That's my point. You're not safer owning a gun all things considered. — Hanover

At least in our very contingent historical moment. But when an argument is based in a very contingent historical moment, it tends to lack depth. After all, if everyone took your advice then we would have a whole society of people who are at the whim of gun-wielders, the allure of guns would increase due to their burgeoning coercive force, and then more people would buy guns to defend themselves (or else hire people with guns to protect them, either in a private capacity or else with taxes in a public capacity). Australia has merely outsourced their gun-protection to the government. When things go south the Australian calls the people with guns: same as anyone else. It just so happens that the people with guns in Australia are most often the military.

So the advice to not own a gun has a lot in common with the advice to sell this or that stock. It is highly time-dependent advice. The advice will become outdated once a few contingencies change.

Life is about reducing risks. — Hanover

Is it, though? Or is this another part/whole conflation?

But I think "end unto itself" is about as vague as "family resemblance" -- so in either analysis, be it ends-means or family resemblance, there's still the question of "What makes a painting a work of art, in this analysis?" — Moliere

It may be worth pointing out that recognizing that art is an end in itself does answer this current question of "use", but it does not provide the essence of art. After all, plenty of other things are ends in themselves, such as for example pleasure and friendship. By learning that aesthetic appreciation is not a means to an end, we have a better understanding of the phenomenon, but we have nevertheless not honed in on it in a truly singular way.

The other relevant question seems to be this:

Art is not meant to be used (although it can be used, and this is part of the confusion, namely that it is incorrect to attempt to prescind from intention when we speak about art). — Leontiskos

We can talk about an object apart from human intentions, and we can also talk about an object in a way that includes human intentions. In this thread there has been a great deal of equivocation between these two different ways of talking about an object. For example:

We have sex for all sorts of reasons beyond "feeling good"... — hypericin

If we talk about sex apart from intention then one can have sex for the sake of pleasure, or for the sake of procreation, or for the sake of bonding, or for some other reason, or for all of the above. And so sex can be used instrumentally, or it can be enjoyed as an end in itself, or it can even be both at the same time.

Art is similar, except that it is inherently ordered towards being enjoyed or appreciated as an end in itself. Thus when one instrumentalizes art they are no longer approaching it in the manner that it is meant to be approached. For example, in the film and book The Goldfinch, a rare painting is saved from a museum fire only to be used in various ways but never looked at or appreciated/enjoyed. A painting can be used as collateral in drug deals, but that is not the telos of art. It is not fundamentally what art is for. An artist does not sit down and say, "I am going to make something that will be ideal for collateral in a drug deal."

Now when we say the word "art" we are usually including the notion that it is to be approached aesthetically and as an end in itself. But a kind of reification can also occur where the word refers to the material object apart any such way of approaching it. So someone can say, "I am going to sell this piece of art and get rich," and thus use 'art' as an instrumental means to wealth. When someone uses art they are always doing something that falls away from the fundamental telos of art. This doesn't mean that it is necessarily bad or wrong - only that it is beside the real purpose of art, namely aesthetic appreciation. If we wanted to be very precise we would clearly distinguish art qua art from art qua use.

(And if @hypericin wonders what verb is properly applied to art rather than 'use', then I would recommend 'appreciate' or 'enjoy'. In the case of a painting we might say 'gaze' or 'contemplate'. It would be strange to walk up to someone viewing a painting at a museum and ask if they are done using the piece.)

Now psychosis is "a mental state where a person loses touch with reality, experiencing symptoms like hallucinations and delusions."

Madness. — Banno

but thanks for providing an example of the pathology I am pointing too — Banno

Psychosis? Madness? Pathology? I would appreciate it if the mods would consider the way that Banno consistently responds with unapologetic bigotry and trolling ad hominem. @Hanover? @Jamal?

From the site guidelines:

Types of posters who are welcome here:

Those with a genuine interest in/curiosity about philosophy and the ability to express this in an intelligent way, and those who are willing to give their interlocutors a fair reading and not make unwarranted assumptions about their intentions (i.e. intelligent, interested and charitable posters). — Baden

This means that solid protection against gun violence is not to own a gun. — Hanover

Yes, but this is a very individualistic assessment. It's a bit like saying, "The class which is most likely to die in gun-related incidents is police officers, and therefore solid protection against gun violence is not to become a police officer." But that leads to a world with no police officers, and a world with no police officers is ironically a world where guns are indispensable.

So I think that if one wants to minimize gun deaths then @Wayfarer's approach is better. In fact I am guessing that, at least on this score, you would rather live in Australia, where you give all the guns to the government and hope that the government never turns them on you.

