posted
So two people are talking and seemingly having a grand ol' time talking about other demoninations of Christanity and occasionally making fun or one of em, then the discussions turns to whether one is saved or not and this turns to Jews and how they because they do not accept Christ as the messiah are not "saved".
I haven't asked if they felt this meant they wouldn't goto heaven or not in their view, but I did have a little argument about this before they left and so when they come back I need help arguing with them.
quote: What exactly is the Messiah? (back)
The word "Messiah" is an English rendering of the Hebrew word "Mashiach", which means "Anointed." It usually refers to a person initiated into God's service by being anointed with oil. (Exodus 29:7, I Kings 1:39, II Kings 9:3)
Since every King and High Priest was anointed with oil, each may be referred to as "an anointed one" (a Mashiach or a Messiah). For example: "God forbid that I [David] should stretch out my hand against the Lord's Messiah [Saul]..." (I Samuel 26:11. Cf. II Samuel 23:1, Isaiah 45:1, Psalms 20:6)
Where does the Jewish concept of Messiah come from? One of the central themes of Biblical prophecy is the promise of a future age of perfection characterized by universal peace and recognition of God. (Isaiah 2:1-4; Zephaniah 3:9; Hosea 2:20-22; Amos 9:13-15; Isaiah 32:15-18, 60:15-18; Micah 4:1-4; Zechariah 8:23, 14:9; Jeremiah 31:33-34)
Many of these prophetic passages speak of a descendant of King David who will rule Israel during the age of perfection. (Isaiah 11:1-9; Jeremiah 23:5-6, 30:7-10, 33:14-16; Ezekiel 34:11-31, 37:21-28; Hosea 3:4-5)
Since every King is a Messiah, by convention, we refer to this future anointed king as The Messiah. The above is the only description in the Bible of a Davidic descendant who is to come in the future. We will recognize the Messiah by seeing who the King of Israel is at the time of complete universal perfection.
1) JESUS DID NOT FULFILL THE MESSIANIC PROPHECIES (back)
What is the Messiah supposed to accomplish? The Bible says that he will:
A. Build the Third Temple (Ezekiel 37:26-28).
B. Gather all Jews back to the Land of Israel (Isaiah 43:5-6).
C. Usher in an era of world peace, and end all hatred, oppression, suffering and disease. As it says: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall man learn war anymore." (Isaiah 2:4)
D. Spread universal knowledge of the God of Israel, which will unite humanity as one. As it says: "God will be King over all the world -- on that day, God will be One and His Name will be One" (Zechariah 14:9).
The historical fact is that Jesus fulfilled none of these messianic prophecies.
Christians counter that Jesus will fulfill these in the Second Coming, but Jewish sources show that the Messiah will fulfill the prophecies outright, and no concept of a second coming exists.
Any other quick sources or links I can use to argue with them about using their own bible (Torah/Tanach) as evidence?
Also, they tend to argue that in the scripture they werent talking about a physical temple etc, can anyone give me a explanation of jewish scripture and how it is different from Christian interpretations of it?
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posted
I'm still unclear as to whether he wants to convince a Christian evangelical that Jews are "saveable" (salvageable?), or convince a Jew to become "saved."
Either way, isn't he an atheist?
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posted
Your concern does you credit, Blayne. But really, who cares?
I used to fight with missionaries when I was in college. The so-called "Jews for Jesus" used to infest campus every year around this time, and I spent quite a lot of time doing battle with them. It was entertaining and educational, but ultimately a waste of time.
I remember once when a friend of mine, a very assimilated Jewish girl from Boston -- and bear in mind that I was not religious at this time, so for me to have seen her as assimilated meant that she was barely more than Jewish by birth -- saw a poster up in our dorm advertising a talk in the dorm lounge being sponsored by the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship entitled, "Proof of the Resurrection".
Like oh so many assimilated Jews, she was hypersensitive about such things. She came running to me and said, "You have to go! You have to tell them they're wrong!"
I wouldn't have gone, but my friend was so hysterical that I just gave in. Their "proof", btw, was reading a passage from the Christian Bible in which it says it happened. QED, I guess.
We wound up having a discussion afterwards, and the subject of Jews and hell and salvation came up, of course. One guy was very clear in expressing his view that not accepting the Christian messiah means that we will burn in hell for all eternity. All the other IVCF students were really embarrassed about this and tried to hem and haw their way around it. Quite frankly, I thought the one guy was just being honest about his own religion, and I had more respect for him than I did for the others. Of course, he was wrong to a really silly extent, but at least he was being honest about it.
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quote: We wound up having a discussion afterwards, and the subject of Jews and hell and salvation came up, of course. One guy was very clear in expressing his view that not accepting the Christian messiah means that we will burn in hell for all eternity. All the other IVCF students were really embarrassed about this and tried to hem and haw their way around it. Quite frankly, I thought the one guy was just being honest about his own religion, and I had more respect for him than I did for the others. Of course, he was wrong to a really silly extent, but at least he was being honest about it.
