They are whether you like that or not.
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven."
-Matthew 7:21
Pretty sure your savior had a lot to say about judging others.
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves."
-Matthew 7:15
I guess reading comprehension is that bad. Here was the rest of the comment:
The justification for attacking them is that they need to be stopped before they cross the line.
I’m not saying I agree with this line of reasoning, but the clear idea is that Iran doesn’t currently have nuclear weapons.
I’m not as critical of his term as president because I don’t think anyone really voted for him as president. He was the Trump blocker.
I never expected him to be a competent or good president so I never put that expectation on him.
His purpose was to be a transitionary president, keep Trump out of office for those 4 years while he spotlights and elevates the profile of exciting young democrats and guides the discussion towards hope and excitement in the upcoming primary, where a popular progressive candidate could spark a nationwide discussion and get everyone excited about the democrats for 8 more years.
It seemed like everyone understood this when he was elected. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if it was Biden’s ego, or if his handlers manipulated him to keep a job, but his decision to run again was the utmost betrayal of democracy, singlehandedly decimated any possible democratic victory, and destroyed any chance of a positive legacy.
All he had to do was just go away and his legacy would have been secure.
You cant just keep spinning up new churches to suit your ideal version of god and expect credulity.
You literally set the criteria as “the heaven Biden believes in”. You’re just arguing with yourself.
The heaven Biden believes in:
“Forgive me father for I have sinned, I drone striked an entire region in the middle east to massive amounts of collateral damage and sent billions of dollars in weapons to Israel to be used against Palestinians.”
“Say 3 Hail Marys and one Our Father and you are forgiven.”
That is outrageous! It’s unfair!
if I were there would be proof that’s why your example is a false equivalence.
Not necessarily. This is lemmy, you’re on a completely anonymous account. I wouldn’t expect to have any proof.
Maybe you just didn’t get caught yet.
If the Christian God exists, for example, there would be no way of knowing for certain
I was willing to grant you the philosophical God argument, but if you want to evoke the Christian God you’re now making a whole bunch of positive claims.
Why don’t we look at the evolutionary record and see whether all of humanity comes from Adam and Eve or if animals evolved from a common ancestor?
We can look for evidence of a flood, or an exodus and see there is none.
We can track the history of Yahweh, and how he was syncretized with El and Baal from Caananite faiths, and morphed over centuries from a local Storm/war God to the only God.
The early Israelites engaged in polytheistic practices that were common across ancient Semitic religion, because the Israelite religion was a derivative of the Canaanite religion and included a variety of deities from it, including El, Asherah, and Baal. Initially a lesser deity among the Cannanite pantheon, Yahweh in later centuries became conflated with El; Yahweh took on El’s place as head of the pantheon of the Israelite religion, El’s consort Asherah, and El-linked epithets, such as ʾĒl Šadday (אֵל שַׁדַּי), came to be applied to Yahweh alone. Characteristics of other deities, such as Asherah and Baal, were also selectively absorbed in conceptions of Yahweh.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh
We can compare the contradictions between the behavior of the Old Testament God and Jesus to conclude like early Christians such as Marcion of Sinope Yahweh and Christianity are incompatible
Study of the Hebrew Bible, along with received writings circulating in the nascent Church, led Marcion to conclude that many of the teachings of Jesus were incompatible with the actions of Yahweh, characterized as the belligerent god of the Hebrew Bible. Marcion responded by developing a ditheistic system of belief around the year 144.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcion_of_Sinope
We can compare the Gospels and see where they copied stories from the Iliad/Odyssey.
