God creating people so a number of them can suffer for eternity in some cold horrible place seems like a shitty move
Who is God to decide who gets heaven or hell anyway? God has no mandate to be judging people.
Well, that's the thing. The idea is he gave mankind free will to choose how they would act themselves. He doesn't make those choices. He already knows the outcome but he still gives you the option knowing some will choose the wrong option.
I am slowly losing my faith in all that, though. I feel as if the way people choose is not so much free will but the way society molds them. How is that free will?
this was always the biggest cop out bullshit to me, and the big part of the Christian mythos that just fell apart under scrutiny
God is a benevolent omnipotent being, but has also chosen to never intervene and help anybody, even innocent people. You could have saved those babies from that plague, instead you let them suffer and die.
Why the fuck would anyone worship you? How could you judge anyone's morality or actions? You haven't done shit since the beginning. Get fucked, I'll choose hell over your hypocrisy.
There's also the argument from free will which is the bigger paradox for me - i.e. if a god knows everything then they know what choices we'll make, if our choices are predestined then we can't act freely so therefore we do not have free will
I agree with C.S. Lewis that this always sounded like a bunch of hooey. To watch a man do something is not to make him do it.
Not when you made it with divine hands! Like, is God not responsible for their own Creation? If they are, then they are morally responsible as well. If they aren't, why call them God?
Verily I say unto thee, fuck god, fuck theology, it's real-life fanfiction, and most of all, fuck the Black Templars.
Hey, you leave the Blacks out of this!
I am. I am not, however, leaving the Sons of Sigismund out of this. Fuckin' Sanguinala-cancelling mother-hubbers...
The problem of evil is very simple. Everything God does is, by definition, Good, regardless of whether you personally like it or not.
We're talking about fan theories, -Tal, not authorial Word of God, that's a different discussion.
I just think it's a bit self-centered to write fan theories that conflate "what is true" with "what do i feel good about"
It is true that the older I get the more often I will "rewrite" an ending in my head when I think an author didn't quite stick the landing, however I don't think that's what I'm generally doing when I'm engaging with fan theory. Most fiction leaves at least some things to interpretation anyway, but this particular setting leaves quite a lot to interpretation. We already have cases where earlier versions of the RPG guide stopped being used over time because they were no longer relevant (for example, the codex about bacon, although some tabletop purists still feel the need to follow that one); it's not that the internal consistency of the setting is no longer true, it's that parts of the setting were written for a specific audience, that audience no longer exists and the setting evolved for newer audiences. That's how I see it, anyway.
The discussion of whether I have "the right" to rewrite an author's story in my head to be what I wanted it to be is a discussion in itself. I've seen essays that treat that sort of mental exercise as an almost obscene way of thinking. I'm not claiming there's anything particularly intellectual about it, it's just an part of entertainment for me. Maybe it's masturbating, but I enjoy masturbating, too.
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
now i think the dietary restrictions are a pretty good example here where i don't think they are even particularly onerous or unreasonable but i do want to eat pig sometimes and i live in a society where pig is both readily available and actively marketed to me
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I mentioned bacon but I actually have never been a fan of bacon. Prosciutto, now, that's a foodstuff worth throwing out an outdated codex for. Especially with cream cheese on a wheat cracker.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
I mentioned bacon but I actually have never been a fan of bacon. Prosciutto, now, that's a foodstuff worth throwing out an outdated codex for. Especially with cream cheese on a wheat cracker.
When you're talking about bacon, is that as a brit, american or canadian? Ie, back bacon, pork belly bacon or loin bacon (which is what a scandinavian or german would call kassler)?
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I've been under the impression that a lot of kosher/halal rules were to keep people from food poisoning in some form or another, and the fact that it prevented them from consuming food that made them sick was used against them by Christians who did eat that food and got sick. I never really looked into if that was true or not, though
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Yes that's what I was taught, laws about pig were from a time when cooking was more primitive and so people weren't regular able to get ovens hit enough to safely eat pork. As technology advanced, the law was no longer necessary.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Yes that's what I was taught, laws about pig were from a time when cooking was more primitive and so people weren't regular able to get ovens hit enough to safely eat pork. As technology advanced, the law was no longer necessary.