They were only being dishonest if they, too, believe that not accepting Jesus Christ as messiah means the one not accepting will burn in hell for eternity. ('For all eternity' is an strange phrase, isn't it? If it was just part of eternity, well, we'd use years or centuries or millenia or eons or something, right?)
If on the other hand they didn't believe that, then they weren't necessarily being dishonest. But your use of the phrase 'hemming and hawing' suggests that they didn't actually say, "That's wrong," but rather tried to sidestep it.
Really, just wanted to point out that not all Christians believe nonbelievers writhe in hellfire.
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Basically I feel that the persons claim was to me a slippery slope towards anti semantism, and that by their own faith or at least faith they claim their faith is based off of they are even as far as incorrect in their assertions, my argument is "they do not have to be saved according to X and Y, your treading a slippery slope and I take offense. They have legitmate arguments for not believing that Jesus is the Messiah."
And the discussion went tangental from there.
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posted
Sign me up for some of that anti-semantism!
Anyway. Arguing with people about their religious beliefs is rarely productive, unless you're letting your Kalashnikov do the talking. As you must have observed on Hatrack, a theist can find something in the Bible to support whatever opinion he happens to have that day, and will then ignore the rest of that contradictory document as inconvenient. So in fact, you cannot find anything "in their own religion" to contradict their stance; you can certainly find stuff in the Bible, but that's not the same thing. "Their religion" is going to be some subset of the Bible, what their parents told them, what they heard gossiped in their church, and Jack Chick comics; and by definition it won't include anything that contradicts their beliefs about Jews.
Anyway, these people presumably believe that all people who are not members of their particular sect are unsaved, so why get so worked up about the particular case of the Jews? Unless they are fantastically charismatic demagogues able to turn Canada into jackboot-land, their anti-semitism (if they have any) is surely no worse than their anti-Hinduism, anti-Buddhism, or anti-atheism.
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quote:Anyway. Arguing with people about their religious beliefs is rarely productive, unless you're letting your Kalashnikov do the talking.
Heh, so does this mean you're finally acknowledging that no, in fact your numerous conversations with people around here about their religious beliefs weren't an attempt to helpfully persuade them of a better way?
Or that you still believe that only a few such discussions are productive, but you thought maybe a bunch of those exceptions would happen here?
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If I want to argue with a Mormon about whether caffeine is permitted, I will start with the Word of Wisdom and then move on to talks by church leaders. Arguing from the religious texts that your opponent follows seems to be the most effective way of winning an argument on doctrine.
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quote:So you're trying to use the Bible, which you don't believe in, to convince them to believe something that you don't believe yourself.
That basic formula works for every successful scam artist.
I don't see any evidence that Blayne is hiding his disbelief. That makes the formula quite different.
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: I'm still not getting why Jews are not saves? Are people just throwing them away? It seem a shame to waste perfectly good Jews.
In a related vein, the biggest anti-semantist I can see here is you, Blayne.
First you think I am lying about my family problems and now your calling me a bigot.
I could call you an idiot, and a member of parliament but then I would be repeating myself.
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posted
Blayne, I think that people are throwing around the "anti-semantist" remark because there is no such thing as anti-semantism.
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Blayne, You may want to consider that when I type things, I generally put some effort into making sure that they are spelled correctly. You might get the joke then.
edit: On a completely unrelated note, semantic is a word that refers to the aspects of meaning that are expressed in a language, code, or other form of representation, whereas Semitic refers to a certain group of people, languages, etc.
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: Blayne, You may want to consider that when I type things, I generally put some effort into making sure that they are spelled correctly. You might get the joke then.
I think given our history you should have known better.
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quote:Originally posted by MattP: ... Arguing from the religious texts that your opponent follows seems to be the most effective way of winning an argument on doctrine.
Indeed. To be honest, I'm not seeing much choice. If you *have* to argue about doctrine (a very questionable have to, BTW), you only really have a few choices. Short of a divine revelation/intervention, or simply passing the argument onto someone else, what else but religious texts can you use anyways?
I figure that arguing on scientific or rational grounds would be even more hopeless, at least this way you're engaging your opponent.
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posted
I didn't expect any better from you than what you gave. Looking at it now, it actually helps the joke a bit too.
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posted
My A member of Parliment what? Has he gotten off his leesh again? If he's digging up Farmer MacGregor's carrot patch again, I may have to bring out my back benchers.
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: So you're trying to use the Bible, which you don't believe in, to convince them to believe something that you don't believe yourself.
I can't imagine that working.
Though I've found it useful to use Christian scriptures when arguing against missionaries.
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: Blayne, You may want to consider that when I type things, I generally put some effort into making sure that they are spelled correctly. You might get the joke then.
