Political progressivism, at least in 21st century America, is liberalism, a philosophy with the political application of moving away from the status quo towards what is intended to be a just and empowering society for all of its members, though there are still groups that many liberals predictably try to exclude from this benevolence. Progressive Christianity is the phrase for Christian ideas embraced in a philosophical context of (partial or full) progressivism, with the adjective progressive getting used in a derogatory way by many evangelicals. Political liberalism is unbiblical in part and, more foundationally, irrationalistic in some of its tenets, yet the people who use this phrase correctly or incorrectly are among the most likely to not see how progressive Biblical ethics is when it comes to criminal justice, social justice, and even the treatment of non-human beings.
I am of course not talking about the often incomplete, vague moral teachings of the New Testament--incomplete and vague apart from Mosaic Law, that is. The part of the Bible most misunderstood, feared, and hated by emotionalists inside and outside of the church is by far the most progressive of everything in the entire book, though not always progressive in the sense of current American liberalism. Where both conservatives and liberals hypocritically fail to acknowledge the humanity of all people--each of them generally discriminating against people in thought or deed on the basis of gender, race, class, and age--Mosaic Law directly rejects all such forms of discrimination. Where plenty of both conservatives and liberals are content to support things like the murder or sexual assault of people they dislike, Mosaic Law condemns these actions in all their manifestations.
There are, however, some ways where the liberal political philosophy of contemporary America is closer to Christian moral prescriptions, such as the repeated commands to avoid overlooking the poor. There are also many cases where liberalism wildly diverges from it, including Mosaic Law's condemnation of discrimination in favor of either the poor or the rich (Exodus 23:2-3, 6), something true of political conservatism as manifested in modern America as well. Beyond this, Mosaic Law prohibits everything from punishing one gender more harshly for the same offenses or punishing crimes more harshly based on the gender of the victim or perpetrator (Exodus 21:26-27, for example) to treating foreigners as inferior for their nationality (Exodus 22:21).
The moral philosophy of the Bible is very distinctly progressive compared to the norms of literally every civilization in the historical record, avoiding the misandry, misogyny, racism, classism, neglect of the disabled, and more that are so common even in cultures that want to pretend they are innocent of these things. Even the "progressive" forms of legal punishment Western culture has normalized out of tradition or conscience (two objectively meaningless, morally irrelevant factors) like prison are really used as dehumanizing breeding grounds for sexual abuse or economic exploitation. In contrast, Mosaic Law does prescribe physical punishment, but this is limited to very specific kinds of torture or execution with very strict moral restrictions on how to use every permitted kind of corporal punishment.
Every category of involuntary or irrelevant factors (including sexual orientation, as the Bible only opposes homosexual behaviors and not the feelings themselves) regarding people is protected, affirmed, and rightfully treated as having nothing to do with human value under Christian theonomy, with theonomy being the metaphysical/epistemological moral framework of Christianity. Even animals and the environment itself, lesser reflections of God but still highly important in their own ways, are clearly ascribed moral significance in the Torah, the part of the Bible idiotically misunderstood and mistaken as having an unjust set of moral commands. The enormous irrationality of looking to subjective conscience or arbitrary traditions aside, Mosaic Law is deeply progressive no matter what its opponents pretend, even in many ways that overlap with modern political/philosophical attitudes.
i think you forgot about Moses allowing gentiles to be property while prohibiting the same for jews, or brides being virginity tested, or rape victims killed for not screaming, and the killing of males and stealing the women as trophies and later possibly forcefully marrying them after killing their families, cuz guess what, they weren't nice egals, they were barbaric patriarchal collectivists! just look at David's murders. you don't know the history or culture of these ancient ppl.
ReplyDeleteThere are some blatant errors in what you are saying--for instance, if you mean that Deuteronomy 22:23-24 says to execute rape victims who don't scream, then you ignored the next fucking verses that say rape is like murder, which always receives the death penalty no matter if someone screams or what their gender is, while the victim has committed no sin and is always to live. Do you also think that the Torah says the Jews are to mistreat foreigners (Leviticus 24:22), servants or not, or that there were not many explicit safeguards against oppressing servants (such as in Exodus 21)? Aside from things like this, though, there are far more fundamental metaphysical and epistemological things to address here.
