Do not resist an evil person

[Jenyar]

There's a time for everything... but I think the point is that one person's wrong cannot be used to justify another person's wrong.

 

[baumgarten]

Again I am not educated in 'Jesus' but didn't he strike someone once, the traders outside the temple?

Note: You are NOT being violent if you are defending yourself. Violence is an act of violation, if someone is violent to you and you retaliate you are not violating them as they invited that response. IMO!

I don't believe he struck the traders, but he did upturn their tables, scattering their money and damaging the goods they were selling. You could call this violence.

 

[Jenyar]

And it's a natural desire to have sex, which is also a species requirement for survival. So you can see there's more to this than simply mentioning what is "in our design". Things that are perfectly acceptable can become completely unacceptable when abused.

There was a discussion somewhere about whether one wrong can justify another - the whole concept of a "just war" falls under that topic. We're often forced to choose between two wrongs, and even then we'll have to face the consequences of our actions.

For instance, let's say America's leadership chooses to defend itself against the rape of its nation on behalf of its citizens (since it's a democracy), by going after the bad guys at all cost despite the UN's reservations. If it's merely an issue of its survival, what stops it from acting in its own interests by eliminatating any threat by force? The survival of others, even if they are political an ideological enemies? Our minds are the "leadership" of our bodies. How we justify retaliation against an insult to our bodies is of equal importance.

 

[Jenyar]

There is nothing wrong with having sex, as long as both adults are consenting. So that's that issue removed.

Read the rest of the sentence. If there was no concept of abuse, "rape" could just be called "sex".

Poor example as the above example doesn't exist in reality. If you are talking about the war on Iraq, Iraq never invaded America, never declared war on America, did not possess any weapons of mass destruction. There was not a threat from Iraq. Thus no wrong has been righted with the war and no wrong has been justified by the war.

Correct, the war is not against "Iraq" - you can't make war against borders drawn on a map - it's against people, and some of these people happened to be in Iraq (according the US intelligence, at least). Do you know what a fatwa is? Note that I'm not arguing whether it's just or not, it's a supposition. Try replacing "America" in my sentence with "Iraq" or some other country. Many terrorists often do call their attacks on America and Israel simply "justice". An eye for an eye.

Meanwhile it is not unacceptable to defend yourself against a rapist. The choice re non defence is deciding whether the defence may result in your life being terminated. Life is more important that virtue in this instance. You may feel you'd rather die? That's your choice. But defence is not a 'wrong', it is an act of survival on the most basic level.

Nor did I say defense was wrong. But retaliation by the victim might be. How many fights can't end because both parties have "good reason" for vengeance?

 

[wesmorris]

I liked your account ToR. It's a very real problem - how does a person resist being violated without resorting to violence themselves? Jesus seems to have said lots of things like this that go against common sense. Perhaps he said them to get us to think!

I can't help thinking of the Karpman "drama triangle" of victim/persecutor/rescuer. It is a triangle based on shame, all roles are interlinked. The only way to escape it, is to realise your own role and refuse to play. Fearless "turning the other cheek" might just be such a strategy.

Quote from "The Three Faces of Victim" by Lynne Forest.

Interesting stuff. Here's a complementary assessment of personal responsibility, from a perhaps weird angle:

Action expresses value

The op:

Action (down to the level of the smallest motion, breathing, heart beating, etc.) - is the perfect expression of value, as constrained by percieved circumstance and physical reality.

Of course this introduces the question:

Is my perception of my circumstance actually my circumstance? In what ways does my perception limit my freedom that my actual circumstance does not?

No?

 

[Diogenes' Dog]

Interesting stuff. Here's a complementary assessment of personal responsibility, from a perhaps weird angle:

Action (down to the level of the smallest motion, breathing, heart beating, etc.) - is the perfect expression of value, as constrained by percieved circumstance and physical reality.

Of course this introduces the question:

Is my perception of my circumstance actually my circumstance? In what ways does my perception limit my freedom that my actual circumstance does not?

Thanks Wes. Interesting thread - I've got some questions - I shall come over! It reminds me of Charles Peirce's definition of a belief as "a habit of action", thinking of beliefs as based on both what we value and our perceptions.

 

[Ophiolite]

Sorry if my phrasing offends you, Ophiolite, but Crunchy Cat's answer makes more sense.

I don't know if you mean your original statement or your preference for CC's milder response to that statement. Either way I am not offended.

 

[Jenyar]

I don't know if you mean your original statement or your preference for CC's milder response to that statement. Either way I am not offended.

Great, then. I was referring to your original statement, and I was thinking of the way conspiracy theories start: people questioning the testimonies of reliable witnesses - like the "testimonies" of scientists about their own findings.

 

[Ophiolite]

Here is the problem. There are, in my view, no reliable witnesses. What makes the 'testimony' of scientists reliable is that it is always subject to replication and review. We may provisionally accept specific 'testimony' from a scientist, but it requires the repetition or validation of their results by many others before this is accepted as 'true'. And that truth is always subject to revision if new conflicting data comes to light.

 

[Jenyar]

Replication! That's the word I was looking for...

 

[Silas]

I love dug-up old threads! I particularly like seeing something someone wrote in answer to me, like a year ago, and thinking, "Oh, damn, I wish I'd replied and said this", and then down the page I find out that I said the exact thing that occurred to me to say a year later.

I'm also intrigued by stuff like this:

I'm fully on board with the idea that Jesus and Magdalen were married. But the idea that the bloodline of this peasant couple from Judaea was somehow maintained in secret even as long as Constantine's recognition of Christianity (which was when Christianity first achieved any kind of genuine authority) 250 years after the death of Jesus, let alone the two hundred more years before the Frankish Empire and the Merovingians were established in Gaul, is evident nonsense. In the 1st Century, Gaul was a semi-barbarian land entirely a fiefdom of the pagan Roman Empire. And Judaea had its own problems, what with the revolt in 66 and the destruction of the Temple in 70. The Franks were Germanic tribes who invaded in the 5th Century.

In addition to the inconceivably low probability of the bloodline of the most famous person in the world to have been maintained without break for 2,000 years in secret, that whole Priory of Sion thing was just a hoax anyway! The Priory of Sion was established in 1956 by some anti-semitic extreme right wingers who happened to take the name of a monastic order which never had any influence and ceased to exist in 1617. All the supposed documentation making Leonardo and Isaac Newton members, was forged by them.

When the hell did I know all this, and why did I forget it?

MedicineWoman, I trust you got the answers you were seeking, since there have been about twenty documentaries "debunking" the Da Vinci Code and its correlated theories.

(I put debunking in quotes, because most of these programmes make no more sense when attacking Dan Brown than Dan Brown does in his useless books. )

Apologies for butting into what seems to have turned into a very sensible discussion. I may be around here a bit more often, since Internet Infidels appears to have been hijacked by Jesus-was-a-myth fanatics.

 

[Ophiolite]

..... than Dan Brown does in his useless books. )

I am shocked, appalled, dismayed and alarmed. Startled, diconcerted, perturbed and deeply concerned. Useless books? Useless books!!

What a calumny! These books have been very useful in turning Mr Brown into a very rich man.