I would say that in our modern-day world the idea that a first-world government would simply turn its guns on citizens is not overly plausible, but the rub is the manner in which that monopoly of coercion functions in the background, at the foundational level. @Outlander was right to mention the freedom of the press, which is a check on government overreach but which is also shaped by the powers of the government, including those latent powers that are not immediately focused on.

No, I wouldn’t. But let’s say I did: is your argument that if it is immoral to kill or leave the infant, then the lesser of the two evils (that should be picked) is to kill it? I do accept the principle that if one has to do evil that they should do the lesser of the evils; but wouldn’t this argument require that God had to do evil? — Bob Ross

No, I was thinking of offering a reductio ad absurdum against the argument, but it looks as though you agree that killing with indirect intention is not necessarily unjust.

2. Omissions and commissions are evaluated morally differently, such that if one can only do immoral acts then letting something bad happen is always the permissible and obligatory option. If I can only murder someone else to stop the train to save the five or let the five die, then letting the five die is morally permissible and obligatory; however, all else being letting the five die would be immoral. If you either have to let the children starve or murder them, then letting them starve is bad but morally obligatory and permissible.

I think you would have to, at the very least, deny the principle in 2 that <if one can only do immoral acts to prevent something bad, then it is obligatory that they do nothing>. — Bob Ross

Okay, I think you are reasoning well in this. :up:

Well, this cannot be true. 1 Samual 15 makes it clear God is commanding Saul to directly intentionally kill them all. It even goes so far to explicate that Saul did it but kept some of the animals and God was annoyed with Saul for keeping the animals BUT NOT for directly intentionally killing the people:

“He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword. 9 But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.” — Bob Ross

Okay, good point.

Yes, this seems to be Aquinas’ answer; but then you are saying that murder is not the direct intentional killing of an innocent person OR that murder is not always unjust. Would you endorse one of those? — Bob Ross

That's a good question. I am not sure. Maybe I will try to dig up a place where Aquinas speaks to this.

One of the things I am asking you is this: What would you have decreed if you were instructing the Israelites? Kill the Amalekites, take as many children as you can support, and leave the other children to die?

The reason I don't personally find the critique overwhelming is because, faced with that situation, I have no clear alternative.* I guess I could say, "Assuming the children are not demonic, make sure to only intend to kill them indirectly." Yet such an approach would be incongruous in an ancient text and an ancient paradigm, and it would also somewhat undermine the whole "remove evil at its root" meaning of the text. I think the nub for you is that the text presupposes that a child can be deserving of death, and this is seen as incredible.

Similar to Akin's video, I think it is worth surveying the options for someone who accepts the Old Testament. Here are some, in no particular order:

• Interpret the text to be talking about indirect intention, and adjust one's interpretive hermeneutic (to deviate from the literal meaning).
• Hold that life and death are in God's hands, that for God to kill is not murder, and that God can temporarily delegate this power.
• Hold that the Amalekites were demons and demons can be justly killed (see Hanover's post).
• Hold to some form of group morality rather than a strict individual morality.
• Hold to a pedagogical approach on the part of God.

Perhaps, taken singly, none of those are satisfactory. It is worth noting that the last option, which alluded to, seems to be supported by later texts such as Ezekiel 18:20. This goes to the fact that, read literally, the Bible does contradict itself. For example, if God does not change, God killed the Amalekite children for the wickedness of their parents, the Amalekite children were human, and Ezekiel 18:20 holds, then we have a contradiction. Indeed the literary genres found in the Bible are not really meant to support that level of scrutiny. This does not dissolve the problem, but it does complicate it.


* Also, I am not willing to abandon Christianity on this basis. I would need a foundational alternative to Christianity to which to turn before I would be more comfortable with such a move. Even if I were to make that move, I would still see the Old Testament as preparatory and indispensable to any true morality that one discovers later.

I generally supported the Australian Governments Covid precautions. Despite similar populations, Florida experienced a significantly higher number of COVID-19 deaths than Australia during the main period of the pandemic. For instance, an early comparison in October 2020 showed Florida with 14,142 deaths compared to Australia's 882. While numbers increased for both jurisdictions over time, the disparity remained pronounced, while American libertarians spread all kinds of nonsense about facemasks being an infringement of civil liberties and vaccinations being a UN plot. As with gun rights, the consequence is a lot more deaths. — Wayfarer

But do you understand your own arguments here? Again and again you are saying, "The coercion is justified." You are free to make such arguments, but the whole topic here is whether there is a correlation between coercion and guns. Saying, "The coercion is justified on the basis of homicides," or, "The coercion was justified with Covid-19," is missing the whole point that what is at stake is coercion and freedom. One cannot dismiss questions of freedom while simultaneously justifying coercive measures, and it is no coincidence that the most coercive environments are those with the most potent monopolies of coercion.