DeleteWithin Christianity, God doesn't change (Malachi 3:6), so either the New Testament is consistent with the Old Testament no matter what misconceptions non-rationalists have or it contradicts the Old Testament and, whether the Old Testament is true, the New Testament is false. The latter could not appeal to the former, contradict it, and still be valid regardless of the veracity of the former. Independent of Christianity, which does have a lot of evidence in its favor, if one actually believes in morality, one would have to hold to this on the basis of conscience (which is subjective and has nothing to do with whether morality exists or what obligations there are), social expectations (which are constructs, often born of conscience, that again have nothing to do with whether morality exists), or a religion with no evidence or logical contradictions. Only a fool believes in non sequiturs, and there is no such thing as just "knowing" something is wrong or having any fucking way to prove, as a human with my limitations, if conscience even corresponds to anything beyond it as it is. Cultural norms are irrelevant either way since it is reason and morality that actually would matter and not what an individual or group of individuals perceives, wants, or is comfortable with.
What the fuck do you even mean by barbaric that doesn't just reflect your meaningless subjective preferences or the arbitrary, conflicting social constructs of human laws or norms? I'm an egalitarian because egalitarianism is true by logical necessity, which the Bible agrees with, not because I care at all about random contemporary sociological trends or anyone else's feelings. As if the likes of the American slave trade (Exodus 21:16), Roman crucifixion (Deuteronomy 25:3), unequal legal punishments for men and women (Exodus 21:26-27), sexual assault of men by women (Deuteronomy 25:11-12), neglecting the poor (Exodus 22:26-27, Deuteronomy 24:10-15), and more are not already condemned very directly in Mosaic Law, yes, the Torah IS progressive, but not in the sense of modern emotionalistic liberalism in America.
Also, I'm now reviewing some recent comments while I have time, and I see that you left one on a post about erotic media, but the comment won't show up no matter how many times I open the post. I'll reply to it here, as I can see the words of your comment on the admin side this time:
DeleteCoveting is not the same as sexual attraction, yes, as the latter does not involve an intention to take from someone else and the former cannot be done towards a single man or woman, but sexual attraction also does not at all inherently involve wanting to have sex with someone. It is just sexual feelings directed to a person, and any variation beyond that is individualistic.
Incest is prohibited by the Bible (Leviticus 18 and 20), like rape (Deuteronomy 22:25-27) and bestiality (Exodus 22:19), so to intentionally use material presenting incest for erotic fulfillment is of course sinful by logical necessity if incest itself is immoral. However, using erotic media is not sinful in the Biblical worldview (Deuteronomy 4:2), no matter how much Christians tend to not like it, even as they might secretly long for something like this to be true.
If you think erotic media has to involve casual sex (the real fornication, unless the term is used in reference to all sexual sins), you are laughably mistaken. A married couple could photograph or film themselves and upload their work to the internet or allow it to be viewed by other people for sexual pleasure, and there are lesser sexual acts short of sex that are not Biblically required to occur in the context of long-term commitment (again, these are not mentioned and it does not logically follow from any command that they would be sinful, so Deuteronomy 4:2 applies). Visiting a brothel to encourage or admiringly view prostitution is different because prostitution itself is a Biblical error.
Nudity is not sex even if it is displayed or enjoyed in a sexual context, so of course uploading nude pictures is not promiscuous. Are you serious? Besides, for a supposed egalitarian, you are very focused on women in the latter examples as well.
You know what i mean by barbaric. they're like the taliban killing males and stealing women. do you know taliban does this to christian women? oh but now it's wrong. tell me what egalitarian society would kill males and spare women?
ReplyDeleteyou haven't addressed virginity testing, which has been proven false globally. what do you say about Israel molesting moabites to know if their virgins? it's impossible!
If the law doesn't allow people to be degraded (Deut 25:3), why are they allowed to degrade her by this public display of the cloth and virginity testing? christians suffer today because of this.
https://spiritualsoundingboard.com/2022/11/12/what-was-it-like-in-my-patriarchal-home-you-ask-lets-discuss-hymens/
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-06/virginity-testing-ritual-faces-growing-opposition-in-india/9619884
This is what the "egalitarian" jews believed because of this law. try defending this.
