This thread is intended for a discussion between myself and Vanya (though others of course may jump in) about pacifism, specifically her interpretation of pacifism, and the Scriptural, traditional, and/or purely rational reasons she may have to believe as she does. And since I hate to be the first to state someone else's views (invariably I am told I have gotten them wrong), I would like to ask Vanya, who has elswhere described herself as a pacifist, to post in this thread and explain what she means by that, and briefly how she came to that view and why she holds it.

Thus with great pleasure in anticipation and without further ado I yield the floor to Constable Jaynin Mimetes. Let's give her a hand, folks.

Oh my, didn't expect to have to do this.

First let me say that my series "Sanctity of Life" is required reading for this discussion. All five parts are available on the HW Blog. Links are provided at the end of this post.

Also, please note that all my views are just that; my views. This isn't necessarily research, and I rely more on conviction and personal opinion than I do on this or that person's opinion on what I should or should not believe. Basically, if you don't call me a heretic, I won't call you one either.

Pacifism can be defined in two different ways. One, objection to war. Two: objection to violence. My version is the former. People I know who term themselves pacifists tend to reject all forms of violence, including self defense, or defense of their loved ones. I live in a community of Mennonites who would stand by and allow their family to be subjected to murder and rape before they would raise their hand against another person. I am not in this camp.

However, I do not believe that there ever has been or ever will be a war that was worth the price paid in human blood. The massacres ordered in the old testament are a slightly ambiguous subject for me, at the moment. I don't believe they would have been justified if anyone but the supreme and omnipotent God ordered it. God can do what man cannot, that is, justify war.

My views originally came about when I read Lord of the Rings for the first time:



Who are we, as mere humans, to condemn other humans' ways or actions as wrong? Who are we to pass death in judgement, to wage war against other nations, to slaughter thousands whom we do not even know? If you attack me in the night, if you break into my house armed, if you threaten the lives of those who I hold dear, I will defend myself, and I will kill you if I must. But if you escape, or if your threats come from afar, or if you simply stand between me and something I desire than I will do anything and everything, up to sacrificing my own life, before I will take yours needlessly.

Pacifism is the closest I can come to labeling this belief.

Part One: Torture
Part Two: Suicide
Part Three: Sacrifice
Part Four: Killing
Part Five: Conclusion

Hey guys!

It's awesome that you guys are discussing theology! But I'm afraid this thread doesn't belong in the theology room.



So I'm going to be moving this into the General Discussion room as soon as y'all notice this note. Unless you'd rather continue this discussion via PM. I'll let you decide.

Thank you for understanding!

* raises hand *

But, Madam Moderator, the discussion is really about the Sanctity of Life series I wrote for the blog, which was born in the theology room, and is sort of, in a rule stretching way, about writing.

*cough* Did you read Andrew's post up there at the top of the theology room, Jaynin?

I'm sorry... But from what Sam stated, this is a discussion on beliefs and not how to portray those beliefs in writing. I can move it to General Discussions, but this really doesn't belong in here, even in a rule-stretching way.

So, again, would you prefer this in GD or in a PM? I'm guessing GD due to the nature of this thread.

Ooh, Council Member vs. zealous Moderator. Fun fun fun. But GD works for me.

I'm interested in hearing about how you would use this in your writing as well, Jaynin, though. I'd like to know how it affects your writing when you work on a novel that involves a war, or death and killing.

I'm taking it your POV comes across when you're writing your characters, and your story plot etc. It will affect a lot of what you write, won't it?

If Sam doesn't want to discuss that in this thread, maybe I could start another where we could discuss this. I don't want to go off topic, but I think it fits here; if not, Sam, just say so!

I have read your blog posts on this, but a while ago now; I will have to go and re read them!

I'm happy with whatever Sam wants. He's running this show.

@Elanor: Well, if you read the series, I believe I mention how I came about most of these views. It was sort of an overnight thing that happened as a result of watching too much Doctor Who back to back with Stargate. As an example of how this affected my writing:

At the very end of The Justice Project the main character blows up a laboratory and destroys most of the city in the process. He does this for many reasons: to escape, to destroy the research, and out of revenge. Later I came back to the scene and was extremely bothered by it. Priorly I had agreed with everything my MC did, and would do the same in his case. But I couldn't condone the explosion, in which hundreds of innocent people died.

