Roy Moore accused of sexual contact with 14-year old

[Terraceth]

This is why the US will remain a two-party nation, and why the candidates will continue to deteriorate.

Nah, the whole "vote for the lesser of two evils" is a consequence of it being a two-party nation, not the cause. The main reasons are:

1) First past the post voting, while not a guarantee of a two-party system, strongly favors it.

2) The Republicans and Democrats are extremely bipartisan in one thing: Making it hard for anyone other than them to have any chance to get elected. This manifests itself in a number of ways. The most obvious are harsh requirements to get someone's name on a ballot (this usually takes the form of requiring a high number of signatures), which can take so much money they don't have anything left to actually campaign with, but there are more subtle things also. For example, the group that controls the presidential debates, the Commission on Presidential Debates, is filled with people with strong connections to the Democratic or Republican parties... and you'd better believe that they make sure to set ostensibly neutral requirements to get into the debates that are clearly designed to prevent third party candidates from getting in.

3) Third party candidates generally don't have policy positions that can appeal to a large enough crowd to get themselves elected. Generally speaking they're more extreme versions of Democrats or Republicans, which isn't too conducive to getting elected. The Libertarian Party is one of the few that isn't, which might explain why they've had the most success, for a certain definition of success. Actually, it's actually downright surprising to me how few of the third parties have any appeal to those who fall into the "economically liberal, socially conservative" category, as that describes a reasonably large percentage of the population and said percentage isn't being served fully by Democrats or Republicans.

[Tassman]

You seem really confused about what the Inquisition was about. While they worked with the secular governments they were hardly interested in consolidating their power. They were quite aware that government's come and go and a friendly country today could be an enemy tomorrow, so they focused on what they saw as the only constant, permanent force -- the church (which for them was the RCC). That is why they were concerned with those who they deemed to be heretics (because they were the enemies of the church).

it achieved that end through infamously brutal methods..

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Spanish-Inquisition

While we tend to heavily romanticize this period, history reveals a different view. First, the often remarked upon Golden Age didn't cover all of the Iberian Peninsula but rather Andalusia and even there things were not as we are often told.

Jews and Christians were generally tolerated, but only as long as they acknowledged that they were second class citizens, paid a heavy tax, followed special dress codes and didn't start accumulating any real wealth or power. When they did there were massacres like the one in Granada in 1066 in response to a Jew being named as vizer to the king^[1][2]

Ho-hum!

Was any of this as brutal as the barbarity if the Christian Inquisition? No it was not. It was by comparison a Golden Age...the Golden Age of Islam...as is generally recognised by historians.

The problem is that the extremists are often high ranking representatives of the government such as when the Indonesian government started importing Muslims into the Maluku Islands in order to make the area more Muslim and when that didn't work as well as planned, the military and police started arming and equipping Muslim militias with the goal of forcibly expelling the Christians there.

Certainly, there are die-hard militants in Indonesia, especially those exposed to Wahhabism, but these are exceptions. So would you say that Indonesia is tolerant of minorities and can be reasonably held up as an example of a tolerant Muslim country as is generally recognised? Or do you believe that most people have it wrong and you know better?

The problem is that you are seeking to herd all conservative Christians into the dominionist camp regardless of their belief. They represent a tiny fraction on the fringe that they are more of an imaginary leftist boogeyman used to frighten the gullible than any real movement.

As Lisa Miller, a self-described progressive, who was senior editor of Newsweek and a religion columnist for the Washington Post, says in her article "'Dominionism' beliefs among conservative Christians overblown," "'dominionism' is the paranoid mot du jour" of the left. Even "left-wing activist specializing in the study of extreme right-wing movements in the United States," Chip Berlet, who is a big time disseminator of the idea of Christian dominionism agrees that many on the left have "stretched the term dominionism past its breaking point."

And just a bit on Ted Cruz and his supposed dominionism in Christianity Today.

[Roy]

Deuteronomy 14 does refer to shellfish (v. 10).

Sorry, I missed the verse - that should have been Deu 14:21, as per Adrift's post.

Note that throughout the passage, none of the meats are classed as inherently unclean; they are unclean for those living under the covenant God established with Moses. Christians are not under the covenant of Moses. Same deity, different contract. Romans 14 is relevant because it emphasizes that.

ok, but why?

Why would eating oysters be an abomination for one group, but not for another? Especially if they live in the same area and have similar practices.

[Cerebrum123]

Sorry, I missed the verse - that should have been Deu 14:21, as per Adrift's post.ok, but why?

Why would eating oysters be an abomination for one group, but not for another? Especially if they live in the same area and have similar practices.

[Mountain Man]

Why would eating oysters be an abomination for one group, but not for another? Especially if they live in the same area and have similar practices.