Part of the difficulty in this thread is that people read "tyrant" as "bad guy," and they assume that they are always the good guy. But a tyrant is fundamentally just someone who forces others to do what they want them to do. It makes no difference whether they think the coercion is a good idea (and obviously they do!). That's really the whole crux: modern people think modern nation states—which are by definition tyrannical—are good because the coercion is justified. Upon considering moving away from the modern nation state, the modern person would basically say, "But how would we coerce everyone to do the good things we want them to do?" "Without a strong state we would not have national laws against gun ownership, and that would be bad; therefore we need a strong state to coerce citizens vis-a-vis gun ownership."

Rogan has nothing to fear from the head of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. And nobody here gets sued for criticizing the Prime Minister provided the criticism is fact-based. — Wayfarer

It's the simple fact that the head of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation is doing stuff like that. Obviously Rogan has nothing to fear. "...provided the criticism is fact-based," is a rather large caveat, and another good example.

To take another example, one can easily assess a country's commitment to civil rights when stress is placed on the country, and the Covid-19 outbreak was the most recent precedent. Australia was rather notorious on that score.

It's what I said - there is a strong belief that guns=freedom. — Wayfarer

Actually, it's much harder to tell someone what to do when they have a gun. That's simple logic, and I'm afraid the prejudice lies with the one who denies such a straightforward fact, not the one who accepts it. Like it or not, arms really do help secure the freedoms of the bearer. They also increase homicides. Two things can be true at the same time.

In all those countries in that chart, I would think freedom of the press can generally be assumed, can't it? Got any counter-examples? — Wayfarer

Although it's hard to see the water you swim in, the freedom of the press in Australia is not great. For example, that Kim Williams, the chair of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, would publicly go after Joe Rogan and Rogan's speech speaks volumes, and would be unconscionable in a society which strongly values freedom of speech and freedom of the press. The Overton window in Australia is generally quite small, and there's a reason for that.

I'd rather say that the very fact that so many people decide to devote their whole lives to art's creation means that it's a human activity devoid of purpose outside of itself -- we do it because we like to. — Moliere

:up:

But separate and apart from that, in this OP, Bob is asking Christians and theologians, how they can reconcile a NT type conception of God with an OT type conception of God? — Fire Ologist

I think this is the conclusion of the arguments he is proposing:

5. Therefore, the God of the OT is unjust — Leontiskos

What is at stake in the arguments is justice, not the compatibility of canonical texts.

(See, all along I thought Bob was a Christian - no wonder my posts meant so little and were off target.) — Fire Ologist

Right. I think he is sympathetic to Christianity, but at the same time the OP represents qualms.

- You may have missed my edit to an earlier post:

Substitute guns with "nuclear weapons". — RogueAI

Everything I said also applies to nuclear weapons. I even mentioned nuclear weapons in my post. — Leontiskos

Thinking about nuclear weapons is helpful because it takes some of the emotion out of the word "tyranny."

A nuclear threat is a coercive instrument par excellence, and the whole disincentive to nuclear disarmament is the absence of nuclear deterrence. A country which yields up its nuclear arsenal forfeits its seat at the international table of coercion. Ukraine is a great example of a country which yielded up its nuclear arsenal and now inevitably regrets it. Furthermore, it is easy enough to see how a nation state which seeks a monopoly on nuclear weapons is at the same time seeking tyranny.

Not being killed is fundamental to liberty. — Wayfarer

Not-being-killed is part of civil liberty, but when that part is absolutized while other competing civil liberties are ignored then it becomes clear that conflating not-being-killed with civil liberty itself is a mistake.

For example, the right to self-defense is also part of natural law, as is the right to defend oneself in one's home. What follows is that one has a greater right to (relatively) heavy arms within one's home than outside one's home. The absolutizing of the societal value of minimizing homicide will tend to undermine the right to self-defense, especially within one's home.

More simply, if there is only one value, and that value is the minimization of homicide, then lethal weapons should be prohibited. The problem is that there is more than one value.

Has there ever been a tyranny that was not supported by the military? — RogueAI

Sure. The military is not the only possible monopoly of coercion, is it?

Has there ever been a tyranny which does not possess a monopoly of coercion?

