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Date Posted: 14:03:11 04/22/01 Sun
Author: SM78
Subject: Re: Question concerning the "Might Makes Right" ethic.
In reply to: Steve A. 's message, "Question concerning the "Might Makes Right" ethic." on 13:15:31 04/22/01 Sun

To nuance the argument, xtians believe that God's might is goverened by his absolute holiness and absolute justice. God's power in the NT, is spoken of in the Greek as dynamis or exousia.

Exousia is conferred or delegated power, as the power Jesus gave to believers to cast out demons in his name. This is the power used by the Bob Larsons of the world.

Dynamis, the root of dynamic, dynamite, dynamo, etc., is the power seen in Jesus ministry, especially in his speaking (See Luke 4:32).

"Power under control" is a key concept when preachers speak of the ways in which the Jesus used his power, e.g. he could have summoned legions of angels to help him at any time, but he did not because he knew his call was to die.
Blah, blah, blah...

The essential biblical idea is that all power comes from God; even the devil can only act with God's permission.
In some big picture sense, the xtian argument goes, God balances everything in terms of justice, and that justice culiminates in, and is expressed through, righteous judgment. Within this mindset, might does not make right in the relativistic sense. Rather, God's holiness ensures that righteousness tempers his exercise of power. Xtians believe that God's power cannot be misused by dint of his purity and so the argument that might makes right does not occur to most of them as an element of their faith.

The problem of human pain and suffering, especially when visited upon the innocent by evil agencies who can only ultimately act with God's consent, is a far better card to play with xtians. "How can a 'loving God' allow children to raped and murdered by pedophiles?' is a great question to pose. You'll have them babbling nonsenscially within ten minutes about how man cannot know the mind of God or the reasons God allows things, but that it all works out in the end.

BTW, God allows the kids to go to heaven after they are raped and murdered, and he wipes away all their tears.
Isn't that touching? Little Sally gets violently raped and murdered by some pedophile like Ted, but then God wipes her tears away in heaven. But why did YHWH allow an innocent to be killed? Worse, if, say, a 21 year old non-xtian woman is raped and murdered, then she will suffer conscious eternal torment for in Hell because she hadn't accepted Jesus.

So let's get this justice part straight: She lives 21 years and rejects the gospel. She is raped and murdered. Her punishment is conscious eternal torment in Hell for more than a trillion years. You have to stress the inequity of her 21 years of life which ends with a violent death versus endless punishment of pain in hell forever.

Make up an unimaginably large number: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
or 1 followed by a trillon zeroes. Well, that is nothing in Hell because Hell is eternal. Thus, the woman's suffering in Hell will be longer than any number of years you could imagine.

The woman, indeed anyone in Hell, will feel conscious pain that never, ever, ever ends. The pain, the burning, the screams, the agony, will never, ever, ever, end. This is God's justice according to xtians.

I am so fucking glad that I do not have to defend such a brutal, vindicative, and cruel God who emotionally needs to hold souls he created prisoner and see to it that they are tortured forever. It is all made more evil by the fact that YHWH created these people with the foreknowledge that he would torture them forever in Hell.

The entire idea of hell is the main reason I renounced Christianity, Steve. I cannot accept that God would be this monstrously unjust and sadistic. Yet ask a xtain to defend this blatant sadism and they will say God is just. At this juncture, might makes right becomes germane to the conversation.

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Replies:

  • Re: Question concerning the "Might Makes Right" ethic. -- OPB, 15:11:08 04/22/01 Sun
  • But where does that leave one? -- Steve A., 16:57:35 04/22/01 Sun
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