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/952885/jewish/Ishut-Chapter-Eleven.htm
Doesn't the 2nd rape law imply that the woman is innocent because she cried out? Why are there 2 situations: Countryside & city? obviously they equate screaming with non-consensuality, just like japanese law did until recently.
this is what happens in societies like israel: https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/pakistan-woman-alleges-rape-panchayat-sentences-her-to-death/story-xyi7WDc7HgQnm9GBterXbP.html
But you'll say they're not following the real Law, but this is what these kinds of ppl are like.
and yeah, Moses condoned passing gentiles as property while condemning israelites from doing the same to other israelites. none of the other laws about oppression override this.
my gosh, read some fucking history.
Because of my wedding and honeymoon, I'm going to have to reply to this in staggered parts, which is fine because I have far more to say about individual points than you do. I'll start by addressing part of your first paragraph, the part about the concept of "barbaric."
DeleteNo, I don't just "know" what you mean by barbaric. I'm not a telepath. I don't even know if you exist, only that you seem to, and I certainly don't know the intentions behind your words with any sort of absolute certainty. As if conscience isn't purely subjective and meaningless and as if cultural norms/human laws aren't invalid anyway left to themselves, people might mean all sorts of things by the word "barbaric" that wildly differ. Is executing certain criminals without artificially drawn-out pain barbaric? Not according to the Bible, but some people could feel that way, not that their emotions actually matter one way or another. Is it barbaric to put anyone in prison for life sentences to face sexual abuse? By Biblical standards in the Torah, this is an atrocity, and it is very obviously, objectively far more severe than mere execution either way, but many people wouldn't be thinking of contemporary prison when they use a word that is so vague on its own. Still, feelings, consensus, and social norms are irrelevant both to core reality and knowledge of core reality, including morality, and you literally have nothing to stand on here with your appeals to emotion and arbitrary, assumed starting points.
yeah sure hope you don't go to her father and get her stoned to death because she didn't bleed on the wedding night. but of course such a disgusting thing would be completely fine with you. go read the laws of Hammurabi and see how they treated women. you'll see that mosaic laws were only somewhat better than them to women. you say that if a law says "a man shall not do this" it applies to both sexes, but Hammurabi's law allowed men to drown their wives. Do you think Mesopotamian wives had the same right? It's the same with the Law. Not everything is complementary and mutual like you want it to be.
DeleteWe're back from our honeymoon, and I showed my wife your comments on this post. We both had a great laugh!
DeleteAre you thinking of Deuteronomy 22:13-21? First of all, that would be about lying about being a virgin, not about not actually being a virgin. Mere sex outside of a legal marriage couldn't be evil on the Biblical worldview. It is not condemned, though casual sex is (unlike something such as rape, adultery, or incest), and God did not create human governments, so there could not have been any government to "legitimize" marriages among the first humans. The approval of a human civilization, moreover, does not mean that something is good or evil. Also, it is logically necessary that if something is permissible, obligatory, or immoral, it has nothing to do with someone's gender, only the nature of the act/intention. Genesis 1:26-27 already Biblically addresses how men and women are metaphysically equal very early on. Having casual sex (getting married after sex before legal marriage is not sinful according to Exodus 22:16-17) wouldn't be sinful for just women if it is sinful inside or outside of Christianity. Who would the women even be having casual sex with? Men! Even if one was doing something immoral and not the other, the other would be contributing to someone else's wrong, so it would still by necessity be morally wrong for both men and women. It is impossible for it to be any other way, so of course logically and Biblically (again, Genesis 1:26-27) gender-specific moral obligations are impossible on every level.
You're the kind of person who would probably read Exodus 21:18-19 and think that the Bible is only condemning assault and battery if it is a man striking a man and not a woman striking a man, a woman striking a woman, or a man striking a woman. The sin is clearly assault, not assault with the perpetrator and the victim being male. You're also not only the kind of person who thinks a philosophy (or at least Christianity and Islam) is whatever the supposed adherents endorse, as you have admitted in the previous comments, but also someone who probably thinks that history is actually knowable. There is no way to know what any ancient society is like because there is no way to KNOW if the world even existed 10 minutes ago. Proof of this is unobtainable for a human being, though they can know logical possibilities and what mere evidences like memories and sensory perceptions suggest. A document saying something about any historical event, however likely it might seem in light of various evidences, proves only that the document makes its claims. Either way, ancient Israel's actual trends are not necessarily those prescribed in Mosaic Law, just as many evangelical ideas about morality have nothing to do with the Bible itself (for example, profanity, nudity, violent entertainment, and so on are not Biblically sinful according to Deuteronomy 4:2).
