wait… TARS was an in camera model? what?!

We’re not just post-truth, we’re post-information if it doesn’t even matter if a particular thing is made up or not…

but look at his appeal to widows and the unmarried in Corinthians

you are missing that barely a verse earlier he attributes people’s different ability in this regard to the grace of God…

“I wish that all men were as I am [single and celebate]. But each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.” - 1 Cor 7:7

he recognises people are given different abilities by God. this is not “failure”. Yes, if God has decided that you aren’t for the single celebate life it is better to get married than burn with desire. As Paul makes clear “But if you do marry, you have not sinned” (1 Cor 7:28)

I understand your hypothesis, but Paul neither says what you want him to say (that sex itself is shameful), nor does it stand up as an explanation when it comes to other things Paul says…

to follow on from your verse above…

“If a brother has an unbelieving wife and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. 13And if a woman has an unbelieving husband and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. 14For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his believing wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy.” - 1 Cor 7:12

This is a far cry from the “original sin” and polluting effect of sex espoused by the later catholic church. it’s the exact opposite. a christian women might be having sex with a heathen husband. but far from this polluting her in any way, it does the opposite - she sanctifies (makes holy) her unbelieving husband! and similiarly, children of such a marriage are not polluted by this act of sex with a non-christian. rather “they are made holy” (v14).

these are not the words of a man who thinks sex is a dirty and pernicious problem.

later on this same passage, Paul makes it clear that his preference for people to not be married is due to the persecution the church is experiencing:

"26Because of the present crisis, I think it is good for a man to remain as he is. 27Are you committed to a wife? Do not seek to be released. Are you free of commitment? Do not look for a wife. 28But if you do marry, you have not sinned. And if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this. " - 1 Cor 7:26-28

Paul is not acting like someone who finds sex itself shameful. He is acting like someone who has seen the additional suffering caused by persecution to married people (and by natural consequence, people with children). He is echoing Jesus’ words on the matter: “How dreadful it will be in those days [the end times] for pregnant women and nursing mothers!” (Matthew 24:19)

In this time (the late 50s AD), Nero has taken over from Claudius and had begun his severe persecution of Christians (Tertullian quoted by Eusebius). This was on top of a famine seen during the time of Claudius (Acts 11:27-29), which you can read in Joesphus caused some families to be in such a desperate state that they resorted to canabalism of children.

This, together with the expectation that Christ would return soon (“Brothers, time is short… this world in its present form is passing away” - 1 Cor 7:29-31), meant that being single and free to spread the gospel was a priority.

But I’ll say again - Paul never calls sex in a monogamous marriage “shameful”. In fact he goes to the extraordinary lengths of saying a wife has the right(!) to demand sex from her husband (1 Cor 7:4b).

Any hypothesis of Paul’s internal thoughts has to accomodate this behaviour and being a “sex repulsed asexual” does not cut it. He was a self confessed “zealous Jew” (Gal 1:14) when it came to Torah defined sin (male homosexual acts, orgies, cultic practices, adultery), but as for lawful marriage, he acknowledges it is what some are called to by God and within which women ought to have conjugal rights.

Oh both Paul and Jesus were morally conservative, no doubt about that. I was replying to someone I felt was implying Paul was somehow co-opting Jesus’ liberal movement into something more conservative and respectable. Whereas I think the opposite is true. Paul pushed frontiers Jesus never mentioned.

soapbox to preach his own distain by insisting that pleasure in sex is bad

I don’t think this is quite the right angle though. He was certainly disgusted by same sex acts and the contexts in which likely had in mind: cultic practises, orgies and temple pederasty.

But he is never against sexual pleasure within heterosexual monogamy as if there was something distasteful about pleasure itself. He never states that the purpose of sex is reproduction. Never condemns solo masturbation for instance (which one might have expected since he had a non-jewish audience). Also, neither he nor any other NT writer calls into question sexual pleasure once a couple can no longer bear children. (Which you would expect if they were against unproductive pleasure in a puritan way). On the contrary, his assertion that a wife’s body belongs to her husband and a husband’s body belongs to his wife and that couples were to not deprive each other of sex except by mutual agreement has to be seen as being both radically democratic in how relationships are conducted by also acknowledging that pleasure in sex serves a purpose in itself. (One only has to imagine a would-be prayerful monastic husband, perhaps emulating Paul himself, being told, no, you have to have sex with your wife, to realise that Paul was not some acerbic prude)