I don't think Dorus would have cared. I think that what he went on to do in the epilogue was far worse than that. But I cared. As an author, I couldn't just let those people die, and never come back to it. And I couldn't come back to it, because it was at the end of the book. The question of the morality of the deaths of those people was completely off-topic.

Eventually I rewrote the scene. I kept the plot intact, but I made the explosion an accident, instead of sabotage, and I limited the damage to the immediate area, bringing about another reason for the collapse of the government.

Even though I may not always agree with my characters' actions, I believe it is my duty to not overlook the gravity of their actions. I think that if your character does something like blow up a city, it needs to be addressed. I consciously avoid incidental deaths; people who are randomly killed out of convenience and never mentioned again.

This doesn't mean I don't write about death, war, and violence. In Lighting Ranger someone dies on every page, practically. I don't spend entire chapters eulogizing their deaths, and there are many soldiers who fall, and are never mentioned again. But the entire subject of murder and violence is a theme of the book, and so it doesn't go unnoticed or unmentioned. My MC has nightmares of the people he has killed. I don't treat death lightly.

Sam, are you willing to open the floor for other people to discuss how they deal with pacifism and war in their novels? I deal with a different facet of the topic in my current novel, so I think there's great potential for such a discussion. If you're willing to expand the topic to include other people's novels, I would leave the topic here in Theology. If you'd rather keep this thread more focused as a way for you to pick Jaynin's brain, I would move it to General Discussion. Let Nemo know which you'd prefer and she'll move it if necessary.

Maybe we can do both. Go back and forth with the discussion... after all, we only started this thread to avoid derailing one in Village Lore.

Alright. As long as you end up relating it to writing, I'll allow the discussion aside from writing to take place here, as long as it's understood right now that it will be both. But this is only an exception because it will relate to writing.

Carry on.

*keeps a close eye on this thread*

*grins and gives her studious mod a cupcake* It's natural in a theology discussion for there to be some side-tracking to discuss people's beliefs in general. After all, the trouble with theology is that you need to ascertain your core beliefs before you can write about them (generally speaking). The "God's Sovereignty" thread was a good example - there were a lot of posts in that thread that were solely people's personal beliefs, but ultimately it all tied back to writing because the thread author was trying to answer a question for his book.

If it gets to be too general we'll kick it out, but if y'all are open to discussing other novels, I'll probably be back with Peter's Angel stuffs. Right now I'm watching in interest, since Peter's Angel deals with a facet of pacifism (or what could probably be classified as pacifism).

I deal with this mainly in the TPof series, because I want to portray a realistic picture of war, both the good and the bad. I wanted to portray as many facets of war as I could, and then make the readers make their own decision about their opinion.

It grew, though, and the theme became more of an exploration of whether or not war is worth fighting, and whether it's more costly to fight a war, or to not fight a war. Or if freedom is worth fighting for, or if it should be surrendered peacefully, as well as whether or not it is wrong for trained volunteers capable of defending themselves to decide not to fight and let civilians be murdered. Or if they should fight, and pay a high price for it, but civilians will live.

Sorry for neglecting this so long.



As long as we can agree on the Nicene Creed, I won't call you a heretic.



OK. I will confess I have some sympathy for your camp, but none for the other.



Interesting that you would come to that conclusion reading Lord of the Rings. So let me ask you the first two of my many hopefully thought-provoking questions:

1. If war is never justified, what would have been the right course of action for the Free Peoples to take in the Lord of the Rings when threatened with attack and destruction by Sauron's armies?

2. If one state declares war on another, what is the appropriate and moral response by the leaders of the defending state?



I would say we certainly have the right to make moral judgments according to reason and revelation. If you don't agree with that, it poses problems in areas far beyond just war. What about criminal justice, for instance?



I can certainly agree with a strong aversion to war, especially war in which civilians may be harmed. I, for instance, do not believe the use of nuclear weapons has ever been or is likely ever to be justified. I also have difficulty justifying the use of conventional bombs against civilian cities. But I have to think that at least a totally defensive kind of war could be justified. If, for instance, a tyrannical foreign state declared war on a free country with the goal of enslaving its people, I think it would be wrong for their leaders not to go to war.

As a minor and not terribly important point, if one side uses nuclear weapons and the only way to stop them from continuing is the use of nuclear weapons, then it's probably justified. Certainly, however, the use of conventional weapons to eliminate their ability to use nukes is the better way to go if possible. Far fewer civilian casualties that way.