However, how people of any society or time period behave has nothing to do with whether morality exists, what the obligations are, or what worldviews like Christianity actually are composed of. If any do exist, they have absolutely nothing to do with your feelings or my feelings or any of our cultural backgrounds. There is no such thing as conscience being anything more than mere emotion one way or another, and no matter how many people believe something or how intensely someone wants it to be true, it is only correct based upon whether it matches with reality, which is determined by logical necessity. There is no emotional bitterness or consensus of moral wishes that makes anything good or evil regardless of whether Christianity is true. Whether it is Yahweh or not, though, if the uncaused cause has a moral nature, that dictates what morality is. If its nature was such that killing every living thing was good, it wouldn't matter what any of the dying creatures prefer.
DeleteI don't give a fuck about you beyond your human rights. What those rights are and if they exist, which is ultimately an unverifiable matter even if there is evidence for Christianity and thus for its moral obligations, is not something that your preferences or any mere human conventions validate. I certainly don't care about how disappointed or outraged you are by practically anything in reality. People too stupid to even know that Mesopotamian or contemporary Indian practices are not what make something Biblical or unbiblical are unlikely to understand or accept anything this abstract, of course.
Clearly, unless you are presenting an illusory version of yourself, you are a slave to assumptions and there is not much of a point in continuing to engage with you. As far as you've shown in almost every comment for a while now, you are just an assumption maker who spouts petty sarcasm and non sequiturs. If you want to actually discuss what does and does not follow by logical necessity from a concept, whatever it is, great! If you're the type of fool who believes that having a memory means a past event actually happened or that something is evil because it upsets your moral feelings, I might keep talking to you for a time, but I am a very busy person.
yes, clearly a very busy person who spends time reviewing obscure games and writing blog posts. you & your wife laughed, did you? what's really funny is that you did not mention the unscientific practice of virginity testing even once. you never mentioned the hymen, the only reason they'd acuse anyone of being non-virginity. you can't because it can never be justified. ever. lots of brides aren't laughing when this happens to them, so maybe you should wake the fuck up, take a flight to Afghanistan or Pakistan and see what goes down there. stop harping about people being angry or their emotions cause you didn't see any of this shit. it is logically necessary that virginity testing be a crime against human rights. i dare you to blog why virginity testing is okay in your worldview.
ReplyDeleteyou think you can simply disregard science and history and the social & cultural contexts of these laws, huh? only a fool would think ancient Mesopotamian and other laws have no bearing on how we understand the mosaic law. this didn't happen in a vacuum. on what basis are you interpreting the law if not including the social context? when was the last time you read a book about ancient culture by a historian? and i didn't say all laws weren't mutual. you clearly missed the point. stop bringing stupid arguments like "there's no way to know if the world existed". that doesn't go anywhere. science and archeology are real, and the same abuse happens in this world today. you take a lot of pride in logic but you deny the trinity (evident in Gen 1:1 & John 1:1, 15:26) and still think Jesus is coming back even though he said "soon" many times. but of course, exegesis and historical context is foreign to you.
Starting in 2020, I actually started getting massively ahead on writing blog posts when I didn't have to drive around or work as much because I enjoy writing. As of right now, I have 379 posts scheduled out one a day between now and the end of next year, with some gaps that I occasional fill when I can write. Almost every single post that has come out this year was already written or even scheduled at least 6-14 months ago, with some occasional exceptions. I'm not writing these recent posts day by day right before they are uploaded. Of course, as a non-rationalist, you assumed. Just because things seem a certain way does not mean they are. I also have extensive working hours and if you believe that I personally owe you my time, you are just assuming that as well. I very much anticipated you making this sort of baseless and ultimately false statement at some point.
DeleteMost things people assert cannot be believed except because of assumptions, including the idea that other minds exist or that the world is not an illusion. No, science cannot prove anything; only logic and introspection can. You have to be an insect to believe that seeing or hearing of something means it is true. There is no way to KNOW if your sensory perceptions at large correspond to an actual external world. You cannot prove that scientific laws will remain constant several moments or years from now. That is a fallacy of inductive reasoning. You cannot know that someone is angry because of their words or facial expressions, only that they appear to be. You cannot know if anything is good or evil from feelings like those of conscience, only that you feel a specific way. True knowledge cannot be obtained except with absolute certainty, and scientific and historical evidences are just that: evidences that could be misleading or illusory. I will somewhat touch on virginity later on below because it is not the most foundational thing here.