Odyssey Location Mark Location
Athena descends like a bird 1.319-324 Spirit descends like a dove 2:1-2 Sailors volunteer to follow Athena 2.383-413 Fishermen volunteer to follow Jesus 1:16-20 Nestor’s feast for 4500 men 3.1-68 Jesus’s feast for 5000 men 6:30-44 Menelaus’s wedding feast 4.1-67 Jesus’s feast for 4000 8:1-9 Odysseus enters city behind mules 6.252-261 Jesus enters city on an ass 11:1-11 Alcinous’s prolific figs trees 7.112-121 Jesus curses unprolific fig tree 11:12-14 Blind Demodocus among sailors 8.471-473 Blind man at “House-of-fisherman” 8:22-26 Lotus-eating, forgetful comrades 9.62-107 Forgetful disciples at sea 8:19-21 Polyphemus the cave-dweller 9.105-525 Dangerous demoniac from caves 5:1-20 Aeolus’s bag of winds and gale 10.1-55 Jesus calms winds and sea 4:35-41 Cannibals at the harbor 10.76-136 Hostile Pharisees at the harbor 8:10-13 Following a water carrier to dinner 10.100-116 Following a water carrier to dinner 14:12-16 Circe turns soldiers into swine 10.135-465 Jesus sends demons into swine 5:1-20 Odysseus’s last supper before Hades 10.546-561 Jesus’s last super and Gethsemane 14:32-42 Death of young Elpenor 10.546-560 Flight of naked young man 14:43-52 Blind seer Tiresias 11.90-94 Blind seer Bartimaeus 10:46-52 Death of Agamemnon at a feast 11.409-430 Death of the Baptist at a feast 6:14-29 Burial of Elpenor at dawn 12.1-5 Young man at tomb at dawn 16:1-4 Eurylochus’s vow 12.298-305 Peter’s vow 14:26-31 Eurylochus’s broken vow 12.367-396 Peter’s broken vow 14:66-72 Eumaeus’s Phoenician nurse 15.417-491 Syrophoenician woman 7:24-30 Odysseus’s transfiguration 16.172-301 Jesus’s transfiguration 9:2-13 Suitors plot to kill Telemachus 16.383-385 Vinedressers kill the beloved son 12:1-12 Conspiracy to kill Telemachus 17.182-213 Conspiracy to kill Jesus 14:10-11 Penelope’s hospitality 17.534-547 Generous widow at temple 12:41-42 Irus the beggar 18.1-94 Barabbas the brigand 15:6-15 Telemachus’s amazement at house 19.35-43 Disciples’ amazement at temple 13:1-2 Penelope’s request for a sign 19.102-271 Disciples’ request for a sign 13:3-8 Prophetic oak at Dodona 19.296-307 Prophetic fig tree 13:28-31 Eurycleia washes her master 19.370-575 Woman anoints Jesus 14:3-9 Eurycleia’s recognition of Odysseus 19.474-486 Peter’s recognition of the Messiah 8:27-30 Odysseus slays suitors in his house 22.17-86 Jesus expels merchants from temple 11:15-19 Contested authority over the house 22.221-233 Contested authority over the temple 11:27-33 Odysseus hacks to death evil slave 22.474-477 Bystander slices off a slave’s ear 14:43-5
https://testimonia.pl/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/MacDonald.Mimesis.pdf
Or also where they contradict each other
If you spend enough time focusing on the truth of this you will eventually conclude you cannot prove your belief like they cannot prove theirs so neither side has anything demonstrable.
I don’t think theist Christians would agree with that though. Quoting Tertullian:
We do not worship your gods, because we know that there are no such beings. This, therefore, is what you should do: you should call on us to demonstrate their non-existence, and thereby prove that they have no claim to adoration; for only if your gods were truly so, would there be any obligation to render divine homage to them. And punishment even were due to Christians, if it were made plain that those to whom they refused all worship were indeed divine. But you say, They are gods. We protest and appeal from yourselves to your knowledge; let that judge us; let that condemn us, if it can deny that all these gods of yours were but men.
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0301.htm
When it comes to a philosophical creator god I agree with your statement, this view describes agnostic atheism.
The assertion that there is no God cannot be proven as you cannot prove a negative.
Correct, no one argued that.
There assertion that there is a divine entity cannot be logically demonstrated in any valid way logically speaking.
Correct again.
The validity of either claim cannot be tested and thus have the same overall value and it is a matter of which you choose to accept.
Do you really mean that?
If I were to accuse you of something terrible like being a child molester with absolutely zero evidence…
That’s valid? You can deny it, but your denial is of equal value to my accusation right? So if everyone in this comment section chooses to believe you molester children from now on… do you have a problem with that?
The reason I’m an atheist is the same reason I don’t believe you’re a child molester yet. I think there is a burden of proof of evidence that would need to be met before the accusation needs to be taken seriously.
Lmao, k
If the question is things “only” old people say, you have to exclude phrases old people say that were repopularized through media.
“Heavy” (meaning important, grave)
For example this is a really quotable line from Back to the Future, so kids would pick it up.
Sorry, but you are suggesting that the best strategy possible to stop the genocide is to be nice to the person committing the genocide
No, I suggested we adopt the best strategy regardless of what it is.
You said that even if the best strategy possible is to be nice, you wouldn’t consider doing do.
When my goal is to describe the flaws of liberalism succinctly and you say “You’ve captured the flaw in liberalism extremely succinctly.” I have a hard time taking that as an insult, ngl.
Social rights are great, but you’re ignoring cost of living and material conditions to paint there being more progress than there has been.
Financially, the average worker has seen the cost of food, housing and transportation increase massively with inflation but wages haven’t kept up.
The 2008 banking crisis and COVID 19 have only pushed this even further.
they are responsible for a genocide
So then shouldn’t we do everything strategically possible to oppose the genocide?
Why is “we should adopt the best strategy possible to stop genocide” so offensive to you?
What I don’t see is a path forward that doesn’t involve incremental progress, even if not all demographics are served. At least not without violence that will be disrupt even more.
