foolish question

[allsmiles]

i dont know how else to extrapolate or interpret the verse that goes something along the lines of:
"see here now you lot, i am god. there is none other besides me. and the only way to god is through me."

it's the particular perspective of a desert people on a god and is not applicable to us now.

how about that as an interpretation?

 

[genuineoriginal]

So abortion, in your opinion, is not slaughtering the innocent.

Abortion is murder. Period.

 

[allsmiles]

Abortion is murder. Period.

is it reasonable to assume that your scant, and contradictory response on this thread is an indication that you have nothing to say about Sun Tzu? i was up until 2:30 AM for you, and you've already shuffled away from the mythical christ argument with your proverbial tail between your legs.

but you are busy.

:sigh:

perhaps i should learn the virtue of patience?

 

[koban]

Abortion is murder. Period.

Is killing the guilty (non-innocents) really murder?

 

[Balder]

The argument that it might be "more merciful" to kill off the children of the nations the Hebrews conquered, given the problems they would likely have to face growing up in those conditions, is curiously similar to some pro-abortion arguments... :think:

 

[genuineoriginal]

while laughter might be the best medicine, this is hardly a demonstration of an understanding of my position, nor is it a refutation.

What is there to understand? You wrote the most absurd thing I have ever read on TOL

you have yet to demonstrate that you have a comprehensive, working understanding of the idea that survival is paramount among priorities and when survival is not in question no circumstances can allieve a killer from the guilt of taking innocent, defenseless lives.

Survival is not paramount among priorities. Yours is the belief of the unenlightened in just about every religion, whether a false one or the true one. You are basing your entire argument on this thought. That is why it is so funny. You have just shown that your arguments are not worth listening to. :rotfl:

i took some time last night to read the Art of War by Sun Tzu (not the entire thing, i skipped the chapter on manuevers), Military Methods by Sun Pin and Mastering the Art of War which is an expansive commentary on the work of Sun Tzu.

for the past 2300 years or so the work of Sun Tzu has been hailed as the definitive work on military strategy. one of the main themes of Sun Tzu's work is to defeat the enemy without fighting, or with the least amount of bloodshed possible. the goal is victory over the enemy, not annhilation of the enemy. to quote his own words, "To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill."

Chapter 2 "Waging War", point 19 states, "Treat the captives well, and care for them."

instructions in this chapter for treatment of enemy cities never extends beyond capturing their wealth and stores.

the very first point of chapter 3 "Offensive Strategy" is this: "Generally in war the best policy is to take a state intact; to ruin it is inferior to this."

the example of Joshua's divinely commanded genocide in Jericho can be argued to be the exception granted by Sun Tzu in his use of the word "generally" until you discover the 7th point of the third chapter, that is that attacking cities is the last resort of not only strategic alternatives, but also ethical and moral ones. also, the tenth point which is to take a city without assaulting it. also point 15 of chapter 4, "Dispositions". this point teaches the student of war to, "cultivate the Tao", the Tao being the Right Way, the way of humanity and justice which would serve to validate the taking of states intact and not ruining them, also taking cities without assaulting them. and once again, using Sun Tzu as a means to refute the primitive and barbaric tactics of Joshua and his divine mandate, in chapter 11 Sun Tzu tells us that a good general prohibits superstitions.

So, what is your point in this? Sun Tzu is smarter than God? :rotfl: What a joke.

i asked earlier in this thread if it were beyond the capabilities of your god to have found a non-violent and beneficial resolution to encounters such as the example of the Jericho genocide, the destruction of Og, Sihon and Arad.

the answer was a resounding "yes". it was beyond the competence of your god to have come to some sort of non-violent resolution.

A non-violent resolution is not beyond the competence of my God. He has shown that he is capable of this in other passages.

It does appear that violence as a means of resolving an issue is beyond your comprehension. Sometimes it is the best way of solving a problem. Just look at the death penalty. It is violent, and is the best way of solving a problem. Jericho is an example of a death penalty upon an entire city instead of a single person.

what was beyond the grasp of your god and his ancient generals was well within the grasp of Sun Tzu as one will be able to find in chapter 8, "the Nine Variables." in this chapter, point 14 Sun Tzu says that "He who intimidates his neighbors does so by inflicting injury upon them." Chia Lin expounds on this by saying, "Plans and projects for harming the enemy are not confined to any one method. Sometimes entice his wise and virtuous men away so that he has no counsellors. Or send treacherous people to his country to wreck his administration. Sometimes use cunning deceptions to alienate his ministers from the sovereign. Or send skilled craftsmen to encourage his people to exhaust their wealth. Or present him with licentious musicians and dancers to change his customs. Or give him beautiful women to bewilder him."

here the Art of War lays out in no uncertain terms non-violent means of making an enemy weary, thus making the tactically and morally right alternative of victory over annhilation easier to grasp. not only is your all knowing god and his generals strategically inept compared Sun Tzu's standards, they also exhibit an unequivocal ignorance of non-violent solutions to combat... to go further, one could definitely say that they do not seek non-violent resolution, they seek the complete opposite, which for the past two millenia Sun Tzu has demonstrated to be incompetent, and morally bankrupt strategy.

