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SirRumpole said:
Most of the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Centre were Saudis. Why isn't the US at war with Saudi Arabia ?
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Why attack a country whose noble King already handed over all the country's wealth and will do as they're told?

Afghanistan holds trillions of gold, copper, lithium etc. etc. If the US isn't there, the terrorists will win :D
 
SirRumpole said:
And the US can simply walk away and end the violence. it's not their country.
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A US general recently said that if the US retreat from Afghanistan, the Chinese will just march in.

So I guess it's there to fight both Muslim terrorists and Communism.

It's like a Cold War sequel. Bigger, badder, longer, more deadly, more villains.

I think the US is on the verge of losing Pakistan to the Chinese. My guess is that the Pakistani military didn't like what Obama did when he made public that killing of bin Laden on Pakistani soil, right next to its elite military compound.

I mean bin Laden deserve what he got. Those Pakistani generals believe so too... or at least they don't mind. So they permitted the US to take him out, with the promise of keeping it quiet. But being a showman with an election coming up, Obama couldn't help himself but rub the generals face in their apparent inability to keep the country secure from foreigners.

that and the Chinese have been buying assets, investing in a new major port, rail and other infrastructure in Pakistan.

Giving some jobs to the locals, have a new rail line or two to show them... That's a bit better than droning them whenever they feel like it.
 
Giving some jobs to the locals, have a new rail line or two to show them... That's a bit better than droning them whenever they feel like it.
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A bit of soft diplomacy never hurts. I wonder if Trump recognises that , or if he still believes that the gun is mightier than the yuan.
 
SirRumpole said:
A bit of soft diplomacy never hurts. I wonder if Trump recognises that , or if he still believes that the gun is mightier than the yuan.
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Mightier than the Yuan. Good one.

The US just withheld some $100M (or three) in aids to Pakistan because it "supports terrorism".

Maybe they're hoping that the cut in those (mostly) military aids will get a few colonels riled up to want to "stop supporting terrorism".

It might go that way. Or the Chinese can bring over a few freight of Yuans they have no record of ever losing.


Trump's also cutting aids to the Palestinians. This is proper aid, as in food and medicine aids to starving people.

It's cut because for some reason the Palestinians don't want to negotiate peace when their future capital, what was left of it anyway, just got handed over to Trump's son in law's uncle.

Heard that there's a proposed capital for that eventual Palestinian state. This was floated decades ago but was rejected.

It's since been used as a literal rubbish landfill.

I guess they can just send in a few bulldozers, give it a good wash and got themselve a capital city. But Arabs being greedy and all Muslims didn't like the idea. So they and their kids will have to starve.
 
bellenuit said:
And it is patently obvious why. They either must condone (as you tried to do) the abhorrent acts of the God of the OT or they must reject the OT in its entirety. However, they can't do the latter as the OT is the basis and justification upon which much of the NT stands. Without the OT, the NT is just a story of another good man and his philosophy. So rather than face that choice, they avoid the issue.



What did the morality of the NT reveal that wasn't already known?
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That's not true at all, and you probably know that. If anything it's more that they don't care that much about the issue. Maybe you care a lot about it since a problem you have, as I've pointed out, is that the Christian morals are too good, seemingly out of this world.

I don't think you read my post 2293 which answers your question. I doubt the Chinese came up with all of those things, and even if they did, none have ever offered immortality. And Jesus said that some of His morals were actually practiced in the very beginning, such as marriage (lifetime commitment, 2 people). So the morality was always the same, it doesn't change, but it took ages to be fully discovered and spread far and wide. God was acting as best as He could in times past (NT view).

You're not open minded to any possible explanations for the brutality in the OT. Or even Cynic's explanations from what I read in the last few posts that he wrote. I just hope that you can be honest with yourself. Maybe you're really an agnostic but you don't know it.
 
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grah33 said:
You're not open minded to any possible explanations for the brutality in the OT. Or even Cynic's explanations from what I read in the last few posts that he wrote. I just hope that you can be honest with yourself. Maybe you're really an agnostic but you don't know it.
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It's not that I am not open to the explanations. I simply do not accept the explanations, probably because my "imperfect morality" is far superior to the perfect morality that you believe comes with your religion.

