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To: EnderWiggins
Let me try to communicate what you are missing another way. Imainge I used the word "information" instead of potrayal in your argument. Then it would read as so:

It is simple historical fact, testified to in the writings of the Church fathers themselves, that this information is both the proximate and ultimate cause of their own anti-Semitism, as well as 2000 years of general anti-Semitism in Christian Europe. There is no need to even explore the inconsistency of that information with the historical facts of Roman history and law. The dots have been neatly and solidly connected.

Doesn't pan out does it? It sounds like you are trying to blame information morally. Sounds pretty stupid really.

So lets try the other meaning of portrayl you had in your conter-distinction, which is "attitude":

It is simple historical fact, testified to in the writings of the Church fathers themselves, that this attitude is both the proximate and ultimate cause of their own anti-Semitism, as well as 2000 years of general anti-Semitism in Christian Europe. There is no need to even explore the inconsistency of that attitude with the historical facts of Roman history and law. The dots have been neatly and solidly connected.

Well that sounds better as a source of moral cupability...but sadly for your argument, it is hard to argue that the attitude came from the New Testament with the "father Forgive them" plea from Jesus, et al.

So you, unconsciously I suppose, commit a logical fallacy and fail to distinquish between the two meanings. You use the meaning "knolledge" to establish the veracity of your premise, but then use the meaning "atitutde" in order to assign moral cupability.

A very common logical error. Don't feel too bad, I think you are smart enough to see them if you try, its just you apparently have bad attitude on this particular subject.

60 posted on 02/11/2010 8:46:23 AM PST by AndyTheBear
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To: AndyTheBear
"Doesn't pan out does it? It sounds like you are trying to blame information morally. Sounds pretty stupid really."

Of course it doesn't. That is probably why I did not use the word "information." I am not equivocating, and I am not blaming some morally neutral, rhetoric free "information." I am blaming the Gospels for their intentional portrayal of the Jews.

Now... a moral relativist here (which I know you believe you are not) would frame this as a discussion of "ought" vs. "is." They would try and wash any moral culpability off the hands of the authors of the Gospels by asserting, "Hey. They were just reporting the facts, ma'am. That's not how it ought to have been, but simply how it really was. The Jews really were responsible for the killing of Christ after all. It's not the New Testament's fault that later generations of Christians would see that as a good reason to murder Jews."

And you know what? Such an argument might hold up were it not for two problems:

The first of these is that it cannot be taken seriously as a true account of the events surrounding the execution of Jesus. Crucifixion was a Roman sentence, imposed by Romans for violations of Roman law. It was imposed exclusively in two instances: as the preferred method of execution for slaves, or as punishment for sedition against Rome. The entire account of multiple trials in front of Jewish authorities and Pontius Pilates eventually "washing his hands" is historically absurd. We could spend entire other threads dissecting the social and political reasons for the Evangelist's mischaracterization of the relative culpability of the Romans vs. the Jews in the execution of Jesus, but I will let it rest with my conclusion, and you can take it or leave it. The "information" of which you speak is not true. It is a deliberate reflection of the personal anti-Semitism of the authors of the Gospels, and it is designed for specific rhetorical purposes.

The second problem is that if you believe that the Gospels actually are Divine Revelation and not the ordinary product of human artifice, then you must conclude (based on what I believe is your conception of God, correct me if I am wrong) that the subsequent history of Christian anti-Semitism was an intended consequence of the revelation. Such a conclusion is, frankly, the one that was unashamedly reached by so many of the Church fathers. They were not as shy as we are in our own politically correct zeitgeist to connect the dots that you find so uncomfortable to acknowledge. They wore their prejudice on their sleeves as a badge of devotion to Christ.

But in that instance, anti-Semitism could not considered immoral at all. If moral rules are delivered by God, then they are ultimately arbitrary. What God says goes, and we cannot question His decisions. And (you know this to be true) notorious anti-Semites such as Justin Martyr, Origen of Alexandria, John Chrysostom and Martin Luther were absolutely convinced that their anti-semitism was not merely moral, but actually good.

You tried to blame the Holocaust on "naturalistic moral systems" in general, "Darwinism" in particular. But I think it's pretty clear that, whatever the ultimate origin, Hitler's anti-Semitism did not arise spontaneously as a personal innovation of Hitler himself. It was instead an extension of ordinary and pandemic European ant-Semitism that preexisted his birth by two millennia and had been conducted all that time explicitly in a Christian framework as an integral part of Christian belief.

You have repeatedly tried to denigrate "naturalism" by falsely insisting that we have no basis for determining right from wrong. And you were quick (far too quick as we have seen) to leap on Nazism as an example of that. Alas, I know how uncomfortable it must be to be hoist on your own petard. Perhaps if nothing else, you will be less facile with your examples in the future.

But ultimately what good is a divine source of morality if even the true believers can do to the Jews what Christians did for 80 generation? Anti-Semitism never even managed to get a bad name within Christianity until Hitler slaughtered six million Jews and Christian Europe finally was shocked into introspection.

No my friend. I am not equivocating over two different meanings of the word "portrayal." I am instead making a deliberate and hard reasoned moral judgment. Something you inexplicably deny that I am capable of doing, and yet I do it anyway. Go figure.

When somebody believes, as you appear to believe, that morality is "what God says it is," then you have eliminated your personal judgment, humanity and humility from the equation. You have reduced yourself from a complete and competent moral actor into a tenth grader taking a cosmic SAT test where all you need to do is get enough answers right and then you can matriculate into salvation.

We are a social species. We have a natural tendency to follow leaders like sheep. This is something that contributes equally to both our great accomplishments such as the symphony orchestra or landing a man on the moon, and to our most horrific atrocities such as 9/11 or the Albigensian Crusade.

And yet we have on the ends of our brain stems 3 1/2 pounds of the most complex matter in the universe, allowing us to question the received "wisdom" of ancient gods and goddesses, and reach conclusions of our own.

Sometimes, we even get it right.
65 posted on 02/11/2010 12:06:45 PM PST by EnderWiggins
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