An Oxford biblical scholar and child-porn: "Himpathy," patriarchy and bad theology

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Interesting you word it this way, as for me I can forgive someone for being terrible, but I probably won't ever trust them again. I'm more likely to forgive than trust, whereas you worded it the opposite.

Been there, done that.

Forgiveness is easy. Let it slide off you and move along. But either way, I'll never, ever trust them again.

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by Traditional_Ale

Sorry to split hairs, but I'd really like to see some sources about Tchaikovsky being a pedophile.

Read things like this:
https://books.google.ca/books?id=9YZ...ophile&f=false

“Official” records tend to wash that aspect of his life out, because Tchaikovsky is essentially a Russian hero, and the Russian culture has an ingrained dislike of homosexuality.

Most scholars believe that to be true though.

[bigtmac19]

Quote:
"I don't abandon my friends, even when they've done heinous wrong. I don't condone Jan's actions, and his loss of status and employment is richly deserved. But I don't modify my compassion to fit someone else's opinion."

If this was my friend saying this, I would be very troubled. His "compassion" should only be with the victims. Would this compassion be there for the perpetrator of a similar crime if he did not know the person?

[afc wimbledon]

I draw a distinction between my friends falling into something bad but 'new', I had a mate that developed a nasty addiction issue and I stood by him as he worked through it, and 'friends' who have always been something they hid from me that I wouldn't have been their friends in the first place if I knew.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Sliver

That sounded really smart.

I’m like and infinite number of monkeys and an infinite number of typewriters. eventually I was going to have one intelligent post.

[Wormius]

I think one of the interesting questions is about whether someone is who is a terrible person should be permitted to continue work in a field where they re obviously talented and knowledgeable. People sometimes give a pass on past work, but future work seems to be off limits. I think it was brought up earlier about making a covid vaccine. If you knew that the only person capable of developing that vaccine or some other valuable research was in jail or ostracized from academia. Would you have that person working if it meant reaching a vaccine sooner,or would you say "no thanks, we'll start from scratch without you".

[Itse]

For me personally, to even begin to judge someone in possession of child pornography (or actual-rape pornography, or snuff etc), I would really need to know more about where and how they got it and what they did with it.

Just downloading what you can find for free and whacking off to it is not okay, but it's very passive participation that has a relatively limited effect on the world, and implies that there are lines the person has at least not yet been willing to cross. Studies have shown that there are pedophiles who are extremely aware that their desires are wrong and who actively try to avoid crossing lines to harming people. Someone in possession of such material might be one of these people; in need of help, potentially dangerous, but at least trying to not do harm.

The moment you start paying for it or distributing what you've found to others is when you become an active participant, someone who supports the creation and consumption of child pornography by others. If you're paying someone to deliver you child pornography, there's really no moral difference to just harming the children yourself.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Itse

For me personally, to even begin to judge someone in possession of child pornography (or actual-rape pornography, or snuff etc), I would really need to know more about where and how they got it and what they did with it.

Just downloading what you can find for free and whacking off to it is not okay, but it's very passive participation that has a relatively limited effect on the world, and implies that there are lines the person has at least not yet been willing to cross. Studies have shown that there are pedophiles who are extremely aware that their desires are wrong and who actively try to avoid crossing lines to harming people. Someone in possession of such material might be one of these people; in need of help, potentially dangerous, but at least trying to not do harm.

The moment you start paying for it or distributing what you've found to others is when you become an active participant, someone who supports the creation and consumption of child pornography by others. If you're paying someone to deliver you child pornography, there's really no moral difference to just harming the children yourself.

Even downloading it for free is reprehensible, someone is abusing children to feed the habit. There is no acceptable or less harmful when it comes to child porn.



Any kind of demand fulfillment is unforgivable.

[Wormius]

I do not believe that this is just floating around on the internet, easy to come across. Regardless of how somebody uses it, they are creating demand either directly or indirectly.

There was podcast last year that was really eye-opening. “Hunting Warhead”. People don’t just passively download it that kind of thing.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by Itse

For me personally, to even begin to judge someone in possession of child pornography (or actual-rape pornography, or snuff etc), I would really need to know more about where and how they got it and what they did with it.