I am honest with myself. But I do not think that applies to most Christians. I'll give you an example. Let's say that there was no OT, but someone today discovers some ancient texts that are identical in every way to what is in the OT and further analysis shows those texts belong to some ancient now defunct religion. You can be sure without any doubt that Christians would condemn those texts and say that the people that held that religion followed the wrong God as his actions are more akin to that of Satan. There would be parallels drawn to the atrocities of ISIS. They would highlight how different the God of those texts is to the God that Christians worship. There wouldn't be one Christian, William Lane Craig included, who would try to defend the God of those texts and that God would simply be condemned as a false God and outright evil. If anyone were to suggest that the God of those texts was in fact Jesus, they would be accused of blasphemy and excommunicated.

That is why Christians aren't being honest with themselves. They are hypocritical for not disassociating themselves from the God of the OT. That is why they do not want to talk about the OT. It forces them to confront their own dishonesty.
 
bellenuit said:
It's not that I am not open to the explanations. I simply do not accept the explanations, probably because my "imperfect morality" is far superior to the perfect morality that you believe comes with your religion.

I am honest with myself. But I do not think that applies to most Christians. I'll give you an example. Let's say that there was no OT, but someone today discovers some ancient texts that are identical in every way to what is in the OT and further analysis shows those texts belong to some ancient now defunct religion. You can be sure without any doubt that Christians would condemn those texts and say that the people that held that religion followed the wrong God as his actions are more akin to that of Satan. There would be parallels drawn to the atrocities of ISIS. They would highlight how different the God of those texts is to the God that Christians worship. There wouldn't be one Christian, William Lane Craig included, who would try to defend the God of those texts and that God would simply be condemned as a false God and outright evil. If anyone were to suggest that the God of those texts was in fact Jesus, they would be accused of blasphemy and excommunicated.

That is why Christians aren't being honest with themselves. They are hypocritical for not disassociating themselves from the God of the OT. That is why they do not want to talk about the OT. It forces them to confront their own dishonesty.
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Thankyou for offering your own personal example, of the, all too prevalent, and insidious, practice of the "HolierThanThouism" religion.

I would normally recommend the instructional teachings, from chapter 7 of the gospel according to Saint Matthew, as a useful remedy for the aforementioned malady.

However, whilst I do not respect irrational contempt, I do respect the rights of others to seek out their own remedies, for the diseases with which they have become personally afflicted.

After all, unlike some people, I do not personally believe that any human religious, or other philosophical belief system, can rightly claim to hold the monopoly over truth.

So if one believes the same truth, or similar, can be sourced from another philosophy, of one's own personal choosing (or creation), then by all means use that truth to "Heal thyself" of one's obsessive desire to persecute theism and theists alike.
 
Tisme said:
You willingly enroll in the armed forces without knowing that you may well be asked to take another person's life. Morals are swapped for national ethics.
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Well I suppose a soldier would have to ask himself if he was in a field somewhere and saw an unarmed woman and child reaping crops or whatever, would he just walk up and shoot them ?

The fact that it happens unseen from an aircraft at 30,000 feet does not alter the morality of the situation at all.
 
grah33 said:
Maybe you're really an agnostic but you don't know it.
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I often have similar thoughts when encountering ardent anti theists. However, I usually suspect "closet theism" consequent to theistic terror, to be the more likely cause of zealously anti theistic behaviours.

There is a classic teaching, courtesy of the prophet Shakespeare, that is relatable to the observation we are making here:
https://m.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://g.co/kgs/aCmJmL
 
cynic said:
I often have similar thoughts when encountering ardent anti theists. However, I usually suspect "closet theism" consequent to theistic terror, to be the more likely cause of zealously anti theistic behaviours.

There is a classic teaching, courtesy of the prophet Shakespeare, that is relatable to the observation we are making here:
https://m.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://g.co/kgs/aCmJmL
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I've had similar thoughts as well. Back to your medicine example...
 
cynic said:
Thankyou for offering your own personal example, of the, all too prevalent, and insidious, practice of the "HolierThanThouism" religion.

I would normally recommend the instructional teachings, from chapter 7 of the gospel according to Saint Matthew, as a useful remedy for the aforementioned malady.
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Far better you read a book called “How to recognise irony”
 
bellenuit said:
It's not that I am not open to the explanations. I simply do not accept the explanations, probably because my "imperfect morality" is far superior to the perfect morality that you believe comes with your religion.