Most other democratic countries managed it without. — Wayfarer

Civil liberty, or the minimization of gun-related homicides? You are equivocating given that the two are not at all the same thing. If a government wants to minimize gun-related homicides then obviously it should just confiscate all the guns. It's not at all clear why that amounts to greater civil liberty.

But do you think an armed populace is an impediment to tyranny? — RogueAI

Yes. Controlling who has access to weapons is one of the oldest tricks in the book. — Leontiskos

I just don't see this as plausible. If America becomes tyrannical, it will only be because the military and police forces support whatever tyrant there is. And if the military and police are involved, they're not going to be intimidated by American small arms in the hands of non-professionals. There will be very few gun owners willing to risk a drone strike on themselves or their families to take a potshot at a soldier or cop. — RogueAI

First, I am curious where you live?

Second, I am not seeing the plausibility of your argument for the conclusion, "An armed populace is not an impediment to tyranny." I think the key problem with your argument is the premise, "If America becomes tyrannical, it will only be because the military and police forces support whatever tyrant there is."

If I am right and—as has been claimed since at least Aristotle—tyranny and monopolies of coercion go hand in hand (and are perhaps even identical), then such a premise is not true. Therefore I would say that if America becomes tyrannical, it will in part be because the government has a monopoly of coercion, and that the more that monopoly is mitigated the less the probability that this will occur.

Note that when you distinguish "military and police" from the tyranny you are appealing to a distribution of coercive force, i.e. a distribution of arms. You are effectively saying, "If there is a population which possesses arms to oppose the tyranny, then the tyranny will be less likely to occur." That is precisely the point, and it is worth noting that a military or police officer who refuses orders from his superior is technically acting as a civilian. You are presupposing the point that I am at pains to make. Further, if the government is not monolithic then its distributed nature also militates against tyranny:

The second reason it is misleading is due to the fact that the government/civilian dichotomy is false, given that government and association exist at various levels of locality. Intermediating associations betwixt civilian and federal government—including non-federal governmental bodies—provide similar anti-tyrannical functions, even despite the fact that modern nation states are inherently bent towards tyranny due to their relatively monolithic nature. The age of nation states correlates to an absence of intermediating institutions possessing coercive force. — Leontiskos

- Yes. Controlling who has access to weapons is one of the oldest tricks in the book.

It doesn't. — Michael

So you can't see it. That doesn't surprise me.

Your argument if I understood it is that the NT description of God is the true God and to the extent the OT God is incongruent with the NT God, it does not descibe God. Yours is therefore both an external critique and an internal critique. — Hanover

This is what I see @Bob Ross doing in the OP and in the thread:

1. I believe in God, and therefore I have a conception of God
2. I understand that Christians see their God depicted in both the Old and New Testaments
3. My conception of God is consistent with the New Testament
4. My conception of God is not consistent with the Old Testament, and here's why...
5. (I am therefore resistant to accepting orthodox Christianity because of these considerations)

So I don't see an internal critique taking place. There is no a priori commitment to the NT, and the argument does not pertain to an inconsistent canon. It does present Christians with an allusion to an inconsistent canon, but that inconsistency is not the thrust of the OP.

What does this mean? It means the sacred literature of the Jews and Christians describe an evolving God, which says nothing about God as much as it does the people conceptionalizing God. — Hanover

The OP actually addresses this in part:

[One objection is that] the OT is seen as a stepping-stone progression... — Bob Ross

It isn't. — Michael

And do you see that your claim of mootness fails once it is recognized that a system can be more or less monopolistic?

Not dour, just proper English. It doesn't seem to make sense that something can both meet needs and be useless.

You seem to use "use" in a way that excludes aesthetic use. This seems unhelpful to me, neither humans nor any other animal behave in ways that are useless, that don't meet needs or serve any purpose. If from the start you presume the behavior is useless it will be impossible to understand. How can you understand a useless, meaningless behavior? — hypericin

I think "useless" is too vague a word for this debate, even though on linguistic grounds I think it is wrong to say that art is meant to be used. What is used is always leveraged to gain something else. What is used is a means to an end. Art is not meant to be used (although it can be used, and this is part of the confusion, namely that it is incorrect to attempt to prescind from intention when we speak about art). Similarly, it seems strange to claim that aesthetic appreciation fulfills a "need." I would say it fulfills a desire but not a need, or that at the very least one is stretching the notion of need/necessity.

Art is something which is meant to stand alone, as an end in itself. It is not meant to be instrumental to some further purpose, except in perhaps a rather mystical sense. But this does not mean that it has no value, or no rationale, or no desirability (i.e. goodness).

