Liberating the Oppressed

[Dexter Sinister]

What is the source and support of the matter and energy?

As Tecumsehsbones said, to the best of our knowledge the ultimate source was the Big Bang, though the only matter it created was hydrogen, helium, and a wee bit of lithium. The heavier stuff was cooked up inside stars, which then exploded and scattered it around, to be incorporated into another generation of stars and planets, so we're all made of stardust. As for energy, there are plausible reasons to think the net energy content of the cosmos is zero, but there are localized concentrations of it that we can get useful work out of, in the sense that physics uses that phrase. It escapes me what you can possibly mean by support in that sentence, nothing supports them in any sense I can think of, they just are, but I've been involved in too many conversations like this not to see where you might be heading: a point at which we'll have to say, "We don't know, we don't understand," and that point you can invoke a deity as the explanation.

 

[HarperCons]

​

JAMES 5 1-5​

Warning to Rich Oppressors​

5 Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. 2 Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. 4 Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. 5 You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.[a] 6 You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.

 

[HarperCons]

Jesus was a communist

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Communism is a theory of social and economic organization based on all property being held in common, or as it's been implemented in the real world, a system in which all social and economic activity is controlled by a totalitarian state which owns everything. Slamming and shaming the wealthy doesn't equal communism. Jesus was a revolutionary, certainly, and his concern for the poor and dispossessed and oppressed and so forth would make him a leftist in contemporary terms, but a communist? No.

 

[HarperCons]

Yes, he was a communist.

 

[petros]

Yes, he was a communist.

A tax paying communist?

"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's"

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

I've been involved in too many conversations like this not to see where you might be heading: a point at which we'll have to say, "We don't know, we don't understand," and that point you can invoke a deity as the explanation.

Yep, it always goes that way. Motar is convinced and, as you say, using his source to prove his source.

But hey, it's Covid and cold. We got plenty of time to waste.

So, Dex, was Voldemort inherently evil, or just forced into it by his life and circumstances? How about Napoleon?

 

[Motar]

As Tecumsehsbones said, to the best of our knowledge the ultimate source was the Big Bang, though the only matter it created was hydrogen, helium, and a wee bit of lithium. The heavier stuff was cooked up inside stars, which then exploded and scattered it around, to be incorporated into another generation of stars and planets, so we're all made of stardust. As for energy, there are plausible reasons to think the net energy content of the cosmos is zero, but there are localized concentrations of it that we can get useful work out of, in the sense that physics uses that phrase. It escapes me what you can possibly mean by support in that sentence, nothing supports them in any sense I can think of, they just are, but I've been involved in too many conversations like this not to see where you might be heading: a point at which we'll have to say, "We don't know, we don't understand," and that point you can invoke a deity as the explanation.

I wonder who was present to witness the Big Bang.

 

[taxslave]

I wonder who was present to witness the Big Bang.

The beings that caused it. The long ago and far away folks you call gawd. Humans are an experiment that went horribly wrong.

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

I wonder who was present to witness the Big Bang.

I wonder who was present to witness the Sermon on the Mount.

 

[Motar]

“Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment” (Exodus 6:6, NIV).

Freedom from oppression is a prominent theme in Scripture.

 

[Motar]

“He is the God who avenges me, who puts the nations under me, who sets me free from my enemies. You exalted me above my foes; from a violent man you rescued me“ (2 Samuel 22:48-49, NIV).

David’s song of praise after he was delivered from the pursuit of Saul and company recognizes God’s liberation.

 

[Motar]

“Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, ‘Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” And God granted his request” (1 Chronicles 4:10, NIV)

“Jabez (9-10) is commended because his name, which sounds like the Hebrew word for pain, would have been thought unlucky; but prayerful faith in God does away with such superstition” (Wenham, G. J., Motyer, J. A., Carson, D. A., & France R. T. (1994). New Bible commentary. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic).