Should point out that according to Christian theology that happened around 36 CE when Paul said it was perfectly good to eat whatever you want. Cause he had a vision, see. Incidentally, that vision also said I should totally be in charge guys.
Yes that's what I was taught, laws about pig were from a time when cooking was more primitive and so people weren't regular able to get ovens hit enough to safely eat pork. As technology advanced, the law was no longer necessary.
Should point out that according to Christian theology that happened around 36 CE when Paul said it was perfectly good to eat whatever you want. Cause he had a vision, see. Incidentally, that vision also said I should totally be in charge guys.
Technically, it was Peter that had the vision where God specifically told him that "clean" and "unclean" didn't mean anything anymore (Acts 10:9-16).
Yes that's what I was taught, laws about pig were from a time when cooking was more primitive and so people weren't regular able to get ovens hit enough to safely eat pork. As technology advanced, the law was no longer necessary.
Should point out that according to Christian theology that happened around 36 CE when Paul said it was perfectly good to eat whatever you want. Cause he had a vision, see. Incidentally, that vision also said I should totally be in charge guys.
Technically, it was Peter that had the vision where God specifically told him that "clean" and "unclean" didn't mean anything anymore (Acts 10:9-16).
Huh, I always thought that was part of the Road to Damascus vision but you're totally right there.
Weren't the dietary restrictions geared towards keeping people from getting food poisoning in a time when that could be lethal
That used to be the assumption but there's really no evidence of that reasoning. The "eating pigs is dangerous for your health" seems to have not become an idea commonly propogated until literally thousands of years after the prohibition started. Pigs weren't, and still aren't, a particularly risky food source and there are actually a bunch of health advantages to raising pigs, the biggest thing being they essentially a natural trash compactor, they will eat gross stuff that can make you sick, but won't make them sick. And they're actually from a basic sanitation level probably the cleanest common domesticated food animal. (This isn't saying much, as oxen/cows/chickens are all pretty grody.)
It's worth noting that until the late bronze/early iron age communities that would be considered proto-hebrew did consume significant amounts of pork, as proven by archaeological records where you find lots of pig bones with clear marks of being cooked, cut and eaten. Then, something happened, and by the end of the bronze age, pork consumption had basically vanished if you use that same method, close to no pig remains at any hebrew site by the thirteen or fourteenth century BCE. If you look at communities all around them, this trend is not followed. Egypt, the northern levant, and Mesopatamia were still big on the pig.
There's a hypothesis that the prohibition may have started as a way to encourage more lucrative taxable livestock raising (like sheep), another that states it might have started as an anti-caananite mentality as there was a Caananite god associated with boars, but ultimately, it'll always be an open question.
a lot of people try to work backwards from "there MUST have been a deeply rational and simple observation-response effect like "saw a dude ate pig got sick"" for religious rules because we all sort of assume that all those societies are less complex than they were, and things like political machinations by Big Sheep are actually totally plausible
With the introduction of the chicken in the Middle East, we have two taxa, the pig and the chicken, functioning in almost the exact same role in the human subsistence system and probably competing with each other for food and labor. Humans have two options in this scenario. Since the pig and the chicken would compete for resources and labor, humans have to make a decision whether to focus on one or, much less likely, use both. I suggest that the chicken, once introduced, was favored by humans and largely replaced the pig in most village and poor urban contexts. The chicken would be favored over the pig for four reasons. First, chickens are a more efficient source of protein than pigs. Second, chickens produce a secondary product, the egg, which is also a more efficient source of protein than the pig. Third, the chicken is a smaller package than the pig, and a household can consume a chicken within 24 hours. This eliminates the problem of the large size of the pig. If families slaughter pigs, they either have to preserve meat or establish reciprocal relations for exchange of pig meat. Fourth, as described above, nomads use chickens. Further, the chicken would gain in importance as nomads become increasingly integrated into regional economies and their animals become too valuable to eat. Under these circumstances, the chicken becomes a major protein resource. The pig, as noted above, cannot be driven or herded effectively and, hence, cannot easily be used by nomads.
huh, interesting stuff
Redding does not mention the Bronze Age collapse, which came to mind when he mentions reciprocal relationships to underpin efficient use of pork (which would have been punished pretty hard by instability)
I feel like there’s a lot of difficult and contentious religious questions being thrown around right now that could be solved if everyone read Forming, the biblical webcomic document on creation and the myths thereof.
