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.

I think my point was that if you are prepared to conscript soldiers, you have already abandoned ethical thinking beyond your own survival. Questions of adulthood or not have been set aside. — Ludwig V

Well the notion of in extremis is a central part of ethics, and I don't see why one couldn't be ethically prepared to accept conscription while at the same time being ethically unprepared to accept the conscription of children. It's not as if anyone who favors conscription therefore cannot distinguish between conscripting adults and conscripting children.

They would simply not be “complete” or certain, though not thus “errors” or simply “predispositions”. They would still be rational, communal, and correct based on the individual criteria for each thing. — Antony Nickles

:up:

It's great to see someone address this topic with clarity, answer questions directly, philosophize forthrightly, etc. Thanks for that.

We appear to agree that the “local”/“absolute” framework needs to be set aside, — Antony Nickles

In different ways, though. For @J and Williams it is not set aside insofar as it remains as a central foil to any thinking going forward. For many others it must actually be set aside as a manufactured dichotomy, which cannot be appealed to as some kind of eternal foil for all future thinking. The question is whether one continues to be haunted by the infallibilist paradigm that they have "set aside."

This is a strawman. I'm not claiming teleology doesn't exist. — Janus

The OP is not about you. You asked about the rationale of the OP and then immediately objected because of something you're not claiming. Do you think the OP was written against Janus in particular? And that if something in the OP does not apply to you then the OP lacks rationale?

I am claiming these things:

1. The assertions... — Michael

To just assume that we are talking about assertions seems to beg the question of the whole thread. For instance:

The prefix, however we phrase it - "I hereby assert that..." [...] does seem to iterate naturally.

... A sentence is already an assertion sign. [...] How does it end up needing reinforcement? — bongo fury

You basically want to stipulate that everything we are talking about is an assertion. You could stipulate that, but it is contrary to the spirit of the thread because it moots the central question of the thread.

John believes that the cat is on the mat. Jane does not believe that the cat is on the mat.

John asserts "the cat is on the mat".

Jane asserts "I disagree".

Jane is not disagreeing with the implicit assertion "I [John] assert that the cat is on the mat" because Jane agrees that John is asserting that the cat is on the mat. Jane is disagreeing with the explicit assertion "the cat is on the mat". As such, we should not identify the explicit assertion with the implicit assertion. — Michael

Good. If this is right then @bongo fury is correct when he says, "A sentence is already an assertion sign."

So we might then ask why anyone would ever make explicit their asserting. For example:

• John: "The cat is on the mat."
• Jane: "Oh, would you like to read some Dr. Suess?"
• John: "No, I am asserting that the cat is on the mat."

It seems that we make the implicit assertion explicit when someone misjudges our intent and thereby misjudges the fact that an implicit assertion is occurring. More generally, we make the species of our act explicit when we wish to clarify the kind of act that we are engaged in.

Similarly, when someone says, "I hereby assert that...," they are generally broadcasting or communicating the fact of their assertion, and broadcasting/communicating is a bit different than asserting. This is why the flavor of asserting is less applicable to recursivity than, say, the flavor of judging. Recursivity requires a mixture of act and potency, and judgment does involve both whereas assertion really only involves the former. Hence assertion does not have the same degree of self-reflexivity as judgment.

Yes, it is, if you are thinking of volunteering. It's a life-and-death decision. Conscription is different. There's an ambivalence here between the soldiers as heroic defenders laying their lives on the line and soldiers as cannon-fodder. — Ludwig V

I guess conscription is different if we think it is okay to conscript children, but I don't think that. It seems as though conscription also entails adulthood.

The analogical reasoning from one case to the other is not valid. — Janus

Again, that's not the claim.

Where does our anti-teleological approach come from, if not from the broad anti-teleological prejudice of the modern period?