Paul’s view he explicitly links to his expectation that the world is ending soon (forgive me I can look up references at the moment). He wishes that everyone was as he was (single and celebrate). But this appears to have been born out of a controversy over whether or not travelling apostles could expect churches to bear the cost of a wife travelling with them. Given his other statements on wishing to never cause stumbling blocks of cost on already very poor communities this seems to be born out of practical mindedness rather than any kind of general anti-sex view. He regards the better practice to be celebrate and await Jesus return. But that if people felt they’d otherwise be too tempted, then they should marry and that was fine. He explicitly notes that married people will suffer a lot in life, which has to be read in the context of the ongoing persecution of Christians. And the use of torture of one’s loved ones as a psychological weapon.

conservative bullshit that Paul’s hijacked letters contained

Yes. I believe Paul was visionary and radical. But I also think he felt his innovations were partially justified given “time was short”. If there weren’t enough male ministers and gospel workers then he was ok with talented women breaking the social mould. (And not begrudgingly, he sings their praises many multiple times). But it’s impossible to tell how he would have felt or spoken had he known his system would be used for 2000 years not 20.

A later generation of disciples apparently decided Jesus’ return was delayed didn’t have the same appetite as Paul for breaking the mould and fell back on traditional gender roles more firmly.

You are the ones

Hmm… i detect a bit of a silly assumption…

This is exactly right. Sad that you’re downvoted by those who don’t know their new testament…

to take control of a nascent religion and steer it away from the more radical ideas that some of the other early followers took away from the teachings of Jesus.

tbh authentic Paul was in many ways more radical that Jesus… Jesus told people to give to the poor because the end was near, and so did Paul. Jesus chose all male disciples, Paul refers to Phoebe, Prisca, Euodia and Syntyche (all women) as his “fellow workers” or “ministers”. Jesus affirmed “for this reason a man will leave his parents and be united with his wife”. From Paul we have “there is neither male nor female in Christ Jesus”. Jesus followed synagogue traditions (male only), Paul allowed women to pray and prophesy in his churches. Jesus taught the Jews to follow a loving version of the Torah, Paul pushed the utterly radical idea that Jews were freed from the Torah and united with gentiles in “one body”.

(The conservative line taken in later letters attributed to Paul are believed by academic scholars to be from his later school of disciples, not from him himself.)

It was communal spirit. Yes you can call that communism if you want. But what most people mean by communism is the state backed variety that you are forced to participate in. And this wasn’t that. What happened in the early church was voluntary, as is made quite clear in the passage. The rest of the epistles make it quite clear that private property was ok and the church couldn’t force people to share anything (not even a fixed percentage) because all pleas to help the poor are i) voluntary and ii) based on ones conscience as to what the right amount is. That looks a lot more like “moral capitalism” than any kind of communist system.

I’m an atheist socialist by the way, I’m not saying this to defend Christianity or capitalism in any way.

It was the only time it happened and it was voluntary. That’s pretty different from most real world communist systems.

Even the Bible talks about the ‘deserving’ poor. Dealing with people and power and motivation and rights has been a swamp since the beginning…

fear the czar

You know the Soviets killed the last Czar in 1918…

Rather alarming number of people I’ve encountered in the UK have a view something like “it’s horrible, but they brought it on themselves”. These don’t seem to be straightforward horrible people. As they would also say the Holocaust and Armenia and Rwanda (etc) were evil.

The fear of having your press pass removed is real. We saw this last time.

FWIW: the BBC are reporting it and they are usually reserved about reporting foreign news until there’s confirmation

This ‘smells’ of an evolutionary tactic to collapse failing tribes or communities rather than let them go completely extinct.

Kurt Vonnegut etc

Isn’t this the opposite of what you’d expect? Birth rates are collapsing amongst the middle class. Less so amongst the working class and religious immigrants?

Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a foreigner (Greek: xenos) and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. - Matthew 25:34-36

etc

Supply Side Jesus doesn’t know his own book, to the surprise of absolutely no-one

MAGA: “gotta check the old testament! God always hated those foreign types…”

Old Testament: “You shall treat the foreigner who journeys with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” -Leviticus 19:34

MAGA: “dammit!! Well… Let’s just deprive them of rights until they’re so miserable they just leave?!”

Old Testament: "You shall have the same rule for the foreigner and for the native, for I am the Lord your God.” - Leviticus 24:22

MAGA: “Wuh?!? huh?!?? Well!! My old pastor said a rule didn’t have full weight unless God said it more than once!!”

