Jesus a "great teacher"

[Peter_Plato]

Yes, if Jesus had really sacrificed his life for others, that would be a sign of selflessness. But the fact is that Jeus did not sacrifice his life. He suffered for some time, then was dead for a few days, and then he resurrected and was alive again.
If someneo offered me a choic

a. somebody will die of cancer in big agnoy and pain
b. I will be nailed to across and I will be alive and kicking after three days and the person in a would be cured of cancer
Then I would not hesitate and choose b.

I doubt it!

 

[tonyrey]

Perhaps it’s not God who is inconsistent, perhaps it is us.

I think “perhaps” is an understatement.

 

[belorg]

What evidence do you have that this man was deluded?

Is it only because he claimed to be God that makes him deluded? If that’s your rationale for claiming he’s deluded then you are begging the question again.

Please cite some other evidence for his lunacy.

Let me repeat what I have said
myself:

If Jesus said the things he said without being the son of God, then of course he would be deluded,

The evindece is that if someone claims to be the son of God and that isn’t true , he is deluded (or he’s a liar or a lunatic). Now I have never claimed that Jesus was a lunatic. There is a big diffrence between being deluded and being a lunatic.
According to Catholics, all non-Catholics are deluded in one way or another, but ever since the Spanish Inquisition, most Catholics have not been calling everybody else ‘lunatics’.

 

[belorg]

You are assuming Jesus was absolutely certain He would rise from the dead,yet in His agony He cried out:

“My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”

Another inconsistency.

He had been aware of His Mission for years and knew He would be put to death. In Galilee and Judea crucifixion by the Romans was a common spectacle which left nothing to the imagination and was not easily forgotten, especially when you knew you were going to be forced to suffer the same agonising fate.

What do you mean ‘forced’? I thought it was of his own free will.

The real test is not what we say…

No, it’s in what we do. So, merely saying ‘love your enemy’ without living up to it does not mean anything. IIRC that was my point. Thank you for agreeing with me, Tony. That’s a sign you really do love your enemy, you even go as far as to help them make their arguments against your position.

The charge that Jesus was self-centred is completely absurd.

“Love me or burn in hell forever” sounds a bit self-centered to me.

 

[belorg]

I doubt it!

You should have a little faith, Peter. The question is: would you choose b?

 

[belorg]

I think “perhaps” is an understatement.

If you find it so unlikely that you are consistent in your ideas about morality then what is your justification for questioning my morality?
My morality could be wrong, but at least I am consistent.

 

[Peter_Plato]

According to Catholics, all non-Catholics are deluded in one way or another, but ever since the Spanish Inquisition, most Catholics have not been calling everybody else ‘lunatics’.

What?

 

[Peter_Plato]

You should have a little faith, Peter. The question is: would you choose b?

More than a little faith would be required.

This is not an academic question. The only way to know would be to be placed in the actual situation. Removed from that, you could make any claim you wanted - that part would be words with little substance.

 

[Peter_Plato]

“Love me or burn in hell forever” sounds a bit self-centered to me.

The option isn’t quite as you state it. The option is: love with your whole being because by doing so you will be transformed into the kind of being that can endure the fire of Infinite Love without getting burned. If you choose to separate yourself from Love, your insubstantial self-existence will not withstand the Infinite reality, all-consuming ferocity and everlasting heat of Love. If you hate love it is that very love that will be insufferable for you. You must be transformed or you will be consumed.

It is not self-centered, it is more like a warning to not wander carelessly near the lion because the lion, by nature, will devour you. The nature of Love is to refine and consume hate and indifference and turn these into pure Love. Choosing not to love will make the inevitable process unendurable, just as choosing to ignore the “Beware of Lions” sign would be painful if misunderstood as an affront by a rash or willful individual.

 

[tafan]

And we all know that if we have a hard time understanding something it can’t be true.

It is a serious question. You said that slavery was inherently morally wrong. How is that so?

What I am trying to get at is having your explain that part of your overall argument from a couple of days ago, which if I could paraphrase: Jesus was not a great teacher because he condoned/supported slavery, which is inherently morally wrong. I will not argue with you what Jesus did or did not do. For the sake of this discussion I will accept your conclusion there. Now I must know, how do you (or anyone else) no that it is inherently morally wrong? Your whole arguement hinges on the answer.