Much has been written about why pigs are not kosher (Lev 11:7; Deut 14:8). Pigs are supposedly ill adapted to the Judean climate, they are infested with worms, they occupy the same place on the food chain as humans,1 or they are unsuited to a nomadic life-style which most probably explains why not a single pig is listed besides the thousands of other animals recorded on the Banquet Stele of Aššurnaṣirpal II. Other explanations focus on what pigs do not produce. Producing no milk, no wool, no traction and only poor-quality leather, pigs played no role in the ‘Secondary Products Revolution’. As this revolution occurred well over two millennia before the rise of the biblical ban, it is clear that humans had other reasons to find pigs useful...
this paper is just so bitter and sarcastic all the way through
Pythagoras banned beans because, uh, throws dart at wheel, beans at the time were higher in raffinose than modern day beans and so what is a mild case of the farts today could have been bowel shattering trumpets in ye olden ancient times.
Meatless Fridays were the result of all meat going bad on Fridays. It was a weird quirk that all meat went bad on Friday. This went away with the invention of the refrigerator.
Meatless Fridays were the result of all meat going bad on Fridays. It was a weird quirk that all meat went bad on Friday. This went away with the invention of the refrigerator.
The associated Meatful Thursdays; mass dining-orgies where people attempted to eat every last scrap of meat in the vicinity before midnight, have been thoroughly erased from history by collective secret law. Viewed as "shameful" by modern society, the sin-filled ecstatic banquets of those Thursdays are our real cultural heritage.
I feel like there’s a lot of difficult and contentious religious questions being thrown around right now that could be solved if everyone read Forming, the biblical webcomic document on creation and the myths thereof.
*edit* there might be some peeners and vagaloos in there
Buddy, most questions of passionate fandom are difficult and contentious. The Star Trek thread has calmed down these days, but I have permanently exiled myself from all future Star Wars discussions ad infinitum.
Meatless Fridays were the result of all meat going bad on Fridays. It was a weird quirk that all meat went bad on Friday. This went away with the invention of the refrigerator.
So I don't know the full history of Lent and how restricted it used to be versus how unrestricted it is now, but I do know that if you go far enough back it was no meat at all during Lent.
Oh also the reason fish is allowed when they say "no meat" is because the RPG rulebooks for Catholicism are written in Latin. That codex specifies you aren't allowed to have carnis, and fish doesn't fall under that Latin word apparently and you know how there are rules lawyers in every campaign.
No but the no meat on Fridays thing (which is no longer a year-long rule, and nowadays only applies on Lent) is specifically a tribute to Christ having died on a Friday, Catholicism is full of stuff like that. Christ is also said to have died at 3 o'clock, so 3 is called the hour of great mercy.
But things like that aren't old testament things, and old testament things are often based on things much, much older than the bible. Keep in mind that I'm not saying that the things they were based on were necessarily rational things, like it the law doesn't have to have a real scientific basis, but "I noticed pigs roll in shit a lot, pigs must be accursed, let's make a law about it" sounds about right to me.
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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GrogMy sword is only steelin a useful shape.Registered Userregular
Why are religious texts and theology being referred to as RPG rulebooks and fantheories? Am I about to see the flying spaghetti monster?
God creating people so a number of them can suffer for eternity in some cold horrible place seems like a shitty move
Who is God to decide who gets heaven or hell anyway? God has no mandate to be judging people.