Just downloading what you can find for free and whacking off to it is not okay, but it's very passive participation that has a relatively limited effect on the world, and implies that there are lines the person has at least not yet been willing to cross. Studies have shown that there are pedophiles who are extremely aware that their desires are wrong and who actively try to avoid crossing lines to harming people. Someone in possession of such material might be one of these people; in need of help, potentially dangerous, but at least trying to not do harm.

The moment you start paying for it or distributing what you've found to others is when you become an active participant, someone who supports the creation and consumption of child pornography by others. If you're paying someone to deliver you child pornography, there's really no moral difference to just harming the children yourself.

Not really, it's the same as any exploitative porn. The market is not the paying market, it's anyone willing to consume that keeps the harm in business.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by Itse

For me personally, to even begin to judge someone in possession of child pornography (or actual-rape pornography, or snuff etc), I would really need to know more about where and how they got it and what they did with it.

Just downloading what you can find for free and whacking off to it is not okay, but it's very passive participation that has a relatively limited effect on the world, and implies that there are lines the person has at least not yet been willing to cross. Studies have shown that there are pedophiles who are extremely aware that their desires are wrong and who actively try to avoid crossing lines to harming people. Someone in possession of such material might be one of these people; in need of help, potentially dangerous, but at least trying to not do harm.

The moment you start paying for it or distributing what you've found to others is when you become an active participant, someone who supports the creation and consumption of child pornography by others. If you're paying someone to deliver you child pornography, there's really no moral difference to just harming the children yourself.

oh this is a bad look.

I'm a bit of a Luddite, but even I know that people can see how many times a free video has been downloaded.

Free, purchased, stumbled upon and not reported, yeah you are harming children, there really isn't an argument about it.

[afc wimbledon]

To be clear it has been about a decade since you could 'stumble' across kiddie porn by mistake, one of the advantages of the commercialisation of the internet

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Wormius

I do not believe that this is just floating around on the internet, easy to come across. Regardless of how somebody uses it, they are creating demand either directly or indirectly.

There was podcast last year that was really eye-opening. “Hunting Warhead”. People don’t just passively download it that kind of thing.

The Hunting Warhead podcast is positively chilling.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews...head-1.5346693

It was produced by CBC in conjunction with a Norwegian news outlet, and it is essential listening, in my opinion.

Sent from my SM-G960W using Tapatalk

[Textcritic]

I am bumping this thead because of a series of comments which appaered in another thread in the FOI forum, and it has prompted some additional thoughts that I think are worth exploring. For some context, this poster was put off by a throw-away comment made by DeluxeMoustache to the integration of Travis Hamonic's faith and his decision to opt out of the 2020 playoffs…

Originally Posted by anon

Originally Posted by deluxemustache
Haha. Whatever. I think you are taking things a bit too seriously. And projecting some things that aren’t there.

I’m not insinuating anything, much less that he should feel ashamed. I think he is a great all around guy. Didn’t even say what he should do, only that I wouldn’t have dropped a handful of references to my faith, just would have kept it on point.

I just think it is interesting when people go out of their way to volunteer arguably irrelevant info.

I do know he is not going to be spending his off time eating vegan or doing yoga though. Because people who do those things will be sure to tell you about them

Hope that helps, friend

First off, I don't believe that DeluxeMoustache meant anything even remotely disrespectful or malicious in his post, but having said that, I think it shows a demonstrable failure to grasp the significance of religious belief and practise for a lot of people. And I think that level of understanding can come only through experience. In other words, unless you have actually experienced what it means to have a belief in the presence of God and a sense of his impact on your daily life, then you cannot understand how inseparable God is from the most mundane happenings of day-to-day life.

Here is how the poster responded to DeluxeMoustache's attempted explanation:

Originally Posted by anon

Excuse me? I'm not the one who needs any clarification nor any kind of "help"
You're just not respectful of other peoples' religious beliefs.

Comparing a serious thing like religion - to yoga or veganism - when religion deals with life after death & the fact COVID can be fatal - that's pure disrespect on your part.