I am honest with myself. But I do not think that applies to most Christians. I'll give you an example. Let's say that there was no OT, but someone today discovers some ancient texts that are identical in every way to what is in the OT and further analysis shows those texts belong to some ancient now defunct religion. You can be sure without any doubt that Christians would condemn those texts and say that the people that held that religion followed the wrong God as his actions are more akin to that of Satan. There would be parallels drawn to the atrocities of ISIS. They would highlight how different the God of those texts is to the God that Christians worship. There wouldn't be one Christian, William Lane Craig included, who would try to defend the God of those texts and that God would simply be condemned as a false God and outright evil. If anyone were to suggest that the God of those texts was in fact Jesus, they would be accused of blasphemy and excommunicated.

That is why Christians aren't being honest with themselves. They are hypocritical for not disassociating themselves from the God of the OT. That is why they do not want to talk about the OT. It forces them to confront their own dishonesty.
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You're really complicating this. The NT is based on the OT. If you read it, you will constantly see cross referencing back to the OT. In fact Paul actually does some commentating on some of the harsh bits in there. And then talks about Christ's love etc, so no problem reconciling both testaments. I think the problem here is you know very little about the Bible itself.

I'm unclear on what aspect of those stories in particular bother you? Is it:
God destroying some races e.g. Sodom/Gomorah/Amalek?
Or is it because He also took away the innocent (babies/children) as well?
Or you think this extermination act is incompatible with the morals laid out by Jesus in the NT? If so, maybe you could be a bit more specific about the conflict with Jesus's teachings.

Also, the OT isn't just about brutality. It's full of wonder and beauty, to those who have the patience to discover it.
 
SirRumpole said:
Well I suppose a soldier would have to ask himself if he was in a field somewhere and saw an unarmed woman and child reaping crops or whatever, would he just walk up and shoot them ?

The fact that it happens unseen from an aircraft at 30,000 feet does not alter the morality of the situation at all.
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mate do you even know why Hiroshima was chosen as a target?

It was a military town, that was targeted because it had soldiers, war factories and large stock piles of equipment, 20,000 of those killed were soldiers, many of the “civilians” were working for the war effort in factories.

No allied force goes after civilians for the sake of it, the civilians were collateral damage, not the target.
Hiroshima was a minor supply and logistics base for the Japanese military, but it also had large stockpiles of military supplies.[115] The city was also a communications center, a key port for shipping and an assembly area for troops.[76] It was a beehive of war industry, manufacturing parts for planes and boats, for bombs, rifles, and handguns; children were shown how to construct and hurl gasoline bombs and the wheelchair-bound and bedridden were assembling booby traps to be planted in the beaches of Kyushu. A new slogan appeared on the walls of Hiroshima: "FORGET SELF! ALL OUT FOR YOUR COUNTRY!"[116] It was also the second largest city in Japan after Kyoto that was still undamaged by air raids,[117] due to the fact that it lacked the aircraft manufacturing industry that was the XXI Bomber Command's priority target. On July 3, the Joint Chiefs of Staff placed it off limits to bombers, along with Kokura, Niigata and Kyoto.[118]
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SirRumpole said:
Well I suppose a soldier would have to ask himself if he was in a field somewhere and saw an unarmed woman and child reaping crops or whatever, would he just walk up and shoot them ?

The fact that it happens unseen from an aircraft at 30,000 feet does not alter the morality of the situation at all.
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Another statistic of note.

The American bombing campaign that was operating for 5 months before it was stopped due to the nuclear weapons, killed nearly 5 times the amount of people killed by the nuclear weapons.

So if the war had dragged on for just 1 extra month, the losses due to the conventional bombing campaign added to the losses from both sides in battle would have out weighed the losses from the nukes.

Check out this short video explaining how devastating the American bombing campaign was even though it wasn’t “nuclear”

 
Value Collector said:
No allied force goes after civilians for the sake of it, the civilians were collateral damage, not the target.
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So, kill one soldier and 10 civilians are collateral damage ? What sort of ratio is acceptable ?

And if you are going to quote something, kindly provide a link so we can decide if it's propaganda or not.
 
SirRumpole said:
So, kill one soldier and 10 civilians are collateral damage ? What sort of ratio is acceptable ?

And if you are going to quote something, kindly provide a link so we can decide if it's propaganda or not.
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a large amount of the “civilians” were also working for the war effort, in factories etc.

So you think killing soldiers is ok,

but killing a civilan is totally wrong,


but what about if that civilian is part of the war effort, and just happens to be sitting in an a factory making rifles when we bomb the factory?


Here is the link, it’s from Wikipedia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
 
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