This is a simplified version of the modern argument:

1. Teleology does not exist
2. If teleology does not exist, then plant, animal, human, religious, and any other kind of teleology does not exist
3. Therefore, plant, animal, human, religious, and any other kind of teleology does not exist

This is the biological argument:

4. If teleology does not exist, then plant, animal, human, religious, and any other kind of teleology does not exist
5. Plant and animal teleology certainly exists
6. Therefore, it is false that teleology does not exist

Now someone like yourself will be prone to say, "Ah, but (5) has only to do with plant and animal teleology, and nothing else." But your error is to fail to understand that (1) was not specific to plants and animals. (1) was a thesis that entailed all sorts of things; some of those things turned out to be false; therefore (1) is false; therefore we have no grounds for any of the entailments qua (1).*

@Wayfarer is correctly pointing out that the anti-teleological prejudice seems to be nothing more than the bad fruits from a faulty and expired worldview. In a historical sense this looks to be accurate.

For example, suppose someone is a Mormon but they realize it is false and they abandon the religion. Yet they retain all sorts of Mormon practices without realizing it. When this is pointed out to them, they realize that those practices also have no validity given that the practices derive from Mormonism and Mormonism is false (or defunct). You are a bit like the Mormon who demands that the person prove that those other practices are false. Yet the point is not that they are false, but that they are unjustified. This is an important move in a society which is still beholden to the recently deceased worldview. Understanding that something is unjustified is an important prerequisite for reconsidering it.


* We have undercut R and therefore invalidated P.

Let 'em vote. Adults are no more politically savvy than mid to late teenagers. 13 year olds can do well at debate club. Most adults can't. — fdrake

First, I would say that this whole question turns on whether they are an adult. "They can do X, Y, and Z; therefore they are an adult; therefore they should be able to vote." I don't think it makes much sense to deny the 16 year-old adulthood and then claim they should be able to vote.

Second, I don't remotely agree that 16 year-olds are no less politically savvy. I would say "Political savvy" has little to do with debating and reading your favorite news sources . It has to do with understanding the rationale behind societal decision-making, which begins in the family. The reason adults have the political wherewithal to vote is because the family life they lead is a microcosm of the polis. More simply and broadly, we are thinking about the age at which one's decisions are on a par with other citizens (e.g. able to legally contract, consent, etc.).

In any case, I think any good argument has to be based on adulthood. The reason the age of majority was lowered from 21 to 18 in the U.S. was largely because 18 year-olds could serve in the military. It was the same idea. The argument that military service entails adulthood is very strong.

We see purpose or agency in the data collected by observing animal behavior. Are you claiming there is purpose or agency there in the inorganic even though we cannot detect it? — Janus

There are a few arguments, but one of them is something like this:

1. Modern science long rejected teleology, even among plants and animals
2. This turned out to be false, and it was based on background assumptions rather than any rigorous reasoning
3. Given that this conclusion about plant and animal teleology turned out to be unsound, do we have any reason to believe that the conclusion about teleology more generally is sound?

The question is, "What is the rational basis for an anti-teleological view, given that the anti-teleological view as applied to plants and animals turned out to be baseless?"

You will probably say what you always say, "They have the burden of proof, not me." But the question is whether the anti-teleological side has any reasonable arguments. They certainly thought they had good arguments in the past, and the current state of science sees most of those arguments as faulty.

- I was about to ask the same thing asked. What do you think about this?

In this light, the familiar claim that the universe is meaningless begins to look suspicious. It isn’t so much a conclusion reached by science, but a background assumption—one built into the methodology from the outset. The exclusion of purpose was never, and in fact could never be, empirically demonstrated; it was simply excluded as a factor in the kind of explanations physics was intended to provide. Meaning was left behind for the sake of predictive accuracy and control in specific conditions.

That this bracketing was useful—indeed revolutionary—is not in doubt. But the further move, so often taken for granted in modern discourse, is the assertion that because physics finds no purpose, the universe therefore has none. — Wayfarer

The Catholic Church teaches that God Almighty came down from heaven to save us... from His own wrath... by allowing Himself to be tortured to death. — frank

Where does it teach that?

