Why? How? — tim wood

Because he is pro-Israel, pro-bitcoin, and pro-Tesla. Because he deports those who come here on visas and spit in the face of the country that welcomes in them. I like him because he's serious about cutting waste and challenges unaccountable corrupt organizations. I like that he's serious about border security, unlike the Democrats. I like he doesn't try to "both sides" the current Israel-Palestine war. He can actually recognize evil, which is rare in the US, and in the world, today.

He correctly recognizes that the main maladies facing the nation are lawlessness, social and moral confusion, and Islam.

Henry Ford was an entrepreneur - not something I would necessarily associate with manliness. — Tzeentch

I'm no fan of Ford. Nor am I overly familiar with his career. Yet he surely took financial risk and effectively led men below him. He also compensated his workers well, but that to me seems a mix of altruism and self-interest, perhaps more of the latter as he desired his employees to be able to buy his vehicles.

If effectively & successfully leading men below you isn't "masculine" then I'm not totally sure what we're counting as masculine.

-

I associate dark femininity more with Lady MacBeth - relentless manipulation of MacBeth & challenging his manhood, unbridled ambition, and complete lack of morality.

Honest cooperation tends to only occur among the latter, though. — javra

Among women? Never heard that one. I was under the impression that honest cooperation is entirely feasible among both sexes.

We can change all the bathrooms to gender neutral. We can make locker rooms gender neutral too. We can get rid of all gendered spaces (biologically-based). We can let people change their documents so that names and sex have zero relation to reality. After all, reality is clearly decided by the individual, not nature or anything external to that individual. :roll:

I love my trans brothers and sisters, but certain challenges arise.

I would have no problem telling TG girls (who have had the prior physical benefit of testosterone) they weren't allowed to participate in girls sports, because this is unfair to biological girls. — Relativist

How do you feel about them in women's locker rooms? Or restrooms? Maybe it would matter how long they've been transitioning and what their results are? There's no easy answers. It's not Trump's fault. It's the difficulties inherent in trans life. Some people will transition for years and still not be passable.

I'm reading:

Antiquities of the Jews - Josephus
Book of Jubilees - Jewish Annotated Apocrypha

Antiquities of the Jews is a must read for anyone interested in this subject. You simply won't find this depth and this coverage of history elsewhere; relating to the Jews, that is. I'm coming to the end of it, but afterwards I will absolutely be going on to The Jewish War. This book contains one of the earliest Jesus references as well.

Yeah, perhaps mate. But I would ask the Rota Inquisition court to act in a less malicious manner than Jews do in Palestine. — javi2541997

In Palestine? What is Palestine to you? So you support the war but want it less vicious?

Bedtime, Carlitos. It is important to sleep early so you will not miss the catechesis exam tomorrow. :wink: — javi2541997

Javi, I would never be able to fall asleep knowing that there are toxic elements among us. Perhaps we need an Inquisition into the matter? :chin:

My point was not backing Gregory but protesting that there are folks who are also toxic like a rotten swamp. — javi2541997

Oh no, and who are those toxic individuals so we can do something about them?

Trump's actions haven't solved those problems, it ignores them. For example, where SHOULD a transgender person go to the bathroom? — Relativist

This problem is intractable. You'd honestly want Trump to legislate on this? It's too thorny. Let the passable transwomen go into the women's restroom and the ones that don't pass into the men's, but of course it's never so easy because passing is subjective and subject to change.

Re: the military- drill them with their biological sex. Trump has denied them the right to serve at all. — Relativist

A judged blocked it. In any case, I would not want e.g. Blaire White or Nikita Dragon training with the men. Estrogen also causes one to lose muscle. Even if it didn't the thought of men showering and changing with transgender women is insane.

Not sure what you are referring to. My view is that they shouldn't be discriminated against. This doesn't mean a trans-woman should be treated identically to a biological woman. — Relativist

You aren't familiar with the view that one's gender identity should be respected? "Trans women are women" is a common slogan. If you're carving out another category for them you're not as progressive as you might think.

The prohibition against eating from the tree of knowledge is indeed puzzling. I think though, that we can zoom out, and say that the eden story presents us with a conception of reality where reality itself is wonderful and for mankind to enjoy and to flourish, yet there are certain rules that one must follow for it to endure.

Song of Solomon uses much edenic imagery; so perhaps through love we re-enter Eden in a way.

