I may need to look for a dreadlock wig and chicken bone rattle to deal with a client’s connectivity issues tomorrow. Sorry. Prayer and fasting ain’t cuttin’ the mustard.
😉
Hard Questions with Easy Answers
N.B. This is not intended to in any way be some sort of an exhaustive and definitive disquisition on the subject dealt with below. Think of it more as a sort of outline and indicator of where and how to direct your own homework, if you want to do any and find my comments useful.
Often, especially when moral equivalency arguments are regurgitated1 in response to truthful statements about the facts of Islamic dogma, questions are posed about “genocide” in the Old Testament. These questions are, of course, intended to indicate that the scriptures that inform and direct the lives of devout Jews and Christians are morally equivalent to those that direct the lives of devout Muslims. Is this true? No.
First, as to mass violence against others either directly attributed to God or as individuals or groups were commanded by God to commit mass violence, examples of both exist. The first includes the Flood account, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the destruction of Ninevah and the annihilation of Pharaoh’s army by drowning in the Red (?) Sea. The latter is pretty much limited to the waging of herem against the Canaanites. It is this that is almost always referred to by the arguers of “moral equivalence” as evidence that the God of the OT commanded genocide and so Jewish and Christian scripture is thus on the same moral plane as foundational Islamic texts.
I’m not going to press theological arguments, because those making the “moral equivalence” argument have proven in my experience to either have no grasp of such things or to simply sneer at the information. Fine. My first objection, then, is that the on-again/off-again obedience by the Israelites to the command to engage in herem was never genocidal, that those who make such an argument are using “genocide” as a facile slur, fully aware that such an accusation is both false and tendentious. The plain text of the OT, not often actually quoted by such persons (often, I have found, because they simply have never actually read the texts but are merely parroting the slur), disproves the “genocide” accusation.
Yes, herem did mean mass slaughter of those indicated in the command, including those we think of as innocents (particularly, children). Genocide or even the less inclusive “ethnic cleansing”? The texts do not support such an accusation. (Should I cite the relevant texts? Nope. Since the accusers almost never do, I’ll go ahead and leave that as a very easy exercise for any interested parties. Easy-peasy.) Next objection: this kind of mass slaughter was limited in scope by both time and place. It was not commanded to be unending, forever. Today, the genetic inheritors of Canaanite blood (genetic progeny exist because, urm, no genocide, *duh*) are actually welcome in Israel and by the Christian community at large, as long as they do not engage in unlawful conduct harmful to others, in other words, as long as they meet the same minimal standards of civilized behavior demanded by such societies of all participants.
While these avenues allow a great deal of scope for further examination of the false accusation of “genocide” as normative for Jews and Christians, we can go to extrabiblical examples often cited by those who argue “moral equivalence” as a slur. How about the Crusades, hmm? Fine, let’s go there. While political leaders (both church and civil political leaders) made appeals for the Crusades based on tainted theological arguments (some, “just war” arguments and some even more silly ones), all such arguments fail the central test: “Why do you call me ‘lord, lord’ and do not the things I tell you to do?” [Luke 6:46]
Hello! “Christian” means “like Christ” and so those who have committed acts of mass murder, rape, torture, etc., claiming to do so in the name of the founder of Christianity are simply liars, because their actions contradict the words and deeds of the one they claim to follow. That includes such things as found in the Crusades, the Inquisition(s) and more, even up to contemporary times. Jim Jones, Fred Phelps and legions of “celebrity” faux-christian leaders are all excellent examples of people falsely claiming to be disciples of a religious leader while acting in direct contradiction of that leader’s life and work. “Why do you call me ‘lord, lord’ and do not the things I tell you to do?”
Now a question of my own. How is that contradiction of the life and work of Christ the equivalent of some who faithfully emulate the life and commandments of one who was a mass murderer, rapist, thief, slaver, and torturer, and who commanded his followers to continue to commit mass murder, rape, theft, slavery and torture on those who would not accept his teachings? On the one hand, those who claim to be Christian who say they commit their mass murder, rape, theft, slavery and torture in the name of Christ are clearly, plainly liars. On the other hand, those who say they commit their mass murder, rape, theft, slavery and torture in the name of Mohamed and his god are clearly, plainly, honestly, faithfully following the teachings of Mohamed. How do these two classes indicate that Christianity and Islam are morally equivalent? Hmm?
Those who fail to follow Christ but instead contradict him by word and deed are considered by those who make the moral equivalence argument to be “like Christ”? Yes. Those who faithfully and accurately follow Mohamed’s example and commandments are, on the other hand, usually presented by such persons as atypical of Islam. How can such persons live with their fundamentally dishonest argument? *shrugs* Oh, it’s probably easy, since they apparently simply have no interest in truth anyway.
[N.B. Minor edits for sentence clarity and to reintroduce paragraph breaks that disappeared from the draft version of this post upon publication. *shrugs* Need dreadlock wig and chicken bone rattle, I suppose. . . ]
You Like?
Thinking of having the local print shop print something like one of these on heavy card stock and having them laminated. . .
A “fair warning” No Trespassing sign, because Woody Guthrie* doesn’t have any cachet here in America’s Third World County, except among the growing population of illiterates (and even worse, a-literates) one increasingly finds everywhere nowadays.