Hmm. Maybe. I really have a hard time justifying warfare prosecuted against civilians in any way. If it's ours or theirs, then maybe it would be justified, though.

By the way, when I said "use of nukes has never been justified," I meant "at no time when nukes were actually used was it justified." I didn't mean "there has never been a time when one could justifiably have used a nuclear weapon," although I think that's probably true too. I can imagine hypothetical sci-fi scenarios where it would be justified, but by and large nukes are used for indiscriminate slaughter of noncombatants in barbaric "total wars." That's what I object to.

Right. Well, I would argue that the first use of nuclear weapons was justified; both by what they knew then, and what they do now. If you look at the estimated casualties from an actual attack on Japan, well, many lives were saved. Including those of Japanese civilians. Because many of them would have attempted to attack the Allies' soldiers, and just been killed uselessly. It's what happens when you have fanatically loyal people following a government that refuses to accept defeat. Nasty, but I still don't see any way it could have been avoided that would have resulted in fewer deaths.

That's not actually true. The Japanese government had offered, prior to the bombings, to surrender if they were allowed to keep their Emperor. The bombs were dropped to get them to agree to the "unconditional surrender" on which America insisted, unnecessarily, immorally, and at the cost of countless lives.

Hmm. I think it was a little more complicated than that, but I haven't studied it that much. I would argue that the bombs were not, however, any more immoral than further attacks would have been. I don't think it adds up to countless lives, either, though. Quite a few, certainly. And I do know they were overly fixated on the whole unconditional surrender thing. (Not sure if it was just the U.S. or all the Allies, though.) I suspect it was to ensure that they wouldn't just start another war again, but you'd think they'd have learned from WWII that that doesn't go so well, seeing as it was largely caused by the treaty at the end of WWI, which was intended to keep the Germans from being a threat again. And we all saw how well that went...

Don't forget the Versailles Peace Treaty started the Vietnam War as well.

*cough* Official HRM Voice *cough*

Don't forget it has to tie back into writing.

A slight imprecision on my part. Technically they hadn't offered to surrender, but, well, I'll let the words of the Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence explain:

"What prevented them from suing for peace or from bringing their plot into the open was their uncertainty on two scores. First, they wanted to know the meaning of unconditional surrender and the fate we planned for Japan after defeat. Second, they tried to obtain from us assurances that the Emperor could remain on the throne after surrender."

Ellis Zacharias, Eighteen Words That Bagged Japan, Saturday Evening Post, 11/17/45, pg. 17.

In other words:

"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

- Dwight Eisenhower, Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63

Besides, as a matter of principle, it's wrong to target noncombatants as part of a war, even for the purpose of saving your soldiers. As for more Japanese civilians dying in a land attack because they would attack the American soldiers, I'd like to see a source for that. But even if it's true, it doesn't justify the bombings. Killing civilian combatants would have been acceptable if genuinely necessary; killing civilian noncombatants by the hundreds of thousands was not.

Re relating to writing:



This thread was originally created to ask about Jaynin's pacifism as such. Arguably it should have been in GD, but it wound up here and I thought we had approval to continue as we were. If that's not the case I'd rather move it than cut short the real-life theology discussion when it digresses from writing, especially as I have difficulty telling the difference between "writing theology" and "real theology."

*pokes head in*

As a note, those quotes are simply what "we" say. None of the Japanese government said that they were ready to surrender, and if they wanted to find a peaceful conclusion, they would've made it clear. In war, we have to take their word for it, not what we think they mean.
Besides, according to my family historians, the Japanese code of Bushido (which was still very much in effect among higher-ranking officials) would've prevented them from surrendering totally.
And if we backed down and let them retain their strength and government, they could've eventually turned on us. Like George H.W. Bush failing to follow up on wiping the Taliban out of Kuwait, because he believed that they were done fighting. That was before September 11.
In the light of my above (possibly flawed) arguments, I believe bombing Hiroshima is justified, for the sake that it probably saved thousands of lives (American and Japanese) in the future.

Ahem, carry on. *slinkaway*

Actually, they're what "we" mostly try to hide. The people who disagreed with the bombing are not the people who define the cultural narrative at the moment.