But do you actually see a path forward that does involve incremental progress?
I’ve watched politics incrementally change from Clinton’s Third Way to Bush’s War on Terror to McCain/Palin and the Tea Party to Trump.
I’ve watched Fox news incrementally change, I’ve watched print media incrementally be bought up.
I’m hearing about abortion getting banned, hate crimes going up, school shootings, people being abducted and sent to death camps in El Salvador.
When does this incremental change move us forward instead of backwards?
You (assorted folks responding to me) want an epoch change where we rise up and take back the power we have. We have it right now, but the price to pay to enforce that is too high for me.
I’m not the assorted folks responding. What I personally want is a reform. I like the idea of democracy. I do not think we have it.
I think the system we currently have is rigged and not capable of producing the incremental change you ask of it.
Where I agree with everyone else, is that if we have to resort to revolution just to get the slightest pedestrian changes to the electoral system to let incremental change takeover (repeal citizens united, disband both parties, disallow “parties” to subvert primaries, remove big money, etc)… why set it back up more or less the same?
When those other leftists accept revolution as inevitable they can dream bigger beyond the current system.
The more liberalism is cooped by capitalists to resist the reforms liberalism itself demands, the less liberalism as a coherent movement can thrive.
This leaves actual liberals like you and me disenfranchised and without a party. A further leftist might describe that as defeatist.
I’d imagine if one genuinely cares about stopping the genocide they’d be exactly as civil as they’d strategically need to be.
If your excitement in the cancer diagnosis of a old man is more important to you I get why people are weirded out.
I understand your frustration as the entire thread is strawmanning liberal positions.
Essentially, capitalism coopts movements. Liberalism is an ideology which exists and has values, but since this is the primary vehicle for left leaning politics on a national level, companies spend a lot of lobbying effort stuffing liberalism with stuff that helps them.
Conservative have has gone through similar changes, stuffing a fiscal conservative viewpoint with bullshit culture war stuff as the primary vehicle for right wing politics.
When people critique electoralism, they see liberals as unable to organize because the movement has been cooped by big money and liberals refuse to admit they aren’t in control of their own party.
When you campaign for liberal values, critics see you as providing ethical cover for the promises to lobbyists that had already been made behind your back which secured their campaign donations enabling them to run in the first place.
Things like funding Israel.
You can discuss being anti Israel, you can rally behind someone like John Fetterman or Krysten Sinema who promises to be a progressive, but the thing about electoralism is you can just lie and turn heel.
Help me out. What’s our next step?
This is where I agree with you.
There are steps inside electoralism and steps outside.
If you’re saying “just vote Democrat and wait 4 years for things to get better” I agree that’s naive and there’s action we can take outside of electoralism.
If they’re “stay home and don’t vote” I agree with you that’s nauve and we can take action inside of electoralism too. It’s just gonna be inherently pretty ineffectual.
Currently, when candidates we elect take big money and vote against our interests we can’t do anything for 4 years about it. But because we have our “I voted” sticker it acts as a balm to the consciousness and deluded is into believing our fellow countrymen actually agree with the direction it takes.
All concepts of what are optimal democratic processes are going to be just that: concepts. We live in the real world. There are millions of people you have to convince to move to your desired method of representation. I think we agree on the end-goal, I just disagree on how to get there and think we can’t jump from a Trump presidency directly to a worker-owned utopia.
Again, this is where I fully agree with you.
Protesting Kamala from my university campus seems like a better alternative to protesting Trump from El Salvador, even if the genocide is happening in both cases.
I haven’t heard a compelling argument staying home and not voting is better.
No one should be told they’re purity testing for criticizing the democrats.
Purity testing would be saying someone can’t be an ally in criticizing the democrats with you because they’re an enemy for voting for them.
Someone put a coin in my hand and said “heads is genocide, tails is genocide in a different way” and I really cared about not doing genocide so I asked “can I choose none” and they said “you can walk away, but then the coin will be flipped randomly”.
If you walked away from that coin flip and left the consequences to chance, I really don’t have a lot of patience hearing you judge me for all the burden and anxiety I put on myself researching which option was worse so I could make the least worst choice.
Walking away seems the easy choice here. You didn’t stop the genocide, you just washed your hands clean of it.
Criticizing me for choosing, instead of being an ally, saying “that was a tough choice, but don’t give up **here’s what we can do next” is useless.
Instead of saying we should stay home and not vote, suggest something we can do. The endless criticizing of powerless people just trying their best in a shitty situation is why you’re being accused of purity testing.
I’m not telling you anything, I simply quoted it. Read the passages.
If you see a contradiction then that’s what your brain is telling yourself.
I’m not going to argue anything. I’m simply going to quote the Bible again.
-Corinthians 5:11-13