Well, that's the thing. The idea is he gave mankind free will to choose how they would act themselves. He doesn't make those choices. He already knows the outcome but he still gives you the option knowing some will choose the wrong option.
I am slowly losing my faith in all that, though. I feel as if the way people choose is not so much free will but the way society molds them. How is that free will?
this was always the biggest cop out bullshit to me, and the big part of the Christian mythos that just fell apart under scrutiny
God is a benevolent omnipotent being, but has also chosen to never intervene and help anybody, even innocent people. You could have saved those babies from that plague, instead you let them suffer and die.
Why the fuck would anyone worship you? How could you judge anyone's morality or actions? You haven't done shit since the beginning. Get fucked, I'll choose hell over your hypocrisy.
There's also the argument from free will which is the bigger paradox for me - i.e. if a god knows everything then they know what choices we'll make, if our choices are predestined then we can't act freely so therefore we do not have free will
But it all works better if you stop saying god knows the future. I don't think the Bible was super clear on his omni knowledge.
Omniscience is omniscience. You can't be a little bit all-knowing, kind of infallible. The whole thing is predicated on emphasizing god is perfect and can do no wrong.
There are multiple stories in the Bible where someone argues with God and changes His mind, which does not seem like behavior consistent with a perfect all knowing being
In the Book of Job, God asks Satan his opinion about the state of the earth, and on his recommendation decides to basically run a moral experiment; an omniscient being would have no need for advice or experiments. At the climax of the book, Job breaks down and says that what God had done to him is fucked up and wrong. God's response is to rage at him for multiple chapters, delivering a whole monologue about how Job is nothing compared to Him, and he has no place complaining about His choices. And then... God just sort of quietly concedes the argument and gives Job back more than He took from him in the first place. The results of the experiment seem sort of inconclusive; not only did God need to run an experiment, it doesn't seem like He was able to reach a definitive conclusion from it.
I'm Christian but my understanding is that God as a completely omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being is a Christian invention and that for instance Judaism does not necessarily hold any of those things to be true (any Jewish folks in here by all means feel free to correct or clarify that)
Posts
We're talking about fan theories, -Tal, not authorial Word of God, that's a different discussion.
I am. I am not, however, leaving the Sons of Sigismund out of this. Fuckin' Sanguinala-cancelling mother-hubbers...
(This is a reference to this youtube video:
)
I just think it's a bit self-centered to write fan theories that conflate "what is true" with "what do i feel good about"
It is true that the older I get the more often I will "rewrite" an ending in my head when I think an author didn't quite stick the landing, however I don't think that's what I'm generally doing when I'm engaging with fan theory. Most fiction leaves at least some things to interpretation anyway, but this particular setting leaves quite a lot to interpretation. We already have cases where earlier versions of the RPG guide stopped being used over time because they were no longer relevant (for example, the codex about bacon, although some tabletop purists still feel the need to follow that one); it's not that the internal consistency of the setting is no longer true, it's that parts of the setting were written for a specific audience, that audience no longer exists and the setting evolved for newer audiences. That's how I see it, anyway.
The discussion of whether I have "the right" to rewrite an author's story in my head to be what I wanted it to be is a discussion in itself. I've seen essays that treat that sort of mental exercise as an almost obscene way of thinking. I'm not claiming there's anything particularly intellectual about it, it's just an part of entertainment for me. Maybe it's masturbating, but I enjoy masturbating, too.
That's definitely a theory I've heard. Don't think anybody knows for sure on that one.
When you're talking about bacon, is that as a brit, american or canadian? Ie, back bacon, pork belly bacon or loin bacon (which is what a scandinavian or german would call kassler)?
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Should point out that according to Christian theology that happened around 36 CE when Paul said it was perfectly good to eat whatever you want. Cause he had a vision, see. Incidentally, that vision also said I should totally be in charge guys.
Technically, it was Peter that had the vision where God specifically told him that "clean" and "unclean" didn't mean anything anymore (Acts 10:9-16).
Huh, I always thought that was part of the Road to Damascus vision but you're totally right there.