I would assume that if the Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence made a statement on the Japanese's motives for failing to offer a surrender, he had good reason to believe those were the motives. Most likely the Japanese government had put these questions to the American one in response to the ultimatum they were given. If it is to be argued that Ellis Zacharias was dishonest or misinformed, I submit that the burden of proof lies on the side making that claim.



We could have offered them clear terms of peace, including assurance that their Emperor could keep his throne. That wouldn't have hurt us. Instead we demanded unconditional surrender, with terms to be set after they gave up, or we would mete out to their nation "prompt and utter destruction."



Do you mean "totally prevented them from surrendering" or "prevented them from offering total surrender"?



First of all, we did let them keep their Emperor in the end, so we obviously didn't need to reserve the right to get rid of him. Second of all, wars were prosecuted for centuries without feeling the need to utterly cripple every enemy country, and it worked out all right. Sure, they could have "turned on us," but based on that argument, we really should go cripple every state with which we have poor relations.



I'm a little confused. The 9/11 attacks were carried out by al-Qaeda terrorists, mostly from Saudi Arabia. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I am asking for clarification: What did the Taliban in Kuwait have to do with 9/11?



Even if it did, can we say "you can kill anyone at all, provided it saves more lives down the road"? To make it more concrete, is it right to kill one innocent man if by so doing you will save the lives of two others? I find mathematical morality quite frightening.

Oh boy. This is what I get for sticking my nose where it didn't belong. XP

Oh-kay. Now correct me if I'm wrong (and I know you will), but let's see if I can put my thoughts coherently on word processor.


Excuse my poor grammar. I meant the latter.


We needed to have the assurance that Japan (which was a world power, and still is) wouldn't come back and hit us. We don't have to neutralize every state that dislikes us. But please remember, that they were the ones who pulled us into the war by bombing Pearl Harbor. If they still had capable military strength, what was to stop them from hitting us again? We had to make sure that they were unable to launch another attack.


I was misquoted (sorry). I meant the al-Qaeda terrorists. My point is, we should've pushed on and eliminated the threat they posed, but we didn't. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe that we did have the major radical Muslim leaders backed into a corner (Kuwait). Instead, we backed down and let them go. Same people directed the attack against the World Trade Centers.

Anyway, I hope my thoughts were more coherent this time. Thing is, I know what I mean, but I have trouble getting the point across in discussions like this.

OK! Good to know. I'm moving this to GD so that y'all can continue discussing without having to worry about relating it back to writing. Y'all might even want to move to a PM, but the thread is good for now.

You mean Nemo. 'Twas Nemo that said that not me, just felt the need to clarify that. *Scurries out*

I've seen it a couple of places, but I don't recall where exactly. However, I also find it highly probable, given the Japanese culture at the time. I believe the estimated casualties were along the lines of one million Allied soldiers, and ten million Japanese. Now your last part of this, I completely disagree with. Because by not doing it, you are knowingly causing the death of many more people, including civilians. And while I don't know the exact number, I'm pretty sure it was hundreds of thousands. Might be wrong about that, though. Also, while they did hit civilians, I believe the primary target was actually Japanese manufacturing capability, which just happened to be in the middle of the city.

Sorry, I completely forgot about this. I haven't time to read it all now, but I'll get back to it as soon as I can. I do want to note one thing, though, that you asked me...

Sauron and his armies were completely evil and unredeemable. Human beings are not. The people of middle earth slaying hundreds of thousands of evil beings is not something I have a problem with. The people of Earth slaying hundreds of thousands of other people of Earth is morally reprehensible. See the difference? That's one of the biggest differences between fantasy and real life...

Back, finally, with my thoughts.

I was going to tell ya'll this is not a history lesson, but the subject at hand is actually a very good example.

You cannot convince me that those bombings were justified. Innocent people died. There is no justification for that.

It has been postulated that if we hadn't bombed them, they would have retaliated. That is not sufficient justification. We are responsible for our actions here and now. When you're faced with a decision to kill or not you are responsible for you actions at that moment, not some hypothetical future you think you are defending.

Yes, we are called to look to the future, but not at the price of human life.

What we did, in Japan, was to take on the role of God. We decided who should live and who should die, and what risk was worth the cost.