I certainly understand why he took offense to DeluxeMoustache's posts and his trite dismissal of religion, but the ire is probably misplaced. My guess is that it stems from the same sort of Christian persecution complex that stems from apocalypticism, which most accurately applies to modern, Western Evangelicalism. The modern iteration with which we are most familiar is a twenty-first century projection of an ancient phenomenon that transcends the boundaries of both Christianity and Judaism. Hell, there were apocalypticists in ancient Mesopotamia, Babylon, Assyria and Akkadia. By and large their expressions would be fairly closely aligned to the current Christrian apologetic worldview.

You comment comes across as trying to make a borderline comment against Hamonic's religion, you're dancing on both sides of the red line, but you've clearly crossed it, and then follow up with more insults and laughing!
The classy thing to do is to apologize - that's what Christian faith teaches, and I'm glad to have been taught things like apologizing and forgiveness because I'm not perfect myself.

I think this part of his response plays into this discussion, which I promoted on this board a few weeks ago. Contrition and forgiveness are both cardinal virtues, but I think they are also prone to significant abuse and manipulation through the Christian model of penal substitutionary atonement. God’s wrath is arbitrarily defined and applied to any and all instances which confront the nebulous idea of God’s "holiness," and as such, it becomes easier to vilify and condemn all objectionable behaviour as "sin," and to artificially equalise all infractions. On the other hand, the all-encompassing forgiveness that is obtainable through the sacrifice of Christ also equalises all people in the eyes of God regardless of their infractions: forgiveness is then afforded to a repentant genocidal maniac, and withheld from an unrepentent adulterer or a "blasphemer" (of which there is no such thing, but that is another topic for another post). I am particularly reminded of the incredibly offensive Jack T. Chick tract, "Lisa":

http://www.boolean-union.com/Chick/Lisa/Lisa.htm

So for me atheism is completely unattractive because too often I see someone screw up, realize they did something wrong, then other people come along and label them a "bad person" for the rest of their lives...

It is also interesting to me that the poster aligns this particular behaviour with "atheism." I would like to see this connection explored more deeply, but then I also wonder if this sort of reaction is borne more of a repugnance for hypocrisy than it is about missing the God-belief. As already discussed in this thread, I think there is something to be said about behaviours and actions which are beyond redemption; I also think that an uncritical Christian theology of forgiveness can potentially contribute to a dangerous culture of enabling serial abusers.

So, there is a mix in here of a whole bunch of things that interest me:

· the inability of the uninitiated to grapple with the deep and meaningful impact of "god" on a person's life and decisions
· the close relationship between apocalypticism and Christianity which is frequently expressed in a deep persecution complex
· the consequences of penal substitutionary atonement in Christian theology, and the direct connection made to a potentially dangerous culture of enablement through unconditional forgiveness

FYI, I will be making and publishing more content on my YouTube channel with my new-found spare time since completing my study of scripts and provenance claims for the Museum of the Bible Dead Sea Scrolls. Mostly responses to bad apologetics videos—be sure to check them out if you are interested in that sort of thing...

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

I am bumping this thead because of a series of comments which appaered in another thread in the FOI forum, and it has prompted some additional thoughts that I think are worth exploring. For some context, this poster was put off by a throw-away comment made by DeluxeMoustache to the integration of Travis Hamonic's faith and his decision to opt out of the 2020 playoffs…


First off, I don't believe that DeluxeMoustache meant anything even remotely disrespectful or malicious in his post, but having said that, I think it shows a demonstrable failure to grasp the significance of religious belief and practise for a lot of people. And I think that level of understanding can come only through experience. In other words, unless you have actually experienced what it means to have a belief in the presence of God and a sense of his impact on your daily life, then you cannot understand how inseparable God is from the most mundane happenings of day-to-day life.

Here is how the poster responded to DeluxeMoustache's attempted explanation:


I certainly understand why he took offense to DeluxeMoustache's posts and his trite dismissal of religion, but the ire is probably misplaced. My guess is that it stems from the same sort of Christian persecution complex that stems from apocalypticism, which most accurately applies to modern, Western Evangelicalism. The modern iteration with which we are most familiar is a twenty-first century projection of an ancient phenomenon that transcends the boundaries of both Christianity and Judaism. Hell, there were apocalypticists in ancient Mesopotamia, Babylon, Assyria and Akkadia. By and large their expressions would be fairly closely aligned to the current Christrian apologetic worldview.