But does God command them because they yield good results or do they only yield good results because God comannded them? Or, perhaps, are they a set of criteria for assessing what a good life is? — Ludwig V

I think the commandments are good in-themselves for Israel to follow and they generally bring about good results. Mosaic law is particular to Israel. Yet God also gives 7 laws to Noah intended for all of humanity way before Moses.

Yet before any of this Cain commits murder. Both Cain and God know that it is wrong. This would seem to imply a universal pre-existent moral order. Here we hear of the land being "defiled" through Cain's deed and how Abel's blood "cries out" to God from the ground. There's a lot to unpack here. And rules go back all the way to Eden.

The Mosaic commandments essentially give Israel their identity.

The only legitimate issue I see is sports participation — Relativist

Did you forget about locker rooms? Among others.

Then you have bathrooms. And prisons. And if we're talking military service, which group do transgender recruits go with? The men or the women? Or do they get their own personal drill instructors? I know some wonderful transgender people, but the idea that all gender identities simply must be respected on the legal level will usher in chaos.

Less that 4% of violent crimes are committed by undocumented immigrants. This is another case of Trump leveraging bias for political gain.

Still too much. That figure should be at 0.

Americans are losing their ability to come together. — ssu

The reason for this is that the overton window has been blown open, especially on cultural issues. So sometimes you can't "come together" and you just need to fight off nasty ideas. I know as a democracy we pride ourselves on tolerance but that tolerance must have a limit. We cannot tolerate the rot that is occuring in our institutions of higher learning. We cannot tolerate the endless streams of illegal immigrants and gang members and sex traffickers making their way into the US. And we certainly cannot tolerate the idea that anyone can just be any gender/sex they feel without it leading to mass chaos. This is what brought Trump to power.

2 of the 3 attacked charging stations. That could lead to people being stranded when their charge dies. It hurts everyone and wastes electricity and time. I'm glad the DOJ is putting its foot down. Teslas are also amazing vehicles, imho peak american ingenuity.

As a Tesla driver, I'm satisfied that Trump is taking appropriate action against these psychos. Their crimes are so senseless. And when someone targets Teslas or Tesla infrastructure it's obviously political. Throw the book at them.

I am a little worried about the trans folk as they are bound for men's prison. Now that's something that's concerning. Not that they belong in a women's prison, but still.

I also love my Tesla and the thought of it getting vandalized because of Elon is enraging.

Too many criminals getting away with their crimes in this world for me to consider it the nature of reality. But perhaps you've addressed "reality" as something which goes beyond the physical and the lives lived in it ... — javra

Just the physical.

Bad behavior ruins relationships. Impulsive amoral men make bad friends and cannot be trusted around partners. You can behave like a selfish asshole but it's probably gonna have a cost so you better get really, really good at hiding it. If you're gonna skew the scales you better be able to trick everyone.

It can work for a time, but probably not forever. People talk.

But then isn't this a scarecrow to the commonplace decency that all adults need to give something of their own well-being for the benefit of the community they pertain to? — javra

I'm not sure what you mean by scarecrow, but yes, I agree that community is important and that there's some collective responsibility towards it. A strong community serves you and your family.

It here sounds like you're referring to something like karma, rather than a deity's judgments. — javra

Or maybe we could just call it the nature of reality.

That's what taxes are all about, right? One's giving of one's own profits for the common good, this at least within genuine democracies. Here, I tend to agree with Mr. Franklin when he said: — javra

I wasn't thinking of taxes. I had in mind the idea that the "moral" thing to do is to maximize the pleasure/utility of the masses and to give no special regard for e.g. one's own family. It is to demand the impossible - complete impartiality towards the entire world. To regard even one's own son or daughter as simply another moral unit no different from a stranger.

Atleast taxes can benefit the taxpayer.

I've noticed that the OT frequently mentions the rewards that one who keeps God's commandments can expect (and the punishments that are frequently dished out). It's old-fashined stick and carrot persuasion. — Ludwig V

Following the commandments generally does yield good results. Those who stray generally pay a price and bad deeds can carry a nasty ripple effect. It seems to me that modern moral philosophy (at least as I was taught it) has largely lost this connection. Instead, modern morality is often associated with sacrifice or inconvenience for the agent, like sacrificing one's own happiness for the multitude. Or following stringent rules because they are rational.