Sun Tzu, his great grandson Sun Pin and the expansion on his work Mastering the Art of War are unmistakable in their position that war is immoral. it is a means to an end for survival of the state. to destroy the defenseless enemy civilians is not only beyond the scope of survival, but it is the antithesis of sound strategy and presents an even greater moral cunundrum that could have been avoided in exchange for winning the hearts of the enemy's people.

Calling war immoral is calling the God of the Bible immoral, which is what you have been doing all along.
Calling God immoral can never change the fact that you are immoral (as are all of us humans).

what i found in my study last night was a 2300 year old confirmation of my position that has been embraced worldwide by military leaders and rulers of various nations and armies. i found nothing to support your belief that the deliberate destruction of defenseless civilians is a necessary and morally acceptable means of gaining victory. i found the complete opposite. i also found that superstitions and beliefs in divinity should never be involved in military decisions, the result of doing so is the genocide we find in the Joshua account of the conquest of Jericho.

Do you wear that blindfold while you are driving also? I refer to the record of history which refutes your beliefs. There have been people who have said that there are ways of winning wars without bloodshed, and that civilians are to be treated as non-combatants. There is a word for those people. :loser: History has shown that civilians are also combatants. History has shown that the people who try to win wars without shedding blood have to give up their lives to avoid hurting someone else. History shows that an initial display of extreme force is more effective in preventing future bloodshed than any other method.

Please read "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card for a better explanation of this.

survival is not a moral dilemma, it is an issue of practicality. we kill the enemy on the battlefield so he does not kill us. we do not kill his women and children because they pose no threat to us and therefore survival is not threatened.

you have yet to counter this assertion or even acknowledge that you understand it.

now you have not only myself to disagree with, but you have Sun Tzu as well.

good luck.

you're going to need it.

You are arguing from the standpoint of a defensive battle, not an offensive one. In an offensive battle, we kill the enemy in order to take what the enemy possesses. This is often land, but can apply to goods as well. If the purpose is to take land, then the enemy must be defeated in such a way that the enemy will not rise up to take back the land.

You have yet to counter this assertion, or even acknowledge that you are willing to consider it.

 

[Balder]

Yes, GenuineOriginal, the best way to make sure your theft of someone's property is not contested is to kill the owner. Divinely inspired reasoning indeed!

 

[Granite]

Abortion is murder. Period.

That's not what I asked, so I'll be blunt:

Does abortion kill someone who is "innocent"?

 

[fool]

Do you wear that blindfold while you are driving also? I refer to the record of history which refutes your beliefs. There have been people who have said that there are ways of winning wars without bloodshed, and that civilians are to be treated as non-combatants. There is a word for those people. :loser: History has shown that civilians are also combatants. History has shown that the people who try to win wars without shedding blood have to give up their lives to avoid hurting someone else. History shows that an initial display of extreme force is more effective in preventing future bloodshed than any other method.

Please read "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card for a better explanation of this.

.

Please read "The Bible"

When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. 11 If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. 12 If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. 13 When the LORD your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the LORD your God gives you from your enemies. 15 This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.

 

[genuineoriginal]

i took some time last night to read the Art of War by Sun Tzu (not the entire thing, i skipped the chapter on manuevers), Military Methods by Sun Pin and Mastering the Art of War which is an expansive commentary on the work of Sun Tzu.

I also read Sun Tzu, (many, many years ago), and I remember how he got the job of commanding the emperor's armies. The emperor told him to prove himself as a general by teaching the emperor's concubines to march. The emperor's favorite concubine wouldn't cooperate, and Sun Tzu ordered her killed. The emperor stopped the order (she was his favorite concubine, after all). Sun Tzu told the emperor that he must be allowed to use disipline on the concubines in order to get them to cooperate, and that killing the dissenter was the best method. The emperor agreed, and Sun Tzu killed the concubine. The other concubines all followed his orders without complaint, and Sun Tzu became the greatest general of his time. :rotfl:

Your example used the "slaughter of the innocents" as the means of establishing his superiority. What an example of finding "non-violent solutions." :loser:

 

[genuineoriginal]

Yes, GenuineOriginal, the best way to make sure your theft of someone's property is not contested is to kill the owner. Divinely inspired reasoning indeed!

