No, I don't think you understand. What is so difficult for you to comprehend?Originally Posted by CitizenCain
Lets try this again slowly and logically, please identify by number which part of it you fail to agree with/comprehend:
1: We were talking about a guy 2000 years in the past.
2: Geegee made a claim.
3: That claim is ridiculous today
4: But that claim was very valid 2000 years ago.
5: QED it was not unreasonable.
But hang on, wasn't GGT asserting that claim in the modern context??
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
No she was not, she was asserting that claim specifically about a discussion of the beliefs of Jesus Christ.
"He'd probably be considered a SSSocialist by today's standards."
You know what, you're right, Rand, there's nothing in her claim about a modern context.
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.
What does a socialist (by today's standards) believe in? Helping the poor etc
What did Jesus (by his standards) believe in? Helping the poor etc
Did Jesus push for redistribution through the government? No, but then nobody did then. But he did believe in the equivalent in that era.
I sincerely doubt you'll get an avowed Christian anarchist to say his personal saviour was pro-government. Though I do wonder whether Kain thinks Jesus was an anarchist, as measured by the standards of 33 AD?
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
You realize that helping the poor is not a uniquely socialist concept, right? Socialism is a means, not an end.
Essentially you're saying, "Socialists drink water, Jesus drank water, ergo Jesus was a socialist!"
Yes you're right, Jesus by today's standards would be a capitalist
I tell you now, any politician who made an equivalent such speech would not get my vote, far too left wing.
Personally I wouldn't call Jesus a socialist. I've always considered him a long-haired, sandal-wearing hippy.
Two issues here...Yes you're right, Jesus by today's standards would be a capitalist
Issue the first: not being a socialist does not automatically make you a dyed in the wool capitalist. We are not talking about binary choices.
Issue the second: that parable seems to illustrates the Christian folly of a man putting wealth before his duty to man and deity, and is not an inherent rejection of capitalism, which says nothing about what a person should do with their wages once they have been earned.
I'm not sure why you are being intentionally intransigent, but you seem to be ignoring the fundamentals of what capitalism and socialism actually are.
Last edited by Enoch the Red; 08-26-2011 at 05:00 PM.
No.
Not is that particular "belief" is unique to socialism (as Enoch pointed out), nor is it the objectionable part of socialism. The objectionable part is the forcing everyone to give money to a government... which, among other things, may or may not use any of that money to help the poor. (Or may use it wage wars of empire to shoot foreigners, and imprison or kill domestic dissidents, as has more consistently been the case.)
No, not true as all. The modern equivalent of ancient era-charity... is still charity. Voluntary giving.
And Jesus was quite clear on **WHY** one should give, and would have thought forcible giving (taxation) to be meaningless, just as he did in the parable of the widow and the mite - where the widow was to be applauded for giving a pittance, because it was much for her to spare, and the rich man was not to be applauded for his more substantial offering, because it was nothing to him.
Oh, and then there's that whole "do unto others"/Golden Rule thing, which is problematic to the socialist belief in forcing everyone to pay for shit they don't wanna pay for.
However, if you insist on comparing Jesus to anyone form the modern era... try Bill Gates. Who also believes in helping the poor and has spent billions of his own money to that end, established a number of huge charitable initiatives (under the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations) and campaigns among his super-wealthy peers to encourage the ultra wealthy to voluntarily donate huge piles of money to help fight malaria in Africa, and AIDS in India, and provide clean drinking water wherever and whatever else. They do a shit-tonne of stuff. All for the poorest of the poor, all with DONATIONS. Charity.
So there you go. Jesus isn't comparable to a socialist, he's comparable to Bill Gates. (Oh, I can practically feel the millions of Mac-fanbois souls screaming out in agony at that statement... and it is good.)
Wait, where's this Christian anarchist? I'd like to meet him. Unless you're talking about me, in which case you're wrong, but I don't need to me meet me anyway.
Jesus' political views are deliberately hard (impossible) to determine, as he never stated any. Whether that's because he couldn't speak his mind without being executed for treason by the Romans before completing his purpose, or because Yahweh actually doesn't care is a different question, but all the evidence states that Jesus didn't have a political preference, or at least didn't state it. And this wasn't exactly unusual in an era when everyone was ruled by one despot or another, and only the nobility or ruling class was involved in politics... which wasn't democratic, and mainly consisted of deciding which despot got what, and how much. Hell, in 33 AD, no one really had what we'd consider a "political" position or affiliation anyway, so the question is inherently faulty.
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.
I'm not going to argue about the supposed political views of a made-believe character that doesn't interest me personally, but it does seem interesting that a stronger case can be made that Plato was a fascist than anything about Jesus's legacy. And Christianity is more or less Paulinism anyway, and that guy was fairly authoritarian as these types go. Wasn't he some kind of tax-man before he went Hubbard?
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
I seriously do need that translated. Into English please, and Murikan English if possible.
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.
It isn't very pertinent to the discussion at hand.
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Yeah, I don't think it's realistic to expect a guy who was kicking around in early-AD to have an opinion on capitalism vs socialism, given that they didn't exist back then. You can say Jesus, if he were alive today, would be an X or a Y, but I think if he were alive today he, as a guy from 33 AD, would find almost everything about modern society utterly incomprehensible and alien.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
Slavery existed back then, too. That had both religious and political context, even for those living in that era.
Oh, it's this thread again.
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