Who can know what the future is? Who can say for sure that if those people hadn't died more would have? The future is not in our control. We cannot presume to predict it. To do so, and to shed blood on those presumptions is arrogance beyond belief. I stand with Sam. "They would have..." is a feeble justification indeed for a slaughter so terrible.

And to take it a step further, even if there was concrete evidence, it still doesn't justify a civilian attack. Take out their military bases. Infiltrate their intelligence. Find a way to stop them, yet, but exhaust every single option available, and wait until the very last minute before you even consider such an approach.

It simply is not worth the cost.

Next question? (Are we doing question and answer or is this an open discussion going wherever the wind blows, or what? I've lost track of the point of this thread. <grin>)

(I am, however, enjoying myself. And I'm wondering if I can get a Sanctity of Life Part Six out of this for the e-book version...)

Hey everyone. I owe you an explanation for my absence from this thread. Replies will be forthcoming, but probably not today. Anyway, here's why I haven't replied:

I am a firm believer in Just War. I think war can be justified, under certain conditions, but that we must follow the principles both of jus ad bellum (that is, you must have a just reason for going to war) and jus in bello (that is, you must behave justly within the war). Although these u.S. were, in my opinion within jus ad bellum to go to World War II, they were not, in my opinion, within jus in bello to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and honestly, I'm not at all sure conventional bombing is under the Just War umbrella either). This is something I am very passionate about, and I have a tendency to get carried away in the heat of discussion. While I generally do my best to maintain a tone of Christian charity:

1. Sometimes I fail,
2. Sometimes what I think is a tone of Christian charity doesn't seem that way to others, and
3. Sometimes even a tone of Christian charity (IMO, anyway) is deemed too much a "debate" for these forums.

In light of this, and in light of the fact that I found myself growing more and more passionate, and replying more and more heatedly and quickly, I decided to withdraw temporarily from this thread and allow myself to cool down, before the thread gets closed and I banned.

Sam, they can't ban you without banning me and... I don't think that's possible. But cooling down is always good. However, I do want to reassure you of the safety of the thread for the time being. Ya'll have been behaving with remarkable charity and decorum. I'm just going to say that now since, being involved, I'm not really in a position to judge the thread should it get out of hand...

Hello Ciela! Been a long time since I ran across you in this realm!!!

Anyway.

A bit of background. My grandfather was in the military. My father is in the military. I plan on joining the military. My brothers do. Obviously I think the military is a legitimate profession for a Christian, and war is sometimes acceptable.

Now onto the topic at hand.

For many years I believed our bombing of Japan was justified. I have recently changed my mind.

The philosophical framework I use to judge this decision, my values criterion, if you will, is what is Biblically acceptable - what is right. You could use a different criterion, such as "the lesser of two evils", or "the greater good", but A. I find those nowhere in scripture, and B. I think everyone here can accept this criterion.

Now. A plain reading of scripture, 2,000 years of interpretation of that scripture, and Just War Theory inspired by our Western, Christian culture, tell us that it is never acceptable to kill the innocent. Even to preserve something good. We don't abort babies to preserve the "emotional health" of their mothers, and I would argue that we can't even abort them in cases of rape, etc. Why? Because we do not have the authority to. God is sovereign, and He orders us not to play God, not to try and find the best outcome for the world at large, but to obey His commandments.

So, with the above in mind, I find the arguments about the prolongation of the war, and millions of lives saved fallacious -why? Because I'm not using the lesser of two evils as my criterion, I'm using what is morally acceptable to God, what brings Him the most glory.

Now, right at the get-go I said I'm for just war. So, what if these people weren't innocent? What if they would have attacked us had we invaded? Is anyone innocent?

True, no one is innocent, but that includes us. Once again, we cannot play God in deciding who lives or dies.

As to my second point, A. We can't punish them for a future event that we don't have proof all of them would have engaged in. Even if 25% of them didn't, we would still be in the wrong. B. It's arguable that they would be morally justified in protecting their homes from invasion, even if their government was wrong, and C. You cannot punish all of the children for the sins of their fathers.

I'd like to further note that our leaders did not see these bombings as targeting military targets. They knew full well, and record in their writings, that they were bombing civilians, and civilians alone. Einstein himself was very depressed about this in his later years. In fact, one of the two cities bombed was not even a factory town, and therefore is even more morally questionable than the already very grey-area firebombings of southern Germany.