Old Testament: "There shall be just one law for the native and for the foreigner who journeys among you.” - Exodus 12:49

MAGA: “BUT IT’S NOT THREE TIMES IS IT?? THREE’S A GODLY NUMBER!!”

Old Testament: “One law and one rule shall be for you and for the foreigner who journeys with you” - Numbers 15:16

MAGA: “NGGGHHHHH!!! CUT THEM OFF!!”

Old Testament: "You shall not oppress a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your brothers or one of the foreigners who are in your land within your towns. " - Deuteronomy 24:14

MAGA: “ARGHHHHH!! MAKE IT STOP!!!”

If you want a debate or to have discussion you need to add something to it. State your position and defend it.

i am repeating myself but the view i’m illustrating is essentially this:

• it is harmful in multiple ways for a soverign state to appear to not have control of its border

• entering a country illegally is a serious crime

• where there is a popular perception of excessive lenience, it is acceptable to show criminals in handcuffs which is not in itself particularly unusual

• using a miliiary airplane is grandstanding, yes. but it also illustrates that these people were not citizens when they broke american law and it is ok for a country to draw a firm line on things like this particuarly if they want it to stop

which would you say is the best way to deport them?

you can see elsewhere in this thread that i agreed with this point and i thought it was a good counter argument. even IF if were appropriate to handcuff criminals and deport them using non-civilian means, it’s ultimately an uneconomical use of money. (though one could argue that there is value in publicising that this is a crime against the state, which it is, and is being treated as such)

Plenty of illegal actions don’t result in arrest.

and plenty do. where the line is is basically the thing up for debate

end in a MILITARY TRANSPORT TRYING TO, UNANNOUNCED, LAND ON SOVREIGN SOIL

i thought this particular aspect was tragically stupid as you can see earlier in this thread

Trump specifically referred to it as repatriation (like done with enemy combatants) and not deportation

i don’t know enough about American use of the word, so i’ll agree with you here. in britain “repatriation” means sending something back to where it should be, it has a slightly different meaning to deportation since deportation only means being moved out of a country (to wherever). repatriation emphasises that the destination was the country of nationality. but this difference might not exist in america.

So beyond it being a massive departure from how every other “free” country handles deportation, it was a far removed example of how even the US treats it’s criminals.

they are using the military to grandstand, yes. but also to point out that these guys are not citizens. this is not the same question of how american citizens are treated.

There is no Devils Advocate argument for this beyond fascism

well…that’s why i persist with doing it. because i’m not a fascist. nor am i particuarlly representing a fascist point of view. just a different point of view on how severe a crime it is to illegally enter a country. that’s the only difference so far. i am not interested in Devils Advocating pure bigotry like straight up racism etc. it can be done, but i don’t personaly see the point. what interests me is that i’m not even representing a necessarily fascist point of view and yet am being accused of such. i think that black and white thinking is ultimatly harmful because it represents its own kind of intolerance - being unable to accept that some otherwise normal people just find entering a country illegally a serious crime against the state that should be treated as such.

you’re just a bad actor

i am continually surprised at how people cannot cope with even moderately different views to them without resorting to outlandish accusations. i don’t personally hold these views, i made that clear from the start. what i find boring is no-one ever representing even a moderately different point of view. questioning how severe a crime it is to enter a country illegally should not automatically result in accusations of “fascist” and insincerity… how else is it even possible to have a discussion about things like illegal migration?

This devil’s advocate position your holding is very akin to fascists “just asking questions”.

If someone were doing that just to be obtuse then I wouldn’t talk to them either. If someone were talking like that because they genuinely believed that and were going to discuss things in a measured reasonable way then that’s the kind of discussion I think is essential.

You seem to equate any lawbreaking as requiring handcuffs and imprisonment.

I very much didn’t say this at all. I don’t think it’s necessary for you to exaggerate to make your point.

What situation do you think handcuffs should or should not be used when dealing with someone breaking the law?

Devils Advocate: when they pose a reasonable risk to the public (not applicable in this case) or have already demonstrated a willingness to evade authorities when breaking the law (applicable). Committing fraud: no cuffs. Most low level drug offences: no cuffs. Previously escaped prison: cuffs. Evaded authorities to trespass or enter illegally: cuffs.

Thanks.

If anyone else wants to explain I’m all ears