I'm interested in this business about total obedience and total trust. Both Abraham and Job raise it. — Ludwig V

So it's worth noting that while in the Isaac binding story Abraham exhibits this stringent faith, in the Sodom & Gomorrah story he does bargain with God. He bargains God down to 10 righteous men which are not able to be found in Sodom & Gomorrah so the cities burn.

Job is excellent in his book. He does question God. He laments the day of his birth. Yet he never curses or renounces God. He tows the line. So Job does question God yet his righteousness maintains. His reward at the end, I think, seems like it's almost tacked on and it's covered very briefly. I never read Job as expecting a reward. Personally, the notion of being adequately compensated/"rewarded" after one's family dies seems absurd to me so I always took it as perhaps some reward in the next life.

Job is timeless. Righteous men suffer for seemingly no reason all the time. Job provides a model, and that model -- that example -- makes room for questioning and lamenting.

In fact, we don't – cannot – know that anything "comes after this life". — 180 Proof

Could be something, could be nothing.

thus, Hillel the Elder's response to the request to say the whole meaning of the Torah while standing on one foot:
What is hateful (harmful) to you, do not do to anyone.
Notice the Rabbi did not say "have faith"... — 180 Proof

An excellent answer to an obnoxious gentile; they only need to behave themselves and avoid idolatry. I'm sure after making this remark everyone cheered and then Hillel returned to Torah study or forming halakha.

Now explain Hegel to me standing on one foot.

:up:

It's what you do, not what you feel or think, that counts, isn't it? — Banno

How we understand the doing -- the action -- is tied to the thoughts and feelings of the doer.

Men can be seen as little Gods in a sense.

Sure. I certainly acknowledge that from a human perspective what happened to Job is terrifying and troublesome. Yet our perspective is not the full picture and it lacks finality. We do not know what comes after this life.

Too many threads indeed. My point is, one can always blame the God character and think how things should have gone, but in doing so one simply takes on the role of God. It's very natural to do this.

It is written that Joseph lives to 120 but apparently his ancestors lived much longer. It's crossed my mind to point the finger at God for that one. Feels like Joseph got kinda ripped off.

That does make some sense. Still, I balk at a story of a supposedly loving God destroying the life of one of their followers for a bet? But I think it's unlikely that we could possibly agree on an intepretation of this, or any other story, in the Bible. I'm reading a collection of ancient texts written over a period of 1,000 years in various circumstances and for various purposes. You are reading the Word of God. But I have to say, some of the stories in the Old Testament remind me of some of the Greek stories, in which the gods do not behave in a particularly moral way and from which the lesson seems to be that the gods frequently mess about with us, either because they don't care or because they are actively hostile. — Ludwig V

I assure you that I'm reading it as a collection of ancient texts written over a ~1000 year period. Maybe once in a while I see an interesting bit that captures my attention and gets me thinking about how the authors could have written such a thing, but overall it is absolutely a collection of texts written over that time. And if we follow that historical view, we see that "God is love" is at an the tail end of that timeline. Initially, God is quite a bit terrifying because, let's face it, reality is often be terrifying -- and man has the potential to make it even more terrifying than it needs to be through his actions.

You were blaming God.

What God does to Job is ethically wrong. — Banno

If you want to blame Abraham or Isaac they are humans so they can bear blame.

This is simply to renege on your responsibility to decide if an act is right or wrong, to hand that most central of judgements over to someone else. To look the other way. — Banno

This isn't between man and man -- that we can judge. It's between man and God.

Let's say that there is some force out there. If a man dies young, has that force wronged him? How many years is a man owed on this Earth? Is man owed a painless existence? You tell me.

Were something along these lines to have in fact occurred, the event would then make far more sense to me.

Again, I get it, it’s a very heretical interpretation of events. — javra

I don't think it's heretical. It's natural to retroject our own 21st century moral views to biblical characters.

In Abraham's day though, and continuing many centuries later, human sacrifice was a fairly common and acceptable practice in the ancient near east. It was thought to appease the Gods and bring good harvest and divine favor. So maybe this God asked for it as well. Yet he stops Abraham at the last moment. Much of the Bible looks barbaric from the eyes of a modern human, yet the world was a very different place back then. Maybe our descendents thousands of years later will judge us much the same. Abraham is only human, a man of his time - not some perfect Jesus-figure.