Here is the comment which both motivated and suffices to answer your OP:

Bob Ross - The reason these threads are tricky on TPF is because asking TPFers religious questions is like going into a bar and asking the patrons about quantum physics. They will have a lot to say, and none of it will be remotely accurate. Toss in the large number of anti-religious cynics like Frank and the quality dips even further. — Leontiskos

But just as "the cat is on the mat" doesn't mean "I am speaking English", it also doesn't mean "I assert that the cat is on the mat". — Michael

But we are asking why, "I assert the cat is on the mat," cannot mean that one is asserting that the cat is on the mat. You are thinking of the claim, "[ I assert that] I assert the cat is on the mat," but that too is an arguably different claim.

So with any such pair, we can assume that there is an implicit assertion or not, and we can identify the explicit assertion with that implicit assertion or not. Again, there is no special rule that tells us how to interpret such a thing.

They mean different things and have different truth conditions.

(a) is true if and only if the cat is on the mat
(b) is true if and only if I assert that the cat is on the mat

(b) can be true even if (a) is false. — Michael

So when someone says, "The cat is on the mat," they are not asserting that the cat is on the mat?

16 just sounds awfully young to vote or to serve in the military. — Hanover

I agree, especially in a world where maturity seems to be decreasing rather than increasing. To take one simple example, what is the average age that people have children now as compared to 40 years ago? 16 year-olds seem to be less mature than they were in the recent past.

Sure: knowing, understanding, thinking, seeing, being just, but they all have (specific) ways we judge them and philosophy is the way we talk about what is essential to us about them. There is no fact that ensures those discussions even will be resolved, but that doesn’t annihilate the ability or process to do so, nor make it a matter of individual “opinion” (or a sociological matter). — Antony Nickles

Yes, and when one despairs of progress are they being reasonable? What is their time frame and criteria for progress? Is it really true that we have not made moral or philosophical progress over the last 4,000 years?

Yes, the last bastion is undefended, without justification or authority, without an arbiter of right. Thus why it is a claim for acceptance, that you accept my observations because you see them for yourself, that you have gathered on your own what evidence is necessary for you to concede. — Antony Nickles

And this is why a theory of error is helpful, at least in nuce. It helps one see their own errors and move beyond them. The notion that a theory of error or a theory of knowledge or a theory of justification must always be other-focused is entirely non sequitur.

Science is not trying to give an account of what the universe would be like were there no observers. It is trying to give an account of what the universe is like for any observer. — Banno

Yep. :up:

They are not seeking to remove perspective, but to give an account that works from as many perspectives as possible. — Banno

Now how do you say philosophy is different?

@J is convinced that science can give an account that works from as many perspectives as possible, but philosophy can't. Usually what someone of @J's persuasion eventually comes to realize is that either both can or both can't. Scientific knowledge and philosophical knowledge go hand in hand, given that the difference between the two is not as great as has been supposed. The idea that scientific knowledge is possible but philosophical knowledge is not is utterly strange, to say the least. It seems more a consequence of philosophers staring into the mirror of their own reflection than anything of interest.

Sort of, but that would be immune to the strongest part of my argument; which involves the children. We could dispute plausbly either way if, for example, there were any healthy adults which could be held to be an Amalekite proper and I am willing to concede, given the seemingly identity relation between being an Amalekate and a part of the cult, that there weren't any. — Bob Ross

Okay, that's fair. I just wanted to try to impress the idea that the Amalekite culture and the Amalekite religion/cult go hand in hand, and if we want to get into the exegesis we could show that it is specifically the abominations associated with the Amalekites that God is concerned with. The question, "Why the Amalekites?," is something we ought to keep in mind. It would be a significant mistake to assume that this is how God/Israel deals with every people-group. But let's move on to children.