What I like about Wilde's aphorism is that it challenges this instinctive (I would say ideological) association of value with utility, reversing it to imply that the higher the value, the less intrumentally functional something becomes. — Jamal

Which seems to say that art is an end in itself rather than a means to an end:

We could think about the "pragmatic" as what is a means to an end, and art appreciation as an end in itself, but beyond that the two concepts will interpenetrate (and a schema which strongly divides means from ends will lack plausibility). — Leontiskos

But the nub is that things which are sought as ends in themselves are still valued. So moving on to the key and somewhat ambiguous claim of your post...

The idea is that art's value is not contingent upon a measurable, definite, or clearly apparent outcome. — Jamal

I would say that the value of a means lies in moving one towards an end, whereas the value of an end is self-apparent, i.e. the intrinsic value of enjoyment or rest in the end itself.

So if we break down your claim, we could say, "Art's value is not contingent upon [... an] outcome." That's actually sufficient, given that nothing, insofar as it is sought as an end in itself, is valued as contingent upon an outcome. With that sufficient condition aside, we could look at the other three:

1. Art's value is not contingent upon anything measurable.
2. Art's value is not contingent upon anything definite.
3. Art's value is not contingent upon anything which is clearly apparent.

(1) follows from the means-end analysis, given that measurement is never an end in itself. (2) and (3) are not obviously true. Of course, I am potentially obscuring your meaning by separating out the "contingent upon an outcome" aspect, but I want to say that all of these debates boil down to the means-end concept. Note too that the means-end analysis is always intention-relative, for example in the way that aesthetic appreciation is always susceptible to the degradation which subtly transforms one's intentional participation from that of end to that of means.

(This is very similar to moral debates in modernity, for in both cases there is the assumption that if there is no instrumental rationale then there is no rationale, and on that assumption any end in itself must be nonsensical. Moral obligation and aesthetic appreciation are two kinds of ends in themselves.)

And in general I think that actual innocent people being killed by civilians with guns is a bigger concern than some alarmist argument that a government could potentially turn tyrannical. — Michael

That wasn't my argument at all. Why don't you try to state the argument I gave so that I understand what you are attempting to argue against.

I don't really understand your request. It's a simple statement of fact: given that governments already have a "monopoly of coercion" even without stricter gun control — e.g. cruise missiles, tanks, attack helicopters, fully automatic weapons, etc. — arguing against stricter gun control on the grounds that it will give governments a monopoly of coercion is moot. — Michael

Let's suppose for the sake of argument that one government allows civilians firearms whereas a second government does not, and yet both governments have tanks, prohibit civilians from possessing tanks, and actually direct government tanks against civilians. Apparently your claim is that both governments possess an equal monopoly of coercion. But that's not true at all, and therefore your "statement of fact" is not factual. The claim is also misleading given that there is generally a distinction between nation-state-directed arms and civilian-directed arms - which is to say that tanks and cruise missiles function among the set of nation states, and if one nation state demanded a monopoly on all such arms it would also be tyrannical vis-a-vis the other nation states.

The second reason it is misleading is due to the fact that the government/civilian dichotomy is false, given that government and association exist at various levels of locality. Intermediating associations betwixt civilian and federal government—including non-federal governmental bodies—provide similar anti-tyrannical functions, even despite the fact that modern nation states are inherently bent towards tyranny due to their relatively monolithic nature. The age of nation states correlates to an absence of intermediating institutions possessing coercive force.

You want your cake and to eat it. — Banno

That looks exactly like one of those false dilemmas that you go around accusing everyone else of. :roll:

this seems to be a moot point — Michael

How so? Present your argument.

---



Everything I said also applies to nuclear weapons. I even mentioned nuclear weapons in my post.

Those who want "gun control" are simply saying that guns should be restricted to a certain set of people. That is, they favor a monopoly of coercion. What is a monopoly of coercion? It is, by definition, a tyranny. So those who favor gun control favor tyranny.

Else, if by "gun control" someone wants to limit the kind of firearms, then the issue is a bit more complicated.

There is a counterfactual question that is different. It is, "If I could push a button that erased all guns from existence, should I?" Or else it is the question of the people who invented guns, "Should we invent guns or not?" Those are interesting questions, but they are also completely moot given that we cannot turn back the clock on the invention of guns (and, similarly, nuclear weapons). It is equivocation to pretend that this question is the same as the question of restricting guns to a certain set of people.