I can find no way out of believing that the story of Job is outrageous. God inflicts all that suffering on him because of a bet with Satan, to show off how faithful his believers are. Truly, not acceptable. — Ludwig V

Job is unique in that we can't situate it within any time or place unlike virtually all the other books. I've long considered it thought experiment/theodicy in agreement with some early rabbinic commentators.

Job is needed in canon because it bucks the general biblical trend of associating bad deeds with suffering/misfortune. It's true as a general trend but it's not all inclusive. Without Job the canon would be lacking. The righteous/blameless do suffer and sometimes terribly and without any known reason or justification.

Job also lays out the acceptable limits of suffering - Job questions God, cries out to him, laments the day of his birth, but he never curses God or tells God that he is wrong.

Book of Job also puts humanity in its place epistemically. As humans our perspectives are limited and biased and to draw such broad and universal judgments such as which suffering is ultimately "justified" and which is "unjustified" is beyond us. The book stands against man's hubrism and his tendency of all encompassing judgment. In the end Job is rewarded.

Are you saying Isaac deserved the death penalty for a crime/sin? — Gregory

No. I was only taking issue with Banno's idea that we can clearly know which suffering is justified and which is not.

The gathering of the animals onto the ark also happens in Gilgamesh iirc.



Is your issue with God or Abraham?

The Binding of Isaac and the Trials of Job speak of acts of cruelty, where unjustified suffering is inflicted in the name of faith.

How do you know that it's unjustified? Like I said earlier, you're more certain than I am. The only suffering here is Abraham's inferred psychological suffering which you seem to be extremely concerned with.

It's not the Isaac story either. I don't see how I'm anymore offtopic than you are in mentioning the Isaac story.

Noah also trusts in God.

I find it funny that you take serious issue with the Isaac story -- a story where no one dies, yet seem to ignore entirely the deluge where countless die painful deaths just a few pages earlier. Surely that should be the bigger matter.

I agree that the flood story is derived from the Gilgamesh story. There are too many parallels to ignore.



You insist that all align to your judgment. I'm the more skeptical one. I acknowledge that much is beyond me. How do you figure God should have handled the flood story? We can begin writing Banno's Bible.

So... you think you do not have very strong intuitions about how things should be?

Then why did you respond to my post? — Banno

I have intuitions. I make judgments, for sure.

Consider that only a few pages before this mess with Abraham and Isaac God floods the world and kills countless people. We can start there. What do you think would have been better? I think about this sometimes. Maybe he should have sent angels down and forced those evil men to attend moral philosophy courses. We can go down this rabbit hole. We can rewrite the Bible as we would have done things.

There are those amongst us who see faith, understood as submission, as a virtue. I am questioning that. I suspect you might agree, broadly speaking. — Banno

"Man is by nature unable to want God to be God. Indeed, he himself wants to be God, and does not want God to be God." - Luther

I get it. You, like many others, have very strong intuitions about how things should be. And when this intuition (moral system?) conflicts with the Bible it must be very frustrating for you.

You seem mad for some reason. As if my opinion on tariffs has any impact whatsoever. Even if I were against the tariffs, I would still be pro-Trump.

I get that certain metals like steel or aluminum can be produced cheaper elsewhere, but cost isn't the only factor. We simply can't be outsourcing all of our metals production overseas because it's just too big of a national security risk. There must be some amount of domestic production.

There's also the fact of countries like China manipulating their currency to make their exporters more competitive. And Canada does tariff some of our products very highly.

I agree with you that, by and large, free markets are good. International trade is good because it allows consumers access to lower prices. I use to be more dogmatic on this point, but now I do tariffs as being necessary in some cases. Lower costs to the consumers are nice, comparative advantage is nice... but it's not the only factor.

It's devotional use is an entirely different matter. — Hanover

Devotion is a personal matter, but if one hasn't actually read the whole book then I don't know one does it. Christianity is good with this, but with Judaism the focus is often more on the Talmud.

It's devotional use is an entirely different matter. — Hanover

I suppose, but I don't know whether it needs to be. I always like to know how old the prayers or psalms I'm reading are and it'll bug me if I don't know. The historical context gives it more meaning to me.

I highly recommend Nahum Sarna's work on Genesis if you're interested in exploring a little further. It left me convinced that many of these Genesis stories are Mesopotamian in origin brought down to Israel and repurposed.