God created everything that exists.
Everything God created is good.
Evil exists.
Therefore, God created evil.
Therefore, Evil is Good?
It's worth noting that until the late bronze/early iron age communities that would be considered proto-hebrew did consume significant amounts of pork, as proven by archaeological records where you find lots of pig bones with clear marks of being cooked, cut and eaten. Then, something happened, and by the end of the bronze age, pork consumption had basically vanished if you use that same method, close to no pig remains at any hebrew site by the thirteen or fourteenth century BCE. If you look at communities all around them, this trend is not followed. Egypt, the northern levant, and Mesopatamia were still big on the pig.
There's a hypothesis that the prohibition may have started as a way to encourage more lucrative taxable livestock raising (like sheep), another that states it might have started as an anti-caananite mentality as there was a Caananite god associated with boars, but ultimately, it'll always be an open question.
huh, interesting stuff
Redding does not mention the Bronze Age collapse, which came to mind when he mentions reciprocal relationships to underpin efficient use of pork (which would have been punished pretty hard by instability)
http://jessemoynihan.com/
*edit* there might be some peeners and vagaloos in there
this paper is just so bitter and sarcastic all the way through
Penny Arcade
Gunnerkrigg Court
Questionable Content
Wow, didn't take these guys long to develop racism.
The associated Meatful Thursdays; mass dining-orgies where people attempted to eat every last scrap of meat in the vicinity before midnight, have been thoroughly erased from history by collective secret law. Viewed as "shameful" by modern society, the sin-filled ecstatic banquets of those Thursdays are our real cultural heritage.
Teach the controversy
Dumbing of Age
Skin Horse
Buddy, most questions of passionate fandom are difficult and contentious. The Star Trek thread has calmed down these days, but I have permanently exiled myself from all future Star Wars discussions ad infinitum.
So I don't know the full history of Lent and how restricted it used to be versus how unrestricted it is now, but I do know that if you go far enough back it was no meat at all during Lent.
Oh also the reason fish is allowed when they say "no meat" is because the RPG rulebooks for Catholicism are written in Latin. That codex specifies you aren't allowed to have carnis, and fish doesn't fall under that Latin word apparently and you know how there are rules lawyers in every campaign.
No but the no meat on Fridays thing (which is no longer a year-long rule, and nowadays only applies on Lent) is specifically a tribute to Christ having died on a Friday, Catholicism is full of stuff like that. Christ is also said to have died at 3 o'clock, so 3 is called the hour of great mercy.
But things like that aren't old testament things, and old testament things are often based on things much, much older than the bible. Keep in mind that I'm not saying that the things they were based on were necessarily rational things, like it the law doesn't have to have a real scientific basis, but "I noticed pigs roll in shit a lot, pigs must be accursed, let's make a law about it" sounds about right to me.
David Willis can quite possibly see the future.
And now, the conclusion!
Atomic Robo
If that snake is a relative of Casper then it'll be as friendly as a chocolate cuddle wrapped in sugar.
Anyone that can inspire this level of devotion is surely not a threat
There are multiple stories in the Bible where someone argues with God and changes His mind, which does not seem like behavior consistent with a perfect all knowing being
In the Book of Job, God asks Satan his opinion about the state of the earth, and on his recommendation decides to basically run a moral experiment; an omniscient being would have no need for advice or experiments. At the climax of the book, Job breaks down and says that what God had done to him is fucked up and wrong. God's response is to rage at him for multiple chapters, delivering a whole monologue about how Job is nothing compared to Him, and he has no place complaining about His choices. And then... God just sort of quietly concedes the argument and gives Job back more than He took from him in the first place. The results of the experiment seem sort of inconclusive; not only did God need to run an experiment, it doesn't seem like He was able to reach a definitive conclusion from it.
I'm Christian but my understanding is that God as a completely omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being is a Christian invention and that for instance Judaism does not necessarily hold any of those things to be true (any Jewish folks in here by all means feel free to correct or clarify that)
http://www.audioentropy.com/