[Peace-discuss] Bellicose rhetoric???

Mon Nov 10 17:56:45 CST 2008

On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 5:38 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:

Gen 1:26f.

Gen 1:26:  And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:
and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of
the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every
creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

> Mt 22:29ff.

Mat 22:29:   Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the
Scriptures, nor the power of God.

All right.  Your point?  By citing Matthew, I KNOW you're not disrespecting
me by impugning my knowledge of Scripture.  The Genesis scripture is, of
course, before the Fall.  Whether you take the Fall as literal or as
metaphor, Adam and Eve exercised their FREEDOM to disobey God, and there
were the promised consequences.  Many things changed after the Fall, not
least of which was man's position in the universe.  But even before the
Fall, while man had dominion over the rest of the earth, God had dominion
over man.  So your point is....?

> John W. wrote:

>  A very interesting perspective.  I think I agree with most of it, but
>> words
>> have a way of being extremely elusive.  The final clause, "...you are to
>> have
>> no image of God because the only image of God is man" can be interpreted
>> in
>> more than one way, and most of the ways in which it's been interpreted by
>> man
>> throughout the centuries have led to unmitigated disaster.  It's just as
>> bad
>> having man narcissistically worshiping himself as it is to have him
>> worshiping the divinities supposedly indwelling mountains and trees.
>>
>> By the same token, Freedom is not the deity, but merely one characteristic
>> of
>> the deity.  It's interesting to me how even people who devote their lives
>> to
>> a study of the Bible tend to emphasize one aspect of God and ignore
>> others.
>> The God I know is male and female, Yin and Yang.  He is longsuffering and
>> merciful, but He is also a God of justice, a consuming fire.  He gives us
>> freedom but requires our obedience.  In other words, the freedom He gives
>> us
>> is the choice of whether or not to obey Him, with attendance consequences
>> either way.
>>
>> And on and on.  I definitely agree, though, that God is not a place or a
>> figurine.  As quickly as we get comfortable, He drives those of us who serve
>> Him out into the wilderness....
>>
>> Now I suppose that EVERYONE on this list will think I'm full of it.  :-)
>>
>> Joe Sixpack
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 4:35 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu<mailto:
>> galliher at uiuc.edu>> wrote:
>>
>> That's true if we gloss "invented" in its original sense, = find, discover
>> (Latin in- 'upon' + venire 'come').
>>
>>
>> Ah, "income".  So this is the origin of the Prosperity Gospel?  Hahahaha!
>>
>>
>>
>> A passage from my ghostly father (i.e., theological mentor):
>>
>> "Yahweh is the God of freedom and there are to be no other gods. 'The
>> prohibition of "other gods" is the basic demand made of Israel'. The
>> important thing is not just to be religious, to worship something somehow.
>> The important thing is to find, or be found by, the right God and to
>> reject
>> and struggle against the others. The worship of any other god is a form of
>> slavery; to pay homage to the forces of nature, to the spirit of a
>> particular
>> place, to a nation or race or to anything that is too powerful for you to
>> understand or control is to submit to slavery and degradation. The Old
>> Testament religion begins by saying to such gods 'I do not believe and I
>> will
>>  not serve.' The only true God is the God of freedom. The other gods make
>> you
>> feel at home in a place, they have to do with the quiet cycle of the
>> seasons,
>> with the familiar mountains and the county you grew up in and love; with
>> them
>> you know where you are. But the harsh God of freedom calls you out of all
>> this into a desert where all the old familiar landmarks are gone, where
>> you
>> cannot rely on the safe workings of nature, on spring-time and harvest,
>> where
>> you must wander over the wilderness waiting for what God will bring. This
>> God
>>  of freedom will allow you none of the comforts of religion. Not only does
>> he
>> tear you away from the old traditional shrines and temples of your native
>> place, but he will not even allow you to worship him in the old way. You
>> are
>> forbidden to make an image of him by which you might wield numinous power,
>> you are forbidden to invoke his name in magical rites. You must deny the
>> other gods and you must not treat Yahweh as a god, as a power you could
>> use
>> against your enemies or to help you to succeed in life. Yahweh is not a
>> god,
>> there are no gods, they are all delusions and slavery. You are not to try
>> to comprehend God within the conventions and symbols of your time and place;
>> you
>> are to have no image of God because the only image of God is man."
>> --Herbert McCabe OP, "Law Love, and Language" (1968), pp. 118f.
>>
>>
>>
>> Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
>>
>> I guess what Carl is saying is that humankind displayed morality long
>> before they invented God. My tho'ts precisely. --Jenifer
>>
>> --- On *Mon, 11/10/08, C. G. Estabrook /<galliher at uiuc.edu <mailto:
>> galliher at uiuc.edu>>/* wrote:
>>
>> From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu <mailto:galliher at uiuc.edu>>
>> Subject:
>> Re: [Peace-discuss] Bellicose rhetoric??? To: "John W." <
>> jbw292002 at gmail.com <mailto:jbw292002 at gmail.com>> Cc:
>> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net <mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>> Date: Monday, November 10, 2008,
>> 10:35 AM
>>
>> God is not a necessary component of morality for the simple reason that
>> God -- the answer (which we do not know) to the question, "Why is there
>> anything
>> instead of nothing?" -- is not a component of anything.
>>
>> God is not a thing in the universe -- we can't point to something in the
>> universe as the reason for the existence of the universe -- and God and
>> the
>> universe don't add up to two. (Two of what would that be?  Two things?
>>  But
>> God is not thing in the universe, etc.)
>>
>> Morality is a component of human nature (for the existence of which God of
>> course is the reason, as for everything), as grammar is a component of
>> language. Just as an intelligent visitor from Mars would think that all
>> humans were speaking one language with regional variations, so human ethics
>> might be regarded as the rules (or grammar) for humans' being together --
>> with some interesting regional variations... (That's what makes horse
>> racing,
>>  or at least philosophical argument -- and literature.)
>>
>> Well over a thousand years of Christian philosophical reflection took it
>> as a
>>  commonplace that the Decalogue is not a set of rules imposed from
>> outside, as it were, that might have been different, but rather rational
>> conclusions from reflection on what it is to be human.  (They did think it
>> was a little hard to derive the 3rd/4th Commandment -- there are different
>> numbering systems -- this way.)
>>
>> Christian theologians thought that, although ethics could be descried
>> rationally, that took effort (and time) -- hence all that literature --
>> and so God generously provided in the Ten Commandments as it were an
>> operating manual ("documentation," we would say) for being human.
>>
>> More on this from me (quoting others), if you want, at "The Subversive
>> Commandments," <http://www.counterpunch.org/estabrook03292005.html>.
>> --CGE
>>
>>
>> John W. wrote:
>>
>> ... I'd be more interested in hearing one or both of you Bible
>>
>> scholars explain to Jenifer why God is a necessary component of morality.
>>  Or
>>  conversely, how one can be moral without a belief in God.
>>
>>
>> John Wason
>>
>>
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