So we were deliberately killing civilians alone, not even ascollateral damage mind you, but as the target, in direct contradiction with just war theory, and in complete disregard for treaties we'd previously given our word on, to bring a quick end to the war.

So does the circumstance of a quick end justify this?

Nope, not in my mind. Nothing ever justifies evil, no one can, except Christ, and in justifying us he was hung on a tree, and forsaken by His father...

(tiny note from a politics and government major interested in geo-politics - we supported the government of Kuwait in 1991, tossing out the invading Army of Iraq (not the religious Taliban of Afghanistan), which had nothing to do with 9/11 (unlike the aforesaid Taliban), and wisely leaving Saddam Hussein in power to offset Iran, a secular, socialist dictator to regularly go to war with the religious fanatics in Iran, something Bush Jr. tragically didn't grasp, which has lead to some unpleasantness today with Iran. xD)

*would like to read people's thoughts on what Eli said *

Like I said before, I'm staying out of this thread and will not be discussing my view here, for obvious reasons.

I am reading, though.

Me too, though my reasons are extremely likely very different...but THE PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW!!!! (what you guys are all gonna say next, I mean)

Hey Eli! I figured you'd show up on a debate of this magnitude.

Hmm. I believe (like Samstarret) that war can be justified. I believe in protecting the innocent, even if that means interrogation and mild torture.

I can't support the slaying of innocents, though.

I still have strong views on subjects here, but since I'm historically inadequate and not a reasonable debater, I think I'll step back and watch from the sidelines from hereonin.

Hey, not to be nit-picky, but I have a couple blurbs.

1. You're implying that Iran was and is controlled by a fanatically Islamic government. This is a sweeping and politically/culturally charged accusation. As an experienced formal debater, I'd like to see some proof there. It's not that I do or don't agree, just that you don't say something like that so authoritatively without evidence.

2. Are you saying that Saddam Hussein was somehow morally superior (despite his genocidal tendencies) to religious fanatics in Iran? Or merely that his prolonged rule was a better defense policy? Because either position seems morally untenable. Saddam Hussein was no different that a religious fanatic. He simply sinned for different reasons.

As for the debate, one has to realize that interrogation and torture must be tempered by the restraints of Due Process. I'm sorry, but Guantanamo Bay was an enormous violation of Due Process, an essential part of Liberty.

As for my views, I will first say that my father, his father, and that guy's father were in the military. Two of my cousins are in the military, and two of my friends are in the military. Saying I'm a pacifist (which I'm not saying) is not an insult to my relatives. On the other hand, one should not feel obligated to support "war" in principle simply because they respect the Armed Forces.

I'm not a pacifist. I believe that there are circumstances in which uses of force are justified. On the other hand, I do not believe that a proper government has the authority to wage an offensive war, for any except the most extreme of circumstances.

We don't live in a perfect world and sometimes we have to do morally ambiguous actions. Or even things that seem wrong, or at least harsh and cruel.

On the other hand, I have to wonder how Jesus would spend His time. There were lots of things it wouldn't have been "wrong" for Him to do that He didn't do. Because something else was more important.

In fact, I have gone so far as to say that those Founding Fathers who were Christian were wasting their time as revolutionaries. Because not even the perfect government will save men's souls. But Jesus will. I'd rather people knew about Jesus than democracy. I'd have preferred sending an army of missionaries to Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than soldiers. Because governments will always, always be corrupted, no matter how good they are at the start, because you can't tell me that one of two unsaved societies has a moral cause for fighting the other, because wars, no matter how noble, will always result in profit for the evil, because Jesus is the only thing that lasts and everything will go to pieces despite your best wishes.

The actions of the Allies in WWII have ultimately resulted in unjustified death and suffering far outstripping that caused by Hitler (and for those who disagree, I challenge you with the rise of Communism, the atrocities committed by Russia AFTER WWII, the atomic bomb and other bombings of innocents, and horrible human rights violations in the tests of experimental weapons during and after WWII). Because all the societies involved were equally under the authority of the Prince of the Power of the Air and he did what he pleased with them.

So, violence may be justified, but it isn't always worth the time.

I would like to recommend we keep this a philosophical conversation and leave real world examples out of it, except perhaps as the occasional example - not as the main focus on the debate. Arguing over real examples can be too personal for a lot of people, and can also make it difficult for those of us who don't want to nitpick history.

I'll be back to reread Eli's post later today...