In an ideal world, I believe that guns should not be accessible to a civilian population that doesn't need them, they should be accessible to military personnel, hunters and top level security. — Samlw

Ergo: you favor a monopoly of coercion (tyranny). You want to place the power of guns into the hands of one set of people, and exclude all other people. Specifically, you want the government to possess the coercive and lethal force of guns and no one else.

"God says do it, therefore you must do it," simply begs the question against the argument you are up against, namely, "The true God would never tell you to do such a thing." If the OT God is God, then it is correct to follow his advice. But the whole question is whether the OT God is God. Or in this sub-case, the question is whether God would tell you to do what is unjust, i.e. killing someone in response to an act that they will perform some time in the future.

I wouldn't say gatekeeping is "bad", and art is certainly a communal practice. But I don't think community vetting can ever be a reliable arbiter of what is and isn't art.

Take Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. To my knowledge, not only was this soundly rejected by the critical establishment, but its performance even resulted in a riot. Yet now it is treated as a masterpiece. If community vetting is the standard, then it wasn't art then, and is art now, which doesn't seem right at all. And it does not leave room for the community to be wrong. — hypericin

I would say that there are two communities here, namely the one which rejected it and also the one which accepted it. You seem to have identified the one which rejected it as the community and then inferred that the status of Rite of Spring is therefore not communal. This seems to ignore the second community in question.

I think "art" is akin to "artifact" and "tool". An artifact is distinguished from an ordinary object by the fact it was created with intention by humans. A tool is distinguished from an ordinary artifact by the fact it was created with the intention to facilitate physical manipulation. Art is distinguished from an ordinary artifact by the fact it was created with the intention to be used aesthetically. None of these distinctions rest on some ethereal ontological essence latent in the object. Rather, they rest on the history of the object. — hypericin

Well, they rest on the intention of the creator, and that intention bears on the ontology of the object qua history. But the whole question turns on what it means "to be used aesthetically." For example:

I don't see this as an exception at all. Decor serves no pragmatic function, it is perfectly possible to live in an abode with no decor at all. Decor serves only to modulate the emotional state of the inhabitant; this is thoroughly, unproblematically art. — hypericin

Why is "modulating the emotional state of the inhabitant" not a pragmatic function? This is but one example of the way in which the meaning of "aesthetic use" is elusive. It is also, I think, an indication that the dichotomies being proffered do not hold up when is comes to aesthetics, unless we want to say that aesthetic experience ceases to be aesthetic experience once it recognizes itself self-consciously and seeks itself "pragmatically."

For the Medievals the crux is that goodness and beauty interpenetrate, and in particular it is the fact that the beautiful is to be sought and enjoyed. We could think about the "pragmatic" as what is a means to an end, and art appreciation as an end in itself, but beyond that the two concepts will interpenetrate (and a schema which strongly divides means from ends will lack plausibility).

Else, given what Bob Ross has said, I am not convinced he would find this persuasive. He would ask whether it is permissible to "kill" a demon for their future crimes, Minority Report-style. — Leontiskos

It's not a speculative preemptive strike, but one where we know what will happen if we relent because the warning was from God, not just some UN inspectors who might be wrong. — Hanover

So if the knowledge of the future (i.e. foreknowledge) is certain then preemptive action is not unjust? The only problem with Minority Report was that the precogs did not provide perfect certainty?

I think this raises problems of justice, even apart from the can of worms it opens regarding free will. I don't think knowing someone's crime in the future is sufficient justification for an act in the present that would be justified in response to their crime in the present. I don't think we can punish for future acts, or even act preemptively in that particular way. But such a stance depends on free will, and you might deny demons free will, in which case the dispute would turn on whether the Amalekite infant is a demon who lacks free will or a human who possesses free will.

That optimism is a major cause of our problems now. That's why I think that revolution is, of itself, a Bad Idea. Reform is more likely to succeed. — Ludwig V

Agreed. :up:

I may not get a chance to revisit the rest of your post. Time will tell. :grimace:

Good question. Right now I am inclined to say that art is intentionally created as art by a creator. When the viewer misunderstands art as non-art, or non-art as art, that is a misfire. — hypericin

Okay.

Why overlook? Museums, galleries, and critics function as gatekeepers of high art, and so yes, someone is doing the gatekeeping. But high art is hardly inclusive of all art. — hypericin

But doesn't everyone and every group distinguish some things as art and some things as not art? In that sense is everyone a "gatekeeper" of art? Or does this just imply that "art" means something substantial, and therefore not everything counts?

Unless you want to say that every creator who intends their creation to be art imbues that creation with the ontological status of "art" whether or not anyone recognizes this ontological status, and that anyone who makes identification-mistakes is "misfiring."