 

[tonyrey]

*You are assuming Jesus was absolutely certain He would rise from the dead,yet in His agony He cried out:

On your part!

He had been aware of His Mission for years and knew He would be put to death. In Galilee and Judea crucifixion by the Romans was a common spectacle which left nothing to the imagination and was not easily forgotten, especially when you knew you were going to be forced to suffer the same agonising fate.

What do you mean ‘forced’? I thought it was of his own free will.

Do you never force yourself to do anything?

The real test is not what we say…

.
No, it’s in what we do. So, merely saying ‘love your enemy’ without living up to it does not mean anything. IIRC that was my point. Thank you for agreeing with me, Tony. That’s a sign you really do love your enemy, you even go as far as to help them make their arguments against your position.

There is far more evidence that Jesus lived up to His teaching than your aggressive posts which savour more of hatred than love.

The charge that Jesus was self-centred is completely absurd.

“Love me or burn in hell forever” sounds a bit self-centered to me. Another inconsistency.

Your distortion of Christ’s teaching is undoubtedly inconsistent and self-centred in its rejection of any higher moral authority than your own opinions - for which you have failed to offer any rational foundation.

“Love yourself to the exclusion of others” is a far more appropriate motto for those who reject the need for humility and compassion because they are obsessed with the craving for power and total independence. There is plenty of evidence of the hell created by men for themselves in this world, let alone the next.

The Greek concept of Nemesis and the Indian doctrine of Karma reflect the fact that our vices incur their own punishment and we all get precisely what we deserve in the long run. Cosmic justice is not an illusion. And negativity is undoubtedly self-destructive…

 

[PRmerger]

The evindece is that if someone claims to be the son of God and that isn’t true , he is deluded (or he’s a liar or a lunatic).

Well, now you’re begging the question again.

Try a different answer, belorg. One that doesn’t beg the question.

 

[tonyrey]

It is a serious question. You said that slavery was inherently morally wrong. How is that so?

…Now I must know, how do you (or anyone else) no that it is inherently morally wrong? Your whole argument hinges on the answer.

Precisely! The answer is not yet forthcoming…

 

[tonyrey]

The option isn’t quite as you state it. The option is: love with your whole being because by doing so you will be transformed into the kind of being that can endure the fire of Infinite Love without getting burned. If you choose to separate yourself from Love, your insubstantial self-existence will not withstand the Infinite reality, all-consuming ferocity and everlasting heat of Love. If you hate love it is that very love that will be insufferable for you. You must be transformed or you will be consumed.

It is not self-centered, it is more like a warning to not wander carelessly near the lion because the lion, by nature, will devour you. The nature of Love is to refine and consume hate and indifference and turn these into pure Love. Choosing not to love will make the inevitable process unendurable, just as choosing to ignore the “Beware of Lions” sign would be painful if misunderstood as an affront by a rash or willful individual.

A superb analysis!

 

[tonyrey]

If you find it so unlikely that you are consistent in your ideas about morality…

I have no idea how you reach that conclusion.
.

…then what is your justification for questioning my morality? My morality could be wrong, but at least I am consistent.

You haven’t even explained what your moral principles are - or on what they are based…

 

[Peter_Plato]

No, intelligence is not the only relevant respect. God is not a human being and human beings are not ants. It is not the mere level of intelligence that makes a difference, it is the ontological state of the being that does.

This article by Edward Feser on the difference between classical theism and personalistic theism may add some insight into this discussion.

Three key paragraphs:

*…theistic personalists and classical theists also differ radically in their understanding of what it means to characterize God as good. For the theistic personalist, since God is a person comparable to us, only without our limitations, His goodness amounts to a kind of superlative moral virtue. Like us, He has moral duties; unlike us, He fulfills them perfectly. But for the classical theist, this is nonsensical. Virtue and duty have to do with habits and actions that allow us to realize the ends set for us by nature and thereby to perfect ourselves. But God, being pure actuality, cannot intelligibly be said to have ends He needs to realize or imperfections He needs to remedy. Accordingly, He cannot intelligibly be said to be “virtuous” or to have “duties” He needs to fulfill.

