracting information. There are in any and all circumstances better, more effective, more efficient methods of extracting information, according to the foremost experts on the issue, therefore torture is never the moral thing to do. Unless you assume that you understand torture (or any questioning methods) better than the foremost experts in the world, you must then conclude, as I have, that torture has no place.

That's all moot, because there's no chance, not even a minuscule chance, of extracting reliable information via torture. You might get information, you may even get information that ends up correct, but only a fool would think it to be reliable. Torture does not yield reliable results.

sprocket

Well, in any situation where there was an equally effective or more effective alternative to torture that was less morally treacherous, I would claim that torture is not justified.

What if the information needed was trivial to verify? Honestly, I don't have my mind closed to arguments of its effectiveness from either side... but one thing in favor of those who would permit torture in some conditions, is the fact that it does have quite a historical precedent.

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Willravel

Can you elaborate? If we're torturing someone, wouldn't the information be important enough to verify? We don't exactly torture for unimportant information. At least I hope we don't.
So does astrology. Historical precedent does not equate effectiveness, in fact it often speaks to a thing's outdatedness. But in all seriousness, don't ignore the massive evidence that torture doesn't work. Don't ignore numerous interviews with the most qualified people alive on the subject. Don't ignore FBI documents from Guantanamo that detail how torture hindered, not helped, their questioning of detainees. Don't ignore the fact that torturing Zarqawi not only yielded no demonstrable results, but the administration had to lie about it working (and were later caught in that lie).

filtherton

Does it strike you as odd that you are absolutely opposed to absolutism?

I guess. Though to tell you the truth, I didn't have to do a lot of soul searching or thought experiments to come to the conclusion that rape is wrong. And whenever I have the opportunity to reiterate the claim that rape is wrong, I never feel the need to qualify it with a statement about how I can imagine that it would be okay in some instances.

Even then, torture in the abstract isn't the problem here. The problem here is how torture typically plays out in real life: inefficient as a means of gathering quality information and with little regard for human rights.

Because it probably would be Jack Bauer fantasy. Jack Bauer fantasies are the standard response when one is attempting to justify torture.

But why would there be an upper limit on the type of torture used? Is it possible that your problems with the "absolutist" perspective is that it sets a much lower upper limit on the types of ethical torture than you?

I understand where you're coming from and I don't necessarily disagree with your math. I just think that the the odds of such a situation occurring are vanishingly small and that discussion of such situations tends to obscure how torture plays out in reality.

Of course it's about feeling secure, the circumstances you are describing are at their core about maintaining some sense of security.

As for proving cases, your case isn't particularly compelling either. Do you know of any instances where Jack Bauer tactics have directly contributed to the prevention of mass murder? Have there been any rigorous scientific studies about the effectiveness of torture at preventing mass murder?

I think that the lack of confidence in the effectiveness of torture at providing reliable information is based on statements made by people whose job it is to know how effective torture is at providing reliable information. Willravel could probably tell you more.

In any case, I would hope that you begin applying your rigorous scientific standards to your own perspective. You might find that there is little scientific evidence corroborating the claim that torture is effective.

florida0214

This is kind of a moot post now. If one pastor of any denomination said something that makes his or his church look horrible then it must be believed by every church no matter what. It seems that people just want to paint all Christians as hypocrites ( which is admittedly true ) and find any excuse they can grasp at to not believe that they may, one day, be held responsible.
People may actually have to come to the understanding that if there is no higher power and we are just dust, then life in really not relevant. That if we are just dust or dirt then life is of little consequence and killing is simply speeding up the decomposition process and nothing more. People will always find excuses to not believe and will never realize that humans are imperfect and are mostly horrible examples of God no matter their religious beliefs. Anyway just my two cents.

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