I'm not convinced that something becomes art based on the creator's intention. I want to say that art is a communal practice that is vetted by a community, whether high or low. If that is right then "gatekeeping" is not bad, and is probably not even avoidable.

- Not sure where you're coming from or where you're going with any of that. Nothing you quoted had anything to do with Biblical exegesis. I imagine I would have to speak to a story in order to "decontextualize it." It turns out I never did that in the quote you identify.

Edit:

So, to your question: if there were a community of demons, some old, some young, and some cute as a button, all of whom you know for certain will perform horrible acts of violence, destruction, and mayhem because God himself told you they would, are you not obligated to nip that in the bud? — Hanover

Else, given what Bob Ross has said, I am not convinced he would find this persuasive. He would ask whether it is permissible to "kill" a demon for their future crimes, Minority Report-style. Admittedly, I myself wouldn't have such qualms. :halo:

That, if Bob Ross' argument proves persuasive, then one will be pushed away from the OT whether or not they are Christian. So if one is a Christian and Marcionism is untenable, then then persuasiveness of such an argument would ipso facto push one away from Christianity.

Yes. I was using the term "democracy" loosely. That's why I referred to Communism as "an extreme form of representative Democracy" where the party symbolizes the populace. Most of the modern political systems have been attempts to work around the negative aspects of the ancient pyramidal social organization that came to be known as "Feudalism". That name refers to the fiefs or fees that vassals pay to their lords higher in the hierarchy. In some cases, all the political power was concentrated at the top : Absolute Dictators & Despots*1. But that never lasted long. So, some sort of spread-the-power compromise was always necessary to form a stable government. — Gnomon

Hmm. Are you assuming that the modern state has always existed? That there was always a single "government" attached to "nations" in a single "hierarchy"? Historically I would say that the notion of top-down, centralized government is quite recent. The scope and breadth of a political entity was generally quite limited, and even where it existed the notion of a standing army was quite rare. Musk's "private security detail" was much more common historically than standing armies funded by nation states.

So, some sort of spread-the-power compromise was always necessary to form a stable government. — Gnomon

So what you say seems somewhat correct, but power that was never concentrated need not be "spread." I want to say that the prepackaged, natural state of power is already "spread."

In some cases, all the political power was concentrated at the top : Absolute Dictators & Despots*1. But that never lasted long. — Gnomon

Right. It doesn't last long because tyrannies (monopolies or attempted monopolies of coercion) do not tend to last long. But liberalism has ushered in an epoch where modern nation states have arrogated to themselves a monopoly of coercion. When we look at that phenomenon as moderns we tend to balk at Musk's "private" coercive entity and we also tend to view government itself as imbued with this top-down structure, thinking that government of the past must also have functioned in this centralized way.

It was probably much more a case of various loci of power and federation. "The government" could never have been reified in the past. "Whose government?" One would not talk about the government, but rather about this king, that prince, that duke, this city/polis, etc., and the power of any single agent would be geographically circumscribed, also diminishing with distance. There were empires which consisted of federated entities, but their longevity was always limited due to their more tenuous nature.

This idea implies that those who control the flow of money have the ultimate ability to influence and potentially control those who control the "things" — Gnomon

In this too I see a modern notion of the centralization of money. Without modern nation states there simply is no centralization of money. There is no Federal Reserve Bank. In a more fundamental sense money is worth very little. It is wealth, arms, and population that are more important in a fundamental sense. Money can be important in procuring such things, but without strong centralization there is no one who "controls the money."

This is the same issue, for when you say that they "have different truth conditions," you are implying that they are both assertions. A locution intended to broadcast/communicate does not have a truth condition in the way that an assertion has a truth condition.

and asked me about two such assertions: — Michael

No, I said we should talk about phrases like, "I assert the cat is on the mat," rather than, "I think the cat is on the mat." It doesn't mean either of the quotations is itself an assertion. It means we are talking about 'asserting' rather than 'thinking'.

Again, if everything in question is stipulated to be an assertion then the whole question of the OP is mooted.

- I agree, and yet Jesus has become one of the most plastic figures in history. People make him in their own image, texts be damned.

* Note that when I spoke about the possibility of being pushed away from the OT, I was prescinding from the question of Christianity. Such a thing may or may not invalidate Christianity (even though I think it generally would).

"Art" is a way of interacting with an object — hypericin

Is it the way that the creator interacts with the object, or the way that the aesthete/viewer interacts with the object?