To say that God is good is for the classical theist to say something very different, and something that it is, frankly, not easy to summarize for readers unfamiliar with certain key metaphysical doctrines characteristic of classical, and especially Scholastic, philosophy, such as the doctrine of the convertibility of the transcendentals, the notion of evil as privation, and the principle of proportionate causality (all of which are explained in my book Aquinas). Briefly, though, according to the first of these doctrines, being is “convertible” with goodness, so that whatever is pure actuality or Being Itself is necessarily also Goodness Itself. Furthermore, evil is a privation rather than a positive reality – the absence of good, as blindness is merely the absence of sight rather than a positive attribute. Whatever is pure actuality, and thus Goodness Itself, therefore cannot intelligibly be said to be evil or deficient in any way. Finally, since according to the principle of proportionate causality, whatever is in an effect must in some way be in its cause (“eminently” if not “formally”), God as the cause of all possible good must have all possible good within Him, eminently if not formally.

The point for now is just to indicate how different the classical theist’s conception of divine goodness is from that of the theistic personalist – and, for that matter, from the conception taken for granted by atheists who suggest that the existence of evil shows that God, if He exists, must in some way be morally deficient. While God is not a Platonic Form, for the classical theist, to suggest that God is in some way morally deficient nevertheless makes about as much sense as suggesting that Plato’s Form of the Good might be morally deficient. The suggestion is unintelligible both because characterizing the God of classical theism as either virtuous or vicious is unintelligible, and because characterizing Him as deficient in any way is unintelligible. An atheist could intelligibly deny that such a God exists at all (just as he could intelligibly deny the existence of Platonic Forms), but to suggest that the God of classical theism might be morally deficient merely shows that such an atheist does not understand the view he is criticizing (just as an opponent of Platonism who suggested that the Form of the Good might be unloving or vicious would only show thereby that he doesn’t understand what sort of thing a Form is supposed to be).
*

 

[belorg]

What?

Is there something in my statement that is false, Peter, then say so.
Is it false that nowadays most Catholics do not call people of other convictuions ‘lunatics’ anymore. In my experience, this is true. I have lots of Catholics friends, my mother is a devout Catholic, and they all know I am an atheist, and of course thye disagree with me, but none of them calls me a lunatic. They all think I am deluded, though.

 

[belorg]

More than a little faith would be required.

This is not an academic question. The only way to know would be to be placed in the actual situation. Removed from that, you could make any claim you wanted - that part would be words with little substance.

Yes, of course. But, remember, my point was that a moral teaching isn’t worth that much if you don’ty live up to it. And Jesus, at least on one occasion, did not live up to his words, which means, ‘his words had little substance’.

 

[belorg]

The option isn’t quite as you state it. The option is: love with your whole being because by doing so you will be transformed into the kind of being that can endure the fire of Infinite Love without getting burned. If you choose to separate yourself from Love, your insubstantial self-existence will not withstand the Infinite reality, all-consuming ferocity and everlasting heat of Love. If you hate love it is that very love that will be insufferable for you. You must be transformed or you will be consumed.

That’s a very nice philosophy, but it has nothing to do with the Catholic concept of hell. In hell, nobody is 'comsumed by love.

 

[belorg]

It is a serious question. You said that slavery was inherently morally wrong. How is that so?

What I am trying to get at is having your explain that part of your overall argument from a couple of days ago, which if I could paraphrase: Jesus was not a great teacher because he condoned/supported slavery, which is inherently morally wrong. I will not argue with you what Jesus did or did not do. For the sake of this discussion I will accept your conclusion there. Now I must know, how do you (or anyone else) no that it is inherently morally wrong? Your whole arguement hinges on the answer.

For this discussion, it suffices to say that slavery is the opposite of freedom, and freedom is so important, that God is prepared to allow a huge amount of suffering and evil in order for us to be free. So, if Jesus condones slavery, that is a sign of ftal inconsistency in his moral views.