if you saw a sign or even met a "prophet" from god. telling you to do something like, kill children
That would be god testing ME to not immediately sucker punch them.
Remember, I'm Quaker. Part of our theology is that there is a tiny bit of god in everyone. EVERYONE. God CAN speak through anyone at any time. The impetus is on the listener to discern what is being heard.
"But how am I to know the good side from the bad?" -Luke Skywalker
"YOU WILL KNOW!" -Yoda (boiling quakerism down to its most fundamental)
No one. To understand THIS you need to be familiar with Schopenhauer. When you say "blame" what you're really doing is conflating "justice" with "revenge". REVENGE is morally indefensible, it's a continuation of Cain's bloody cycle.
Justice is NOT about righting some cosmic scale that is set wrong by harmful acts.
The morally defensible objective of justice is to make moral laws as tangible and immutable as natural laws. The prohibition of murder should be as inexorable as gravity.
The person who kills, must die. Not for the sake of the dead but for the sake of the living who will see it done and know that for cause there is effect.
Justice is deterrence, not revenge.
On this there is one caveat that departs from liberalism, and that is that IT IS NOT NECESSARY FOR THE CONDEMNED TO ACTUALLY BE GUILTY. Only that they are perceived as guilty by the community and that justice is done swiftly and known to all.
Actually the WORST possible situation is not the conviction of the innocent, but rather the exoneration of someone everyone "knows" is guilty. When OJ Simpson was ruled innocent, it made the state look impotent and the law toothless. Blackstone's formulation is an insidious poison utterly assured to destroy the legitimacy of every Caesar who decides to adopt it.
Do you succeed in bringing about god's kingdom on earth?
Consider it like this: The Muslims believe that there will be peace when when there are no non-believers.
Are they wrong? Rather, if they succeed, were they right?
God's will is only revealed retroactively.
When you embark on a quest in the name of god, whether or not you were righteous hinges on whether or not your actions bring about the world condition your god desires.
To put it another way... God is always on the side of the victors. Or as they put it in the film: "His god... is god."
I've seen enough to know that the atheists' pure reason, and the environmentalists' gaia are false. But as to which branch of the God of Abraham is true (if any)... that is still an open question.
I haven't. At any point. Ever.
That would be god testing ME to not immediately sucker punch them.
Remember, I'm Quaker. Part of our theology is that there is a tiny bit of god in everyone. EVERYONE. God CAN speak through anyone at any time. The impetus is on the listener to discern what is being heard.
"But how am I to know the good side from the bad?" -Luke Skywalker
"YOU WILL KNOW!" -Yoda (boiling quakerism down to its most fundamental)
No one. To understand THIS you need to be familiar with Schopenhauer. When you say "blame" what you're really doing is conflating "justice" with "revenge". REVENGE is morally indefensible, it's a continuation of Cain's bloody cycle.
Justice is NOT about righting some cosmic scale that is set wrong by harmful acts.
The morally defensible objective of justice is to make moral laws as tangible and immutable as natural laws. The prohibition of murder should be as inexorable as gravity.
The person who kills, must die. Not for the sake of the dead but for the sake of the living who will see it done and know that for cause there is effect.
Justice is deterrence, not revenge.
On this there is one caveat that departs from liberalism, and that is that IT IS NOT NECESSARY FOR THE CONDEMNED TO ACTUALLY BE GUILTY. Only that they are perceived as guilty by the community and that justice is done swiftly and known to all.
Actually the WORST possible situation is not the conviction of the innocent, but rather the exoneration of someone everyone "knows" is guilty. When OJ Simpson was ruled innocent, it made the state look impotent and the law toothless. Blackstone's formulation is an insidious poison utterly assured to destroy the legitimacy of every Caesar who decides to adopt it.
Do you succeed in bringing about god's kingdom on earth?
Consider it like this: The Muslims believe that there will be peace when when there are no non-believers.
Are they wrong? Rather, if they succeed, were they right?
God's will is only revealed retroactively.
When you embark on a quest in the name of god, whether or not you were righteous hinges on whether or not your actions bring about the world condition your god desires.
To put it another way... God is always on the side of the victors. Or as they put it in the film: "His god... is god."
I've seen enough to know that the atheists' pure reason, and the environmentalists' gaia are false. But as to which branch of the God of Abraham is true (if any)... that is still an open question.