Rendering Unto Caesar: Natural Law vs. Artificial Law‏

[sophia_sadek]

One morning, while purchasing coffee at a local watering hole, I heard a fundamentalist say something about man's law vs. God's law. At the time I marveled how people come up with such sharp distinctions. Freedom of religion deserves no respect because it is something that human beings came up with. Stoning sinners, on the other hand, is a duty

Comments

[pastorlenny]

Is it natural to view homosexuals as fractionally human to the point that they do not deserve the same rights as everyone else?

Are you asking if it is "natural" to view the Other as Less Than? It obviously is. How is this material to anything?

[sophia_sadek]

It may seem obvious to you. The conditioning that comes with obsessing over ancient literature tends to alienate people from their natural sentiments. It could be said that some level of homophobia is natural in people who have little or no experience with homosexuals. I do not see homophobia as the actual source of the urge to treat homosexuals as less than human.

[pastorlenny]

obsessing over ancient literature tends to alienate people from their natural sentiments

Indeed. In fact, the Punic Wars were largely the result of excessive Bible study!

[sophia_sadek]

And here I thought it was an attempt on the part of Rome to expand its hegemony into more distant territories.

[pastorlenny]

Why would they do such a thng if they weren't Christians?

[sophia_sadek]

They were pre-Christians. Christians inherited the Roman zeal for global domination with the added tendency to obsess over Jewish literature.

[pastorlenny]

Ah. So we have the Mongols and Visigoths to instruct us in how we ought to rightly embrace the Other.

[sophia_sadek]

Augustine admired the Goths. They were apparently far less corrupt than were Trinitarian Christians. The Mongols I have met put Christian fundamentalists to shame, but they converted to Buddhism only after their military adventurism.

[underlankers]

You met Genghis Khan? You must be a Highlander. ;)

The Mongols, BTW, did what they did because they essentially brought modern military organization and prototypical fire, maneuver, and gunpowder to a medieval battlefield. By the time they met professional armies like the Mamluks they were slaughtered. They did overrun the proto-industrial Song Empire, to be sure, but that's how they got gunpowder in the first place.

[pastorlenny]

That was startlingly incoherent.

[underlankers]

Christianity must have inherited it rather poorly. The Western Empire, at least, really inherited it wrongly, what with it falling to Arians over most of its territory and to the heathens in Britannia. The Eastern Empire did admittedly revive Roman hegemony for a short time, but it ruined itself in the endless wars with Persia plus a plague. I might ask here that if you see Christianity as this, what did Islam inherit from both Rome and Persia?

[sophia_sadek]

Islam inherited more than just territory and a lust for expansion. It also picked up the schools of philosophy that the Christians had expelled from Roman territory.

[underlankers]

I would hardly say it inherited a lust for expansion in and of itself. Not unless we credit Justinian and Charlemagne, as well as the Rurikids, for showing Christianity converting by the sword.

[underlankers]

Actually they weren't caused by that. Rather they were the outgrowth of rival imperialisms of Rome and Carthage (the bastard offspring, BTW, of the Canaanites. They even evidently were still offering up children to Moloch if we judge Roman records to be accurate). The first Punic War was the outgrowth of the leftover issues of the Pyrrhic War, the second was the result of the Barcids originating both Africans taking over Spain and the issue of Overmighty Subjects. The third was Disproportionate Retribution in a most gruesome fashion. The wars caused by Rome's expansions were fought with the Hellenes, not the Canaanites. And the Jews.

[sophia_sadek]

The practice of child sacrifice in Carthage is mentioned in the works of Plato. Archeological evidence has been found of a large number of dead children indicating that it was not merely propaganda.