I think this part of his response plays into this discussion, which I promoted on this board a few weeks ago. Contrition and forgiveness are both cardinal virtues, but I think they are also prone to significant abuse and manipulation through the Christian model of penal substitutionary atonement. God’s wrath is arbitrarily defined and applied to any and all instances which confront the nebulous idea of God’s "holiness," and as such, it becomes easier to vilify and condemn all objectionable behaviour as "sin," and to artificially equalise all infractions. On the other hand, the all-encompassing forgiveness that is obtainable through the sacrifice of Christ also equalises all people in the eyes of God regardless of their infractions: forgiveness is then afforded to a repentant genocidal maniac, and withheld from an unrepentent adulterer or a "blasphemer" (of which there is no such thing, but that is another topic for another post). I am particularly reminded of the incredibly offensive Jack T. Chick tract, "Lisa":

http://www.boolean-union.com/Chick/Lisa/Lisa.htm


It is also interesting to me that the poster aligns this particular behaviour with "atheism." I would like to see this connection explored more deeply, but then I also wonder if this sort of reaction is borne more of a repugnance for hypocrisy than it is about missing the God-belief. As already discussed in this thread, I think there is something to be said about behaviours and actions which are beyond redemption; I also think that an uncritical Christian theology of forgiveness can potentially contribute to a dangerous culture of enabling serial abusers.

So, there is a mix in here of a whole bunch of things that interest me:

· the inability of the uninitiated to grapple with the deep and meaningful impact of "god" on a person's life and decisions
· the close relationship between apocalypticism and Christianity which is frequently expressed in a deep persecution complex
· the consequences of penal substitutionary atonement in Christian theology, and the direct connection made to a potentially dangerous culture of enablement through unconditional forgiveness

FYI, I will be making and publishing more content on my YouTube channel with my new-found spare time since completing my study of scripts and provenance claims for the Museum of the Bible Dead Sea Scrolls. Mostly responses to bad apologetics videos—be sure to check them out if you are interested in that sort of thing...

I think there is and should be a difference between behavior that God can forgive and me forgiving it, he's God, his job is to be merciful, I may try to aspire to that but I reserve the right to be human about some things, kiddy diddling being high on that list

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

I am bumping this thead because of a series of comments which appaered in another thread in the FOI forum, and it has prompted some additional thoughts that I think are worth exploring. For some context, this poster was put off by a throw-away comment made by DeluxeMoustache to the integration of Travis Hamonic's faith and his decision to opt out of the 2020 playoffs…


First off, I don't believe that DeluxeMoustache meant anything even remotely disrespectful or malicious in his post, but having said that, I think it shows a demonstrable failure to grasp the significance of religious belief and practise for a lot of people. And I think that level of understanding can come only through experience. In other words, unless you have actually experienced what it means to have a belief in the presence of God and a sense of his impact on your daily life, then you cannot understand how inseparable God is from the most mundane happenings of day-to-day life.

Here is how the poster responded to DeluxeMoustache's attempted explanation:


I certainly understand why he took offense to DeluxeMoustache's posts and his trite dismissal of religion, but the ire is probably misplaced. My guess is that it stems from the same sort of Christian persecution complex that stems from apocalypticism, which most accurately applies to modern, Western Evangelicalism. The modern iteration with which we are most familiar is a twenty-first century projection of an ancient phenomenon that transcends the boundaries of both Christianity and Judaism. Hell, there were apocalypticists in ancient Mesopotamia, Babylon, Assyria and Akkadia. By and large their expressions would be fairly closely aligned to the current Christrian apologetic worldview.