Ah, Memories. . .
*heh* The video below reminds me of a kid who pulled a small caliber automatic on me some 35 years ago. Between my German Shepherd and me with a large wrench (already in hand; was working on car), he decided his lil .25 cal (what it looked like to me) Saturday night special. . . wasn’t so special. Saw him walking up the street a few hours later all torn up and bloody. Story came around someone took his lil ladygun away from him and fed it to him.
Typical “language” warning that accompanies such events. . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DepefuRqwQ
A lesson in manners to a trash-talking wannabe tough guy.
Got Game?
This coffee mug does. When I saw this, I told S&H, “Dude! Your coffee mug has its own game!”
*heh*
(Just clickety-click to size the graphic for your display, mmmK? :-))
Faux-Literacy
I saw an article today in passing that reminded me once again how the Internet has helped spread faux-literacy. Its title contained, “all the cool offices aren’t in San Francisco” even though the content of first paragraph of the article indicated that the writer’s view was something very different, that NOT ALL of the cool offices are in SF.
For anyone who’s confused as to the difference, thank the Internet, the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind and your incompetent English teachers for the spread of faux-literacy. (A couple of Venn diagrams would clarify the differences, but there one would have to fall back on skills math teachers may or may not have imparted. *sigh*)
Oh, well, here’s one set of diagrams that can illustrate the difference, although there are other ways to do it. This is just the simplest, perhaps (Click on graphics for optimal size):
Of course, the gripe I give a bare outline of above is just the tip of the faux-literate iceberg. I had live almost six decades before I began hearing/reading subliterate morons saying/writing, “I wish I would have” instead of “I wish I had.” Did this sort of misuse of the conditional perfect just start being widely used as illiteracy (even among college graduates) has grown over the last few decades until it reached some sort of critical mass and spill over into public fora, or has it been there all along and just hidden from me because I had an exposure to people who were primarily a more literate bunch of folks?
*shrugs* Who knows. I certainly see much, much more of these things since the Internet has democratized publishing of all sorts of writing.
faux-literacy Well, what do you think it means, anyway? Lots of folks think they’re literate because other people have told them they are, accept them as literate and even pay them to write their subliterate crap. They think they are literate and others around them do, but what they write (or say) proves that they are not. The more they fake literacy and spread their subliterate, moronic screeds, the dumber public discourse becomes.
And they’re everywhere. Most prominent Mass MEdia Podpeople: condemned as faux-literates by the words they utter. Politicians, Academia Nut Fruitcakes, “Edumacators” and more: all spreading subliteracy via their public pretense of literacy.
The lowest common denominator is the measure of the best in our society.
Come On, Folks, Show a Little Respect!
I was lurking a discussion about some of the recent shenanigans of congresscritters and other hellspawn-in-training when one of the participants typed, “F*** ’em with a rusty pipe!”
Now, that’s just wrong folks. Show a little respect. “F*** ’em with a rusty hammer” scans so much better. Show some respect for the English language, mmmK?
Well, I Can’t Blame Anyone Else. . .
. . .because I did it to myself. I bought the thing knowing what I’d find.
David Weber has a series of goat-gaggers–the Safehold series–from TOR that I find interesting but have had the same issues with from the very first book, Off Armageddon Reef (2008). Other issues have presented in the six books that have followed, but, as I said, I knew what I was getting when I bought it.
Weber still pretty consistently misuses some words. An example: he pretty consistently uses “less” when “fewer” is correct. But every time he misuses a word it does throw me out of the story.
Weber also really overuses banter in dialog. Meetings about serious matters are consistently trivialized by light-hearted banter. Some is healthy, but Weber has a tendency in everything he writes to overdo it. His Honorverse books feature too much if it for me, but not nearly as much as the Safehold books. The Safehold series doesn’t seem to have any editor handy to tell Weber, “Stop already! That’s too much!” *heh*
And then there’s the extremely irritating treatment of proper names. *gagamaggot* Zhaspahr Clyntahn? Rhobair Duchairn? It goes on and on and on. Sure, Weber “named” his Safehold characters into a corner in the first book, and there was no easy way out, especially after book 2. . . or three, four, five and six. *sigh* And this book includes a cast of characters sixty-six pages long with such names.
But still, I’ve bought every one of ’em. These last two have been ebooks, but the others, hardcopy, all but one hardback. Why?
Well, I bought and read the first one because Weber. Yes, his Honorverse books have some of the same issues (though apparently the editors at Baen are better than the ones at TOR *heh*), but they’ve still been worth my time for more than a few reasons. So, I knew it’d be readable and would at least tell an interesting story. But. . . issues. (“Lords secular and temporal”–*feh* Weber! You use that ALL the time and ALWAYS wrongly! Well, at least he didn’t include that abortion of sense in this book as he has in every other book i the series, IIRC, as well as in several of the Honorverse books.)
The rest? Well, interesting story, despite the aforementioned issues and a few others. Fun stuff on “rediscovering” technologies. Interesting low-tech milfic as well.
So. . . I buy ’em, even though I know the negatives will irk me.