I think given our history you should have known better.
quote:Though I've found it useful to use Christian scriptures when arguing against missionaries.
Useful to what end?
I can't tell the amount of scorn I have for the integrity of someone who doesn't believe who tries to use my own scriptures against me.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: I can't tell the amount of scorn I have for the integrity of someone who doesn't believe who tries to use my own scriptures against me.
I have discussions and debates with believers all the time about the consistency, or lack thereof, in their scriptures.
If that's what you mean, then by all means scorn away.
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It's manipulative. It isn't a discussion of equals - it's one person using someone's religion as a weapon against them. It's attempting to hold their discipleship hostage. I've seen it done a hundred times, and it's never pretty.
I think very poorly of manipulative hostage-takers.
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quote:Anyway. Arguing with people about their religious beliefs is rarely productive, unless you're letting your Kalashnikov do the talking.
Heh, so does this mean you're finally acknowledging that no, in fact your numerous conversations with people around here about their religious beliefs weren't an attempt to helpfully persuade them of a better way?
Two comments; firstly that's experience talking, which I didn't have when I first came to Hatrack; secondly, unproductive and fun are not mutually exclusive.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: It's manipulative. It isn't a discussion of equals - it's one person using someone's religion as a weapon against them. It's attempting to hold their discipleship hostage. I've seen it done a hundred times, and it's never pretty.
I think very poorly of manipulative hostage-takers.
Confucius he say, man who choose scripture that can be used as weapon against self, better develop thick skin.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: It's manipulative. It isn't a discussion of equals - it's one person using someone's religion as a weapon against them. It's attempting to hold their discipleship hostage. I've seen it done a hundred times, and it's never pretty.
I think very poorly of manipulative hostage-takers.
I think you are painting with too broad a brush here. As an atheist living in an LDS community, with mostly LDS friends, and an LDS wife, I find that using scripture is often the only productive way to move opinions or even have a productive discussion of a topic.
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Perhaps under certain circumstances it would be okay, but very certain, limited circumstances. Namely, there would need to be no doubt that 1) there is mutual, deep respect on both sides both for the other people and for the texts in question. Even if they aren't believed, they need to be respected. and 2) the person who is using the scriptures as an argument point while not actually believing them needs to completely free of a desire to "win."
Maybe, maybe under those circumstances it might be okay. That situation is impossible to achieve on a public board like this or between any people other than those with a deep and varied history of trust of respect.
quote:Why is this more acceptable if the person doing it happens to share the same religion?
It's a matter of vulnerability. It's like having a fight with Superman and then pulling out the Kryptonite. You may end up rejoicing that you're stronger, but it wasn't a fair fight.
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quote:That situation is impossible to achieve on a public board like this or between any people other than those with a deep and varied history of trust of respect.
I think this is more of an issue for you than it is for others. I believe that, for instance, Blackblade and I could have a discussion on a doctrinal issue, using scripture, without any animosity developing, and we certainly don't have any deep history.
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posted
Trying to persuade people to believe something that you yourself don't believe seems both dishonest and manipulative to me.
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: Trying to persuade people to believe something that you yourself don't believe seems both dishonest and manipulative to me.
I don't think this is a fair characterization of such discussions. If I think the text means "x" and they think the text means "y", then I'm trying to persuade them of what I believe (that the text means "x"), not something that I don't believe (that "x" is correct).
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quote:Trying to persuade people to believe something that you yourself don't believe seems both dishonest and manipulative to me.
Exactly. It's using the scriptures and someone's religion as a tool, and I think very poorly of using someone sacred anything as a tool.
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quote:It's a matter of vulnerability. It's like having a fight with Superman and then pulling out the Kryptonite. You may end up rejoicing that you're stronger, but it wasn't a fair fight.
Would it be a fair fight between me and Superman if I didn't have Kryptonite, and he only had super-strength, invulnerability, super-speed, and the ability to shoot lasers out of his eyes?
Edit for clarification: because I would say that using Kryptonite against Superman is the only way for all but the most superheroic people to sensibly engage Superman. In the same way, using the contradictions and moral conundrums and tiny hypocrises exposed in Scripture against the religious may well be the only way for all but the most superheroic people to sensibly engage the religious on points of religion.
I suppose the problem here is that you wouldn't pull Kryptonite on Superman to engage him in some friendly sparring; merely by having Kryptonite, you've made this unfriendly. Pulling Scripture on the religious might be equivalent. On the other hand, there's no real point in sparring with Superman without Kryptonite; you know that nothing you do is going to even get his attention. So perhaps the lesson is "don't engage in friendly sparring with religious people who would be hurt if you referenced Scripture."
quote:and for the texts in question. Even if they aren't believed, they need to be respected.
Is this, in your view, for everything or just religion? Or just your religion?
Because I, for example, may not respect the Communist Manifesto at all. But that does not keep me from having productive conversations and debates about it.
That same, I hold, is true for me of religious scripture.
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