When the owner wants His property back, killing the squatters is not theft.

 

[genuineoriginal]

Is killing the guilty (non-innocents) really murder?

Are you talking about justice or murder? A society killing a rapist for committing rape is justice. An individual killing his neighbor because he wants to sleep with his wife is murder.

 

[genuineoriginal]

That's not what I asked, so I'll be blunt:

Does abortion kill someone who is "innocent"?

Abortion is murder because it is killing without just cause.

Deuteronomy 27
25Cursed be he that taketh reward to slay an innocent person. And all the people shall say, Amen.​

This is during a time of peace, not of war. War has different rules.

 

[genuineoriginal]

Please read "The Bible"

10When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. 11 If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. 12 If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. 13 When the LORD your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the LORD your God gives you from your enemies. 15 This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.

Dueteronomy 20
15 This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.​

This does not apply to the cities of the land of Canaan.

 

[allsmiles]

What is there to understand? You wrote the most absurd thing I have ever read on TOL

you have yet to demonstrate an understanding of "survival is not a moral dilemma" and you have yet to demonstrate what is so absurd about it.

Survival is not paramount among priorities. Yours is the belief of the unenlightened in just about every religion, whether a false one or the true one. You are basing your entire argument on this thought. That is why it is so funny. You have just shown that your arguments are not worth listening to. :rotfl:

baseless assertion. please demonstrate that survival is not paramount.

So, what is your point in this? Sun Tzu is smarter than God? :rotfl: What a joke.

no, Sun Tzu is smarter than many of the people who penned the fictitious atrocities of the Old Testament.

A non-violent resolution is not beyond the competence of my God. He has shown that he is capable of this in other passages.

but we're not talking about those passages genuineoriginal, we're talking about the Jericho Genocide and in relation the destruction of Og, Sihon and Arad.

It does appear that violence as a means of resolving an issue is beyond your comprehension. Sometimes it is the best way of solving a problem. Just look at the death penalty. It is violent, and is the best way of solving a problem. Jericho is an example of a death penalty upon an entire city instead of a single person.

if you truly understood my position then you wouldn't have written a word of this inane paragraph. survival on the battlefield entails killing before one is killed. survival is not a factor when destroying defenseless non-combatants.

please demonstrate how survival is threatened by non-combatants, please demonstrate how survival is preserved by destroying defenseless non-combatants. please demonstrate how an already acheived victory improves with the slaughter of non-combatants.

Calling war immoral is calling the God of the Bible immoral, which is what you have been doing all along.

no, i've been calling the authors of the myth immoral. that you cannot understand this is not my problem... what increasingly does become my problem is when you mischaracterize and misrepresent my argument and condemn me based on your failure to comprehend.

Calling God immoral can never change the fact that you are immoral (as are all of us humans).

you'll never hear me claim a special moral status, just as you'll never hear me claim that your god is immoral as he does not exist. the writers of the Old Testament were immoral, there's a world of difference.

Do you wear that blindfold while you are driving also? I refer to the record of history which refutes your beliefs. There have been people who have said that there are ways of winning wars without bloodshed, and that civilians are to be treated as non-combatants.

which record of history is that? you didn't cite any sources, you didn't quote scholars or literature or books on military combat. what's this innocuous record of history you speak of? i see nothing.

Sun Tzu, a master of the art of war, a man whose word has been revered and followed for longer than that of your spiritual leader's says that to defeat an enemy with little to no blood shed is the "acme of skill".

generals and tacticians have venerated him for this for thousands of years.

in your great wisdom, perhaps you could give us an example of how Sun Tzu is wrong? so far you've said he is wrong, but you have failed to demonstrate how. just as you are continually failing to address "survival is not a moral dilemma" and just as you failed to address the mythical christ argument.

There is a word for those people. :loser:

Sun Tzu is a loser? please elaborate. perhaps your words of wisdom will influence nations and armies and battles for the next two millenia as his have.

History has shown that civilians are also combatants.

history has shown that civilians become combatants when left no choice. if one follows the Art of War this tragedy is easily avoided. Sun Tzu wrote of this over 2000 years ago and his wisdom still rings true today, as i amply demonstrated with his own words.