Without examples, we have nothing. The more examples, the more legitimacy our arguments have. We live in the real world.

I agree with most of what Neil said. I don't think wars not waged in self defense are morally justifiable.

To Neil's critique of my critique of some of the statements Ciela claimed to be fact - 1. This wasn't a major point of debate, and as this opinion is a majority opinion, I don't feel the need to defend it for the sake of proving myself right... it adds nothing to the actual debate here, either way. 2 Saddam was by no means morally superior... a sinner is a sinner is a sinner, whether he is a John Doe or Adolf Hitler. I simply meant Bush Jr. didn't have the best understanding of the intricacies of the Middle East.

Anyway. I agree and endorse just about everything Neil said... excepting his statement about the founding fathers. I originally posted in response to Ciela, and those claiming the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were morally justifiable.

So, I'd like to hear anyone on that side of the argument respond.

Dr., only my first two nitpicks were directed at you. The other statements were directed towards the debate at large.

Yes, examples are everything. We can debate philosophical hypothetics but if we can't apply them to real world examples we can never act on them.

This is one the the surprisingly less heated debates that have happened on this forum relating to this very subject...I'd rather not preemptively cut off an particular argument.

I understand that the Saddam Hussein issue in no way contributes to this debate, but I have a strong (perhaps too strong) desire to correct...well, words fail me. But yes, ironically, Bush Jr. didn't comprehend the Middle East policy created by his very father and father's friend (Ronald Reagan).

This is not directly linked to the current flow of the debate, but I noticed Jaynin, that you mentioned the ambiguity of some of the slaughters by the Israelites as directed by God.

My pastor is preaching through Joshua right now, and made some really good points. Contrary to what some people have claimed, He was not invoking genocide. War was never done on basis of ethnicity (as evidenced by the survival of Rahab and the Gibeonites), but on the basis of judgement.

The people of Canaan had lived in rebellion to God for thousands of years, worshipping idols, sacrificing their children, and engaging in all kinds of immoral behavior. God has full right to judge people for their sin, and he chose to directly use the Israelites for that.

It's interesting that He did choose to spare those who helped the Israelites, or submitted to them.

It is also interesting, that, with several exceptions, most of the offensive of the conquest of Canaan was conducted by Canaanites--groups of kings banding together and attacking the Israelites first.

Anyway, thought I'd mention that.

As a side note...what is your opinion on the death penalty? Would that entail a separate thread?

As long as it remains a side note I can just answer you... I don't think much about the death penalty. My view of the justice system is extremely old testament and not very patriotic. But without going into all that, to give a short answer: I think there are times when a death penalty is warranted. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is the definition of justice, and that extends to a life for a life. However, I don't approve of executions being carried out by random strangers with no connection to the event simply following orders from a government who has no connection to the event after an investigation by a court of law which also has no connection to the event. I believe in the right of the family for vengeance, and I think that if you sentence someone to death you'd better have the guts to kill him yourself.

Oh yes, it's a good one. Okay.

No, he didn't at all... thought they'd left the work undone unintentionally. I sometimes wonder if his father tried calling him up...

I've put this off long enough. Commencing to reply...

Good. Though, you weren't on the pro-bomb side, were you? I desperately want someone to defend the bombings. Maybe I'll try bribery.

Maybe this is beside the point, but really? This evangelical cliché has gone far enough.

John 19:11

11 Jesus answered, “ You would have no authority [a]over Me, unless it had been given you from above; for this reason he who delivered Me to you has the greater sin.” (emphasis mine)

Now, with that out of the way:



I don't care. Killing combatants and killing noncombatants are completely different things. You don't get to compare a number of combatants killed with a number of noncombatants killed and pick the lower number. The death of noncombatants is not justified by some hypothetical scenario wherein a greater number of combatants die.

@Eli Heavens no. I am most definitely on the anti-bomb side. And we have Arien defending the bombings, don't we?

Oops. My bad, Sam. I didn't mean to imply there are no differences in sin. Some definitely make God angrier than others... like hurting the children who are especial favorites of His, for example.

Arien hasn't replied in this thread since my large anti-bombing post. Glad to hear we're on the same team for once though, Sam.

This thread is being moved back to the Theology room because it now fits under the Theology room purpose. General theological discussions are allowed.

Continue.

We changed the theology room purpose again?