You need to read up on the concept of ritual purity. These weren't moral laws, they were ceremonial laws.

[Adrift]

I doubt that verses about eating sacrificed food or eating bread without washing your hands are applicable here. The closest possible reference is Romans 14, but that is more a contradiction than a reversal. Also, Deuteronomy 14 doesn't refer to shellfish, but to dead animals, and doesn't necessarily apply to Xtians who do after all follow the same deity.

Romans 14 is not a contradiction. Paul tells Christians that what one eats does not condemn them, but at the same time, don't be quarrelsome with those who still eat kosher. Compare this passage to a parallel point in Colossians,



The New Testament scholar Craig Keener comments on this, stating,

Source: Romans: A New Covenant Commentary by Craig S. Keener

For Paul, foods themselves are religiously neutral; that is, one may keep food customs because of upbringing, cultural preference or ethnic attachment, but one who keeps them out of the belief that it is religiously profitable is "weak in faith" (14:1). (Paul might even formulate this designation as a contrast with the ancestral archetype of faith who was "not weak in faith," 4:19.) This contrasts with one who genuinely believes and hence may eat anything (14:2); nothing is really intrinsically "clean" or "unclean" (14:14).

Nevertheless, Paul's agenda in this chapter is not to denigrate the keeping of these food customs, but to keep those who viewed themselves as "strong" from looking down on the "weak." Paul does not want stumbling blocks placed before those who continue to keep kosher by others eating non-kosher food in front of them (14:13-21).

© Copyright Original Source

Concerning the eating of sacrificed foods in 1 Corinthians 8, it absolutely is applicable here. Again, the issue is keeping kosher by not eating foods sacrificed to idols. In verse 8 Paul recognizes Christian freedom from the law by stating, "Now food will not bring us close to God. We are no worse if we do not eat and no better if we do," but again, as in Romans, Christians who viewed themselves as strong in the faith were not to look down on the weak.


Matthew 15 and Mark 7 are not just about washing hands (and here I think you have to know this if you read the chapters). It's literally Jesus telling his audience that diet doesn't make or keep one holy,





As the New Testament scholar R.T. France points out,

Source: The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text by R. T. France

The food laws of Lv. 11 and 17, and the whole concept of ritual purity which underlies them, were of central importance to Jewish culture and identity. Together with the rite of circumcision and their observance of the sabbath, the literal adherence to these dietary laws served to mark out the Jews as the distinctive people of God, and to separate them socially from other people. The sharing of meals is one of the most basic forms of social integration, and these laws effectively made it impossible for Jews to share in meals prepared by non-Jews. While the issue raised by the scribes in v. 2 is at the relatively inoffensive level of ritual washing before meals (a matter on which Jews themselves held different views), by his pronouncement in v. 15 Jesus deliberately widens the discussion to include this ritual separation which constituted one of the 'badges' of Jewish national identity.

Once the Christian movement came to include significant numbers of non-Jews, it was inevitable that the food laws would become a matter of existential importance, as their literal persistence would make table fellowship between Jewish and Gentile Christians impossible. Both in Acts and in the Pauline letters we see the sensitivity of the issue. It was one of the most burning areas of controversy in first-century Christianity, as we see especially in Peter's vision at Joppa and its outcome (Acts 10:9-16, and the rest of Acts 10-11), in the Council of Jerusalem and its famous 'compromise' decree (Acts 15:1-29), and in the 'Antioch incident' of Gal. 2:11-14. Paul's discussion of the dietary disputes in the Roman church in Rom. 14 focuses in part on the same issues, and his pronouncements in Rom. 14:14, 20, with their authority formula πέπεισμαι ἐν Κυρίῳ Ἰησοῦ [I am persuaded in the Lord Jesus], echo the words of Mk. 7:15, 19; the tradition of Jesus' teaching on this issue (and perhaps the substance of Mark's comment on it in v. 19c) was thus already known to Paul in the fifties.

. . .

The force of this pronouncement cannot easily be confined to the issue of hand washing with which the pericope began. While the washing ritual (where recognised) did indeed involve the impurity of food eaten without due preparation, this was only a very minor aspect of the concept of defilement by 'what goes in'. Far more prominent were the very detailed regulations of Lv. 11 specifying which animals could and could not be eaten by the people of God, spelled out in terms of 'clean' and 'unclean' foods, and the prohibition of eating blood first declared in Gn. 9:4 and developed in Lv. 17. It was such laws, firmly rooted in the Torah, that would more naturally come to a Jewish mind on hearing Jesus' words.