History has shown that the people who try to win wars without shedding blood have to give up their lives to avoid hurting someone else.

if you had paid attention to my post... nay, had you any knowledge of Sun Tzu at all you would not have written such an ignorant sentence.

the words of Sun Tzu that i quoted were directions for conduct during war, not before in an effort to prevent war :nono: Sun Tzu was speaking of winning battles, of obtaining victory in battle. he was not speaking of avoiding war altogether.

History shows that an initial display of extreme force is more effective in preventing future bloodshed than any other method.

really? once again you mention history and what it "shows" but you have yet to reference a single event, general, quotation, record, document, book, annal or legend that backs up your claim.

you're grasping for straws and it's obvious to everyone.

Please read "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card for a better explanation of this.

i already read a book for you genuineoriginal and i proved my point quite well you on the otherhand are completely unprepared for a discussion of this depth. had the results of my study not turned out so well i would rue the moment we began speaking and would consider this entire effort as a collosal waste of time.

as it stands i've disembowled you and am currently dancing in your mutilated remains.

cue the devil dance.

:devil:

ahem... now that we've got that out of the way...

You are arguing from the standpoint of a defensive battle, not an offensive one. In an offensive battle, we kill the enemy in order to take what the enemy possesses. This is often land, but can apply to goods as well. If the purpose is to take land, then the enemy must be defeated in such a way that the enemy will not rise up to take back the land.

and Sun Tzu is quite explicit that there are many ways to weaken the enemy so as to minimize casualties. he also demonstrates that a key to victory is to win the hearts of the people. he is clear that the limit of plunder never extends to the point you suggest is morally acceptable, that being the slaughter of defenseless women and children.

You have yet to counter this assertion, or even acknowledge that you are willing to consider it.

in any battle you destroy the enemies that need to be destroyed in order to acheive victory, no more, no less. this strategy has been honored and revered and followed for longer than the ethical teachings of your mythical lord and savior. your definition of the enemy includes those who do not threaten the survival of the army or the acheivement of victory.

consider your assertion countered.

now please, if you're going to continue blathering in this thread there is still time to undo the damage you have done to yourself.

you can start by answering the entirety of my posts.

you can follow up by acknowledging my position and demonstrating a working knowledge of my position.

you can continue to undo the damage you have wrought on yourself by actually challenging "survival is not a moral dilemma".

any attempt to avoid these demands will be equivocation on your part and i promise you, everyone will see it and everyone will know it.

don't do this for me, do it for yourself.

have some shame man and here your pants back.

 

[Balder]

When the owner wants His property back, killing the squatters is not theft.

This kind of "reasoning" never fails to amaze me. We're an odd bunch, us humans.

Killing a squatter and all his kids is murder, short and simple.

But the situation isn't really so simple. It's people killing other people over land, and justifying their brutality with appeals to the "authority" of their tribal wargod.

 

[Granite]

Abortion is murder because it is killing without just cause.

Deuteronomy 27
25Cursed be he that taketh reward to slay an innocent person. And all the people shall say, Amen.​

This is during a time of peace, not of war. War has different rules.

So I'll take it you don't believe abortion kills a human who is "innocent," however, since you've failed to address that twice.

 

[allsmiles]

So I'll take it you don't believe abortion kills a human who is "innocent," however, since you've failed to address that twice.

get used to GO failing in general, Granite :chuckle:

i'm sorry, i've tried to be a good boy, i've tried to hold back on the ad homs... but this guy really sucks, i've been eating him for breakfast for like a week now and i'm sick of leftovers :chuckle:

where's Aimiel? i could stand to chew him up and spit him out... again :think:

 

[koban]

The argument that it might be "more merciful" to kill off the children of the nations the Hebrews conquered, given the problems they would likely have to face growing up in those conditions, is curiously similar to some pro-abortion arguments... :think:

You noticed that too?

 

[fool]

Dueteronomy 20
15 This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.​

This does not apply to the cities of the land of Canaan.

Ah ha! He does pay attention. You're right that the "kill em all let me sort em out" orders from Yaweh applied only to the lands conqured in Isreal, outside of there more merciful measures were allowed. Interesting hmmmmm? The reason I posted that verse was in response to your statement;

There have been people who have said that there are ways of winning wars without bloodshed, and that civilians are to be treated as non-combatants. There is a word for those people. :loser:

Seeing as how we have a quote from Yaweh saying there is a no blood option and you called such people losers, you just called Yaweh a loser.
Nice work.