At the end of the day, I emphasize the children, although I understand you are setting that aspect of it aside for a second, because it is really implausible in my mind that there were no Amalekate children and it seems like they would be a part of the ban. — Bob Ross

I think it is reasonable to assume that there were Amalekite children and that they were part of the ban.

1. The God of the OT commanded Saul to put the Amalekites under the ban
2. There were innocent children among the Amalekites
3. Therefore, the God of the OT commanded the killing of the innocent
4. The killing of the innocent is unjust
5. Therefore, the God of the OT is unjust — Leontiskos

In the first place I would want to note that in our Western society which strongly values individualism, the individual is the central agent and the child is often seen to be his own person, so to speak. I saw the new Superman movie (which I did not think was very good) and there is a scene where Clark's father is telling him that parents don't shape their children's lives, but instead give the children tools with which to shape their own lives. That a pretty standard individualistic sentiment, and it would in no way have been the view of ancient peoples.

To oversimplify, the ancient world is going to see the child as strongly shaped by their environment—both "nature" and "nurture"—whereas our own culture tends to see the child as a free agent who largely transcends their environment. I think we have veered too far in the "libertarian" direction, and I think that a factual or statistical analysis would show that children are deeply influenced by environment and culture.

A second consideration is the question of support mechanism. Suppose Israel wipes out the adults. Would they have the resources to absorb all of the children into their own numbers? That seems unlikely, and neither is it clear that the children would be overly cooperative at that point or even when they grow older. So there is the simple logistical problem, where there is a people-group who practices abominations (human sacrifice, cannibalism, rape, demon worship, etc.) and you have to address the problem. How do you address it? Given that the adults are not able to be reformed, they must be imprisoned or killed, and imprisonment of such a large number would have been impractical in that day (if not in ours as well!). So what do you do with the children? How do you view the children? Similarly, what is best for the children? Should they be left to live without parents and support? Should they be left to grow up into evil cannibals (in the case where their parents are not killed)? Should they be abandoned to their fate if they cannot be incorporated and supported? I don't see any obvious answers here. Indeed, the command to kill the children is much like a command to pull out the weed by its root, so that it does not regrow.

Now your argument is apparently thinking in terms of commutative justice, where the child is the agent, the agent has done nothing wrong and is therefore innocent, and therefore the child cannot be harmed and certainly not killed.

So at this stage we have three considerations which cannot be altogether ignored:

• Individual agency vs. group agency
• How to address the problem of abominations which have become embedded in a people-group
• The injustice of killing the individual, including children

The injustice argument has a certain preeminence given that it is trading in exceptionless norms. More explicitly, if the Amalekite children have a right to life, then it is unjust to kill them. So we probably want to ask whether they do in fact have a right to life, even though they are Amalekite children.

Certainly if we think of agency in terms of groups instead of in terms of individuals, then it is no longer clear that the Amalekite children have a right to life. More specifically, it is no longer clear that the Amalekite children are innocent, given that they are inextricably bound up with an abominable group.

Note that when thinking in terms of group agency rather than individual agency, children of the Edomites, for example, are innocent in virtue of their people-group and therefore do have a right to life. Or more simply, the commandment against murder applies straightforwardly to them. So the criterion of innocence has not been abandoned, but is rather being interpreted and applied differently.

Anyway, those are three of the basic data points I think we would need to consider when thinking about the Amalekite children.

If so, then how do you explain the fact that God punished Saul for sparing some animals? Doesn't that suggest that God was including everything that lived in the City itself? — Bob Ross

At the very end of that clip I suggested this is addressed quite well (beginning at 1:11:45). If you didn't get a chance to watch those 18 minutes I would recommend it.


P.S. The reason you aren't getting a lot of direct answers to your argument in this thread is simply because it is a very difficult argument to address. For that reason I'm not sure whether I will succeed in giving you a satisfactory answer either, but I think these considerations complicate the initial picture quite a bit.

Talmud helps us apply Torah, but Torah is the holier, more primary text. — BitconnectCarlos

Thanks for confirming.