I think this part of his response plays into this discussion, which I promoted on this board a few weeks ago. Contrition and forgiveness are both cardinal virtues, but I think they are also prone to significant abuse and manipulation through the Christian model of penal substitutionary atonement. God’s wrath is arbitrarily defined and applied to any and all instances which confront the nebulous idea of God’s "holiness," and as such, it becomes easier to vilify and condemn all objectionable behaviour as "sin," and to artificially equalise all infractions. On the other hand, the all-encompassing forgiveness that is obtainable through the sacrifice of Christ also equalises all people in the eyes of God regardless of their infractions: forgiveness is then afforded to a repentant genocidal maniac, and withheld from an unrepentent adulterer or a "blasphemer" (of which there is no such thing, but that is another topic for another post). I am particularly reminded of the incredibly offensive Jack T. Chick tract, "Lisa":

http://www.boolean-union.com/Chick/Lisa/Lisa.htm


It is also interesting to me that the poster aligns this particular behaviour with "atheism." I would like to see this connection explored more deeply, but then I also wonder if this sort of reaction is borne more of a repugnance for hypocrisy than it is about missing the God-belief. As already discussed in this thread, I think there is something to be said about behaviours and actions which are beyond redemption; I also think that an uncritical Christian theology of forgiveness can potentially contribute to a dangerous culture of enabling serial abusers.

So, there is a mix in here of a whole bunch of things that interest me:

· the inability of the uninitiated to grapple with the deep and meaningful impact of "god" on a person's life and decisions
· the close relationship between apocalypticism and Christianity which is frequently expressed in a deep persecution complex
· the consequences of penal substitutionary atonement in Christian theology, and the direct connection made to a potentially dangerous culture of enablement through unconditional forgiveness

FYI, I will be making and publishing more content on my YouTube channel with my new-found spare time since completing my study of scripts and provenance claims for the Museum of the Bible Dead Sea Scrolls. Mostly responses to bad apologetics videos—be sure to check them out if you are interested in that sort of thing...

What’s your YouTube channel?

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by You Need a Thneed

What’s your YouTube channel?

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBT..._as=subscriber

My audience is very small. (or possibly very selective?)

[Textcritic]

Double post.

[Fighting Banana Slug]

I enjoy your take on things Textcritic. I am also interesting in those takeaways, but I think I am coming at those from a completely different angle:

· the inability of the uninitiated to grapple with the deep and meaningful impact of "god" on a person's life and decisions

While the response in the Hamonic thread was rather flippant and dismissive, I wouldn't categorize that as the uninitiated inability to grasp the concept. To be fair to Hamonic, I would think he does hold a closely-held belief that informed his decision. My question to him might be, however, do you think god would protect you? The exchange reminded me more of the eye-roll situation where the winning QB praises god after the big win.
Does god really care about what team wins and loses? Good chance the other QB believes in the same things, if they are playing in the SEC

· the close relationship between apocalypticism and Christianity which is frequently expressed in a deep persecution complex.

This one has always confounded me. If there is an honestly held belief of the apocalypse coming (soon), then why have any cares at all, let alone the persecution complex. They will be saved, end of story.

· the consequences of penal substitutionary atonement in Christian theology, and the direct connection made to a potentially dangerous culture of enablement through unconditional forgiveness

Dangerous culture indeed, which I agree is fostered by atonement and unconditional forgiveness. This is the part as an atheist which worries me the most. It is one thing to say that most christians are good people that have their own personal beliefs that harm no one. But I don't think it is an accident that some of the terrible abuses of children and subsequent cover up come out of this system of belief.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

I think there is and should be a difference between behavior that God can forgive and me forgiving it, he's God, his job is to be merciful...

That certainly makes some sense, but there are aspects of the divine economy which defy all efforts to rationalise. For example, God's holiness: supposedly so unimaginably transcendent and pure that it is impossible for him to tolerate the presence of "sin." I think this stems from the ancient view of divine/human transactions, whereby the value of small offerings made by humans was inversely proportional to that of the giver. In other words, for a god, giving much is giving little; for man, giving little is giving much. Hence man’s small gift to the god is as valuable as god’s big gift to man, but at the same time this equivalence of the gifts signifies and establishes the nonequivalence between god and man. To put another spin on this, small infractions committed by humans are intensified to such a degree before God that they require eternal condemnation and punishment.

I may try to aspire to that but I reserve the right to be human about some things, kiddy diddling being high on that list.

That sounds good in theory, but in my experience it seldom if ever works out this way in Christian culture. We were prompted to forgive unconditionally and totally because that is how God does it. I think you are right to point out here how truly absurd that is.