 

[DaSleeper]

Did you start preaching career as a Jehovah witness and got thrown out of so many houses that you decided you would get less bruising if you took it to the internet?

 

[Motar]

“Keep me free from the trap that is set for me, for you are my refuge. Into your hands I commit my spirit; deliver me, Lord, my faithful God“ (Psalm 31:4-5).

David attributes to “his faithful God“ his capacity to avoid a snare.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

I wonder who was present to witness the Big Bang.

No you don't, you know perfectly well we have no testimony from witnesses on that. You also know perfectly well, or you certainly ought to, there are other ways to figure out what happened than from the testimony of witnesses, there are other kinds of evidence. Don't go down that path, it's a weak and silly argument.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

So, Dex, was Voldemort inherently evil, or just forced into it by his life and circumstances? How about Napoleon?

Well wothehell, let's throw Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot into the mix as well.

No doubt a thorough postmodern psychological analysis would show that Voldemort is a product of complex historical and social forces beyond his control and not really master of his own fate, leading to the conclusion that there's no such thing as a bad wizard, only a sick one. Similar conclusions would be found for the others as well, and in fact was for Hitler at least, that's what led to the initial appeasement of him by the likes of the spineless Neville Chamberlain and a generally craven British establishment. Ultimately however, it doesn't really matter why they're the way they are, what matters is that they *are* the way they are and are responsible for what they do, as Churchill clearly saw in the case of Hitler: the Nazi dictator was irredeemably wicked and therefore had to be taken down, no compromise with iniquity.

Not the answer you expected, I'll wager.

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

Well wothehell, let's throw Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot into the mix as well.

No doubt a thorough postmodern psychological analysis would show that Voldemort is a product of complex historical and social forces beyond his control and not really master of his own fate, leading to the conclusion that there's no such thing as a bad wizard, only a sick one. Similar conclusions would be found for the others as well, and in fact was for Hitler at least, that's what led to the initial appeasement of him by the likes of the spineless Neville Chamberlain and a generally craven British establishment. Ultimately however, it doesn't really matter why they're the way they are, what matters is that they *are* the way they are and are responsible for what they do, as Churchill clearly saw in the case of Hitler: the Nazi dictator was irredeemably wicked and therefore had to be taken down, no compromise with iniquity.

Not the answer you expected, I'll wager.

From you? Pretty much exactly what I expected, in analytical depth and moral pragmatism if not in precise details.

If Napoleon had won, he'd be regarded as one of the 2-3 most important people in the history of the world.

Hitler had to be taken down, but so did Stalin, and he wasn't. He probably was responsible for more deaths than any other single person in history. I dated a Russian emigre woman for a few years. She said that in the Soviet Union, it wasn't that everybody knew somebody who knew somebody killed by Stalin, it was that everybody knew somebody killed by Stalin. That's pretty staggering.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Hitler had to be taken down, but so did Stalin, and he wasn't.

Agreed, but we can't always get what we want. I think it was Patton who argued that as long as they had this big, successful, experienced, well-equipped army on the continent they should keep going east and do exactly that. That would have been a bloody and expensive process though, and everybody but Patton had probably had enough of it for a while. Surely Napoleon's and Hitler's experience in trying to invade Russia would have given every thinking person pause as well. I'm sure Churchill would have at least thought about it, he did often make a point of wanting to meet the advancing Red Army as far east as possible, and would probably have preferred to meet it at Russia's western border. If Stalin had turned on the western allies and tried to keep going west things would have been vastly and unpredictably different, but he didn't, so he was left alone to slaughter his own countrymen and anybody else he didn't like in the satellite states the Red Army overran on the way west. A mistake, perhaps, but holding the moral high ground can be ruinously expensive, pragmatic considerations sometimes override it.

 

[taxslave]

“Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment” (Exodus 6:6, NIV).

Freedom from oppression is a prominent theme in Scripture.

The catholic church seems to have missed that sermon.