As soon as you put it in a museum, it becomes an object to be appreciated, contemplated, and reacted to, rather than used. — hypericin

You might therefore say that anything that is found in an art museum is, eo ipso, art. But this seems to overlook the fact that someone decided what is allowed in the art museum and what is not allowed in the art museum.

- :up:

So, the political question here seems to be : are we, in the established democracies — Gnomon

I think the question is whether any of the regimes you speak about are properly called democracies, or ever were. The shift from the Articles of Confederation at the Constitutional Convention in the United States was explicitly anti-democratic. A republic was opted for instead of a democracy (and also, at least rhetorically, instead of a monarchy). A constitution instead of the more democratic articles of confederation. A republic is inherently more of an oligarchy than a democracy. The folks behind the Convention wanted something more oligarchical.

There is a myth about democracy which sees it as both good and natural. With this myth comes ideas which say that non-democratic rule in Russia or China or the United States is an aberration, and that any deviation from pure democracy must be bad. Historically speaking, these are not aberrations at all. In fact democracy is historically recognized to be a rather dubious form of government, which is why even before the Constitutional Convention we had significant checks on democratic forms.

One of Aristotle's many contributions is that the goodness or badness of any particular regime must always be judged relative to where it began. This is true regardless of one's regime hierarchy. Even if someone thought that democracy was the greatest thing since sliced bread, it would nevertheless remain true that the Soviet Union cannot be expected to shift from communism to democracy in the blink of an eye, and that the fall of the Berlin wall is not necessarily teleologically oriented towards a democratic regime.

Okay, those are reasonable attempts to capture my arguments and good responses in turn. :up:

First, let me try to elaborate on the second consideration I gave. Consider this argument:

1. It is impermissible to indirectly kill an infant
2. Killing an infant's parents will indirectly kill the infant (if left to itself)
3. Therefore, it is impermissible to kill an infant's parents (for any reason, so long as you cannot support the infant)

Would you agree with that argument? Because anyone who accepts that argument simply cannot justify killing the Amalekite parents, regardless of what the parents have done, unless of course all of the infants can be supported. That is one way of seeing how the second consideration comes to bear on the issue. Specifically, it is the idea that the Amalekite adults who should be killed cannot be killed because they have infants (and thus the Amalekites will simply keep infants as a defense strategy).

Similarly, suppose that (1) is false and that one is permitted to indirectly kill an infant in certain circumstances. In that case a command to kill infants could be reasonably interpreted as a command to indirectly kill infants by killing their evil parents.

Another argument would be as follows. God is allowed to "kill," given that every time anything dies God has "killed" it. Life and death are in God's hands. Can God delegate such a prerogative to the Israelites in special cases, such as that of the Amalekites? If so, then this "mercy killing" of an infant is not per se unjust, and it actually provides the infant with the best option, given the alternatives.

Let me respond to a few things:

Argument from Evil Cleansing

1. An extremely evil idea deeply rooted in a society, culturally, should be eradicated.
2. Eradicating such an extremely evil idea is infeasible without killing off most of the population.
3. Therefore, one should kill most of the population of a society that has a deeply rooted extremely evil idea.

Is this an argument you would endorse?

Briefly, I would say that this also is consequentialistic at heart. I don’t think it is permissible to do evil in order to eradicate evil. — Bob Ross

2. A person that has done nothing wrong themselves but is a part of a group that is guilty is thereby guilty (just the same). — Bob Ross

The first thing I would say here is that someone who intentionally remains attached to an evil group is evil, and has bound themselves to the consequences of that group. But this doesn't apply to infants or small children.

Note though that collateral damage is part of war, and that it bears on the question of directly intended killing versus indirectly intended killing. Often innocents are casualties of war, and often this is foreseen, but there is a difference between intending to kill an innocent and foreseeing an innocent's death as a side-effect. This is all related to our conversation about indirect intention and double effect.

That’s fair, but aren’t you a Christian? I’m curious what you make of these difficult passages: does it affect your faith? — Bob Ross

Yes, I am a Christian. I would say that, first, I am not God and therefore I do not expect to understand everything. Second, there are many different ways to approach these issues, and the video from Akin highlights some of the different approaches. A lot of it relates to whether some text is literal or figurative, and whether one takes the text to be inerrant. I actually like Fr. Stephen De Young's approach because it is not too liberal or wishy-washy, it is rigorous, it is contextually robust, etc.

With that said, your argument is not bad. Perhaps such an argument must push us into more liberal exegetical approaches. Or perhaps such an argument must push us away from the Old Testament altogether. That's possible. I am not there myself, but I do know some people who take such routes.