© Copyright Original Source

So, anyways, yes. The Bible really does talk about this subject, and the passages I highlighted for you really are relevant to the subject at hand. This isn't anything new. Biblical scholars have known this for ages, and it's pretty universally agreed by Biblical scholars of all stripes that the Bible really does talk about a change in stance on dietary laws as it applies to Christians. I'm sort of surprised that you'd find any of these contentious, or confusing, or that you brought the matter up at all. You've been on this website for a very very long time. Surely you've seen people discussing this matter at some point or another, and knew that this wasn't a serious challenge to Christian behavior. This is like Theology 101.

[Mountain Man]

So, anyways, yes. The Bible really does talk about this subject, and the passages I highlighted for you really are relevant to the subject at hand. This isn't anything new. Biblical scholars have known this for ages, and it's pretty universally agreed by Biblical scholars of all stripes that the Bible really does talk about a change in stance on dietary laws as it applies to Christians. I'm sort of surprised that you'd find any of these contentious, or confusing, or that you brought the matter up at all. You've been on this website for a very very long time. Surely you've seen people discussing this matter at some point or another, and knew that this wasn't a serious challenge to Christian behavior. This is like Theology 101.

My guess is that he's going to say that he simply doesn't find any of this reasoning convincing, so he's going to continue to assume it represents a significant theological problem for Christians.

[rogue06]

it achieved that end through infamously brutal methods..

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Spanish-Inquisition

There was a whole lot of warfare going on during this period of "enlightened peace" that you claim was taking place. The number of people killed as a result of the Inquisition is around the same as the number of Jews killed during just one of the more notable slaughters of them by Muslims during this period of "enlightened peace" (Granada in 1066).

Moreover, even your source suggests that it is an unforeseen consequence of the Inquisition that the Spanish monarchy consolidated power, not, as you've contended, a goal. Sort of like how the Soviet Union became a global superpower, not as a goal of WWII but rather as an unintended result of the outcome (I don't think that even the Russians were striving for that result being far too busy fighting for their very survival). Likewise, Prohibition led to a massive growth in the scope and power of organized crime -- but you won't find very many who would even suggest that this was the goal of Prohibition.

The goal of the Inquisition was to fight what the RCC saw as heretical views, not to prop up this or that government.

Ho-hum!

Was any of this as brutal as the barbarity if the Christian Inquisition? No it was not. It was by comparison a Golden Age...the Golden Age of Islam...as is generally recognised by historians.

Whining that the Inquisition was no picnic (something nobody is contending otherwise) is hardly the way to support your assertion that Spain was enjoying some unprecedented era of enlightenment and universal tolerance and acceptance as you seem to envision. The fact is that the period was anything but and while better than many other places was not even unique being rather typical of what we see historically speaking where a region benefited from a prolonged period of prosperity.

And while this supposed "Golden Age" has been overblown and exaggerated the same is true (except in a negative way) about the Inquisition.

And previously noted:

Generally I hear the number of somewhere around 200,000 people killed at the hands of the Inquisition, but this is almost certainly exaggerated. As William D. Rubinstein (who has held chairs of history at Deakin and Aberystwyth Universities, and is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences, and of the Royal Historical Society) noted in his Genocide: A History:

Critical History of the Inquisition

And earlier

Certainly, there are die-hard militants in Indonesia, especially those exposed to Wahhabism, but these are exceptions.

As noted these die-hard extremist exceptions must occupy a bunch of top level government jobs since it was the Indonesian government that started importing Muslims into the Maluku Islands in order to make the area more Muslim and when that didn't work as well as planned, then the military and police started arming and equipping Muslim militias with the goal of forcibly expelling the Christians there.

So would you say that Indonesia is tolerant of minorities and can be reasonably held up as an example of a tolerant Muslim country as is generally recognised?

Are you deliberately trying to set a real low bar here?

No Muslim government, no matter how supposedly tolerant, practices what anyone in the west would ever confuse for open-mindedness or tolerance. Tolerance in a Muslim country generally means something like they don't have a death penalty for homosexuality but only flog those convicted of being gay.


I'm not that familiar with Moore, but from little that I know he is probably the closest to being that way. As for Cruz and Pence... This is exactly what folks like Chip Berlet, the big time disseminator of the idea of Christian dominionism, means when he says that many on the left have "stretched the term dominionism past its breaking point."

And I'll bet, considering you've shown a habit of deliberately ignoring all evidence that contradicts your worldview, you never even looked at the article about Ted Cruz and his supposed dominionism in Christianity Today

[JonathanL]

So, anyways, yes. The Bible really does talk about this subject, and the passages I highlighted for you really are relevant to the subject at hand. This isn't anything new. Biblical scholars have known this for ages, and it's pretty universally agreed by Biblical scholars of all stripes that the Bible really does talk about a change in stance on dietary laws as it applies to Christians. I'm sort of surprised that you'd find any of these contentious, or confusing, or that you brought the matter up at all. You've been on this website for a very very long time. Surely you've seen people discussing this matter at some point or another, and knew that this wasn't a serious challenge to Christian behavior. This is like Theology 101.