Now, I am a Christian because of historical evidences, such as (but certainly not limited to) Tacitus mentioning things about the life and legacy of Jesus in Annals. I know that ALL historical accounts are epistemologically hearsay, however. As you might have noticed if you read certain other posts, I do not even actually believe that Christianity is true. I am committed to living for it it on evidential grounds knowing it might be false except for certain parts that are true by necessity either way, such as there being an uncaused cause of some kind. My PERCEPTIONS of science and archeology are absolutely real since the existence of mental states cannot be an illusion. If I perceive something physical that looks like it is outside of my mind, by logical necessity I am indeed perceiving it, but that does not mean that I am not the only being in existence or that the material world is exactly as it seems. Evidence is subjectively perceived, probabilistic, and potentially illusory.
Just like someone who thinks logical axioms are false or a construct (such as how if truth did not exist, this would be true, so truth exists either way) is by necessity wrong, someone is in error who thinks that scientific laws are self-evident when they would hinge on axioms or other necessary truths, not the other way around. The things I am saying are true independent of things like your obsession with virginity. You are not arguing from logical necessity or recognizing the distinction between evidence and proof. You have consistently argued from scientific perception or hearsay about someone else's scientific perceptions, historical documents, cultural laws (in one of your other comments, you said international law makes something immoral, which is blatantly false), and seemingly conscience. You are starting philosophically backwards and I am not. I am focusing on things that are utterly more foundational in order to get to the other things.
Morality doesn't exist because some or all people want it to. You completely ignore that and are either 1) just assuming some things are good or evil or 2) believing morality is a subjective/cultural construct and then pretending like some things, such as virginity testing, are still evil in spite of how nothing is objectively immoral according to you. I am not saying nothing is good or evil, but I am affirming the irrelevance of desire and perception here. Moreover, did you even acknowledge to yourself or to me that Deuteronomy 22:13-21 cannot be about merely having sex before legal marriage and thus the scope of the law is already much, much smaller than you might believe? There are prerequisite things far more important here that first I would want you to realize before I start touching on other things because the nature of the other things depends wholly on the former. How do you know anything is good or evil? How do you know your preferences match with morality instead of someone else's?
DeleteYou or I being upset about something absolutely does not make it evil, and I am not even saying that virginity testing is good. This is as true of murder or kidnapping or something else that even you might admit is evil on the Christian worldview. No, it does not logically follow from there being mere human laws against something that it is evil or that it seems/feels evil that it really is that way. If someone else is not offended by it, does this mean it is amoral or permissible? You likely think YOUR feelings or those of arbitrary individuals reveal moral obligations, while I don't care about my feelings or anyone else's at all in this regard. It's all irrelevant one way or another! You probably think that contemporary laws or feelings are what make something evil even though there would be no reason to have laws or act on moral feelings if something wasn't already evil to begin with. Agreement and emotion do not make anything true except that there is agreement and emotion.
I only have certain windows of time where I can even check your comments, much less respond to them, and there is far more to these philosophical issues than you even hint at, so no, I am not always able to say everything I want to. I'm not slandering you or even being hostile to you right now. Do you actually want to talk or are you just wanting to erupt at me because I don't believe anything that cannot be logically proven? I don't even know what you philosophically identify as. As you an egalitarian Christian? Are you a non-Christian who goes by conscience and conflicting societal laws? You're not a rationalist, and I doubt you understand what I am and am not saying about my own worldview. I would certainly take the time, when I have it, to get to know you better ideologically and personally if you reciprocated. It looks like you don't actually want to discuss things free of assumptions or carefully represent ideas as they are because you just want me to agree with your emotionalistic rants.
I could write about (or in some cases, more about) certain subjects if you'd like, yes. With something like the Trinity, I have already written about whatever general objections you seem to have because distinct theological beings do not require the classical Trinty. It is not even Biblically evident that Jesus existed into the eternal past along with Yahweh, but, to name one detail, Jesus would not possibly have less knowledge than the Father about his return if they were the same entity. My release slots are practically full up until a few outstanding spots in May next year, though, with scattered posts scheduled out in the following months as well. However, I wouldn't owe you anything other than not making assumptions about you or mistreating you, and if you won't even realize the difference between logic and science, then no, I will not prioritize you much or at all.