Yeah, and it's not like you even need to be a scholar to to understand this. It's pretty much the common sense reading of these passages, unless you have an axe to grind.

[lilpixieofterror]

Context restor... rant rant rant...I HATE LPOT! SPIDDLE SPIDDLE!.

[Tassman]

There was a whole lot of warfare going on during this period of "enlightened peace" that you claim was taking place. The number of people killed as a result of the Inquisition is around the same as the number of Jews killed during just one of the more notable slaughters of them by Muslims during this period of "enlightened peace" (Granada in 1066).

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/sasha...b_1941608.html

Moreover, even your source suggests that it is an unforeseen consequence of the Inquisition that the Spanish monarchy consolidated power, not, as you've contended, a goal. Sort of like how the Soviet Union became a global superpower, not as a goal of WWII but rather as an unintended result of the outcome (I don't think that even the Russians were striving for that result being far too busy fighting for their very survival). Likewise, Prohibition led to a massive growth in the scope and power of organized crime -- but you won't find very many who would even suggest that this was the goal of Prohibition.

The goal of the Inquisition was to fight what the RCC saw as heretical views, not to prop up this or that government.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Spanish-Inquisition

Whining that the Inquisition was no picnic (something nobody is contending otherwise) is hardly the way to support your assertion that Spain was enjoying some unprecedented era of enlightenment and universal tolerance and acceptance as you seem to envision. The fact is that the period was anything but and while better than many other places was not even unique being rather typical of what we see historically speaking where a region benefited from a prolonged period of prosperity.

And while this supposed "Golden Age" has been overblown and exaggerated the same is true (except in a negative way) about the Inquisition.

And previously noted:

And earlier

As noted these die-hard extremist exceptions must occupy a bunch of top level government jobs since it was the Indonesian government that started importing Muslims into the Maluku Islands in order to make the area more Muslim and when that didn't work as well as planned, then the military and police started arming and equipping Muslim militias with the goal of forcibly expelling the Christians there.

Are you deliberately trying to set a real low bar here?

No Muslim government, no matter how supposedly tolerant, practices what anyone in the west would ever confuse for open-mindedness or tolerance. Tolerance in a Muslim country generally means something like they don't have a death penalty for homosexuality but only flog those convicted of being gay.

I'm not that familiar with Moore, but from little that I know he is probably the closest to being that way.

This explains why the Evangelicals of Alabama, many of dominionist bent, are prepared to overlook accusation against Moore of sexually molesting minors as young as 14 years old. He's on their team.

As for Cruz and Pence... This is exactly what folks like Chip Berlet, the big time disseminator of the idea of Christian dominionism, means when he says that many on the left have "stretched the term dominionism past its breaking point."

And I'll bet, considering you've shown a habit of deliberately ignoring all evidence that contradicts your worldview, you never even looked at the article about Ted Cruz and his supposed dominionism in Christianity Today[

So Cruz and Pence are only a little bit dominionist. Got it! What about the likes of Betsy DeVos or Rick Santorum and the stealth movement of Christian dominionism taking root inside the Republican Party?

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/loc...e18081173.html

[carpedm9587]

Do you really think 50 people being murdered is a small incident?

I think it is a single incident. It is horrendous, yes, but it is not conclusive. It's the equivalent of pointing to Hurricane Irma and saying, "see - climate change!" Irma is weather. A continuous pattern of strengthing hurricane is a sign of climate change.

Likewise, Sandy Hook and Cegas were incidents. The research to show that Sandy Hook and Vegas are part of a larger pattern and the best approaches to addressing that pattern is simply not there. Why? Because of an act of Congress.

Now I wonder who benefits from shutting down research into gun violence?

[John Reece]

Snip

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/loc...e18081173.html

The following is an excerpt from the link above:

The quoted text above gives the impression that all the people mentioned are "Christian Dominionists".

As one who spent many years reading almost everything written by Rushdoony and the many "dominionist" authors he discipled, hired, and fired, like his son-in-law Gary North, I can say with certainty that all that the people listed above have in common is simply basic Christianity -- NOT "Christian Dominionism".

Ned Walsh, writing in the Raleigh News and Observer, from which the quote above is excerpted, shows himself to be not as knowledgeable as he thinks he is and deeply prejudiced against those about whom he writes.

[One Bad Pig]

Roy doesn't hate you. In fact, you might be Roy's favorite poster, since you tend to be a little sloppy with details and there's nothing he loves to do more than pick nits.

[Sparko]

Roy doesn't hate you. In fact, you might be Roy's favorite poster, since you tend to be a little sloppy with details and there's nothing he loves to do more than pick nits.

I would love to see a debate between Roy and Robrecht. The nits would fly.