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The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”

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Re: The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”

#251

Post by _urga »

ux-app wrote: post #244
_urga wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may be an idiot, but personally, I would find it hard to believe in a God who never sanctioned judgement, who never advocated justice at all. That would be truly evil. As far as the Egyptian first-born, was God not patient and slow to anger? Was that the first plague or the last plague? How many years had the Egyptians oppressed another people? How many Israelite children did the Egyptians not kill? Did the punishm…

>As far as the Egyptian first-born, was God not patient and slow to anger? dude. he fucking killed babies. what a shit head psycho.

What would be your comments then on this same God foreordaining his one and only Son to be crucified, to suffer, to die, to bear your sin, in your place, and his Son doing this willingly in obedience to the Father he loves?

Jesus, in John 10:

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”

The Jews who heard these words were again divided. Many of them said, “He is demon-possessed and raving mad. Why listen to him?”

But others said, “These are not the sayings of a man possessed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”

Re: The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”

#252

Post by [deleted] »

_urga wrote: post #240
blurbleblurble wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example in evangelical Christianity is the "new covenant vs old covenant" theology.

The difference between New Covenant and Old Covenant is a matter of a change in place , not a matter of a change in God's character (which stays the same). The Old Covenant was the law written on tablets of stone, see Exodus 33-34. The New Covenant is the law written on tablets of human hearts, see Ezekiel 36. The place changes from "tablets of stone" to "tablets of human hearts". It's also critical to understand tha…

[deleted]

Re: The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”

#253

Post by MagnumOpus »

_urga wrote: post #228
pavlov wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the Old Testament is really as bad as people say then Judaism really has a problem. But in my experience Jews aren't any more violent than Christians. A group of people is not defined by a 3000-year-old folklore collection. You can’t infer anything about the text this way.

"a ... folklore collection" Are you implying the Old Testament is not historical? Or not accurate with regards to history? Or what do you mean by folklore?

Yes, that is what folklore means. And apart from people who really believe that the world is 6,000 years old or that bronze-age jews lived hundreds of years, nobody takes the Torah as accurate history. Do you?

Re: The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”

#254

Post by ux-app »

klibertp wrote: post #249
ux-app wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So it was his to take fuck off, that's gross. as humans if we ever create AI we'll (hopefully) do it in the context of a robust ethical framework, and yet all knowing Jehovah couldn't fucking do some due diligence? Jesus fucking Christ, how pathetic of him.

> that's gross Sure, it is now. But it (probably) wasn't gross back when the bible was written. The bible is a piece of art/propaganda written to support the sense of tribal unity and to ensure political power stays with the right people. The God, therefore, is just a character - a literary device - from a book written 3k years ago for a very specific target audience. We are not that target audience and we lack the c…

>And it's not "whitewashing". Nobody denies that OT God is a mass killer. They just claim that - for a fictional character - being a mass killer (or a god for that matter) was very differently perceived 3000 years ago in a middle of a desert.

sigh

you've clearly never dealt with fundies. I was raised by people who taught me that literally every word was divine and that the entire bible is a historical document (there are millions of these idiots across the globe). These people will bend over backwards to explain to you how the wholesale murder of babies was totally justified. They'll even do it with a straight face.

You and I both agree that the Bible is no different than Harry Potter, and God happens to be a bad guy in the first half.

There are millions of people who live their lives believing that the entire bible is a 100% historical document. Having unshackled myself from these morons, this topic can be a bit of a sore point for me ;)

Re: The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”

#255

Post by ux-app »

_urga wrote: post #247
ux-app wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There are no grounds (rational or otherwise) for objective morality outside of God. hopefully we can do better than OT god, otherwise we're in for rough ride.

"we can do better than OT god" That's the Devil's oldest lie, and his favorite. "otherwise we're in for rough ride." That's what we've been witnessing ever since.

you're a lost cause pal.

Re: The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”

#256

Post by ux-app »

_urga wrote: post #251
ux-app wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As far as the Egyptian first-born, was God not patient and slow to anger? dude. he fucking killed babies. what a shit head psycho.

What would be your comments then on this same God foreordaining his one and only Son to be crucified, to suffer, to die, to bear your sin, in your place, and his Son doing this willingly in obedience to the Father he loves? Jesus, in John 10: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he a…

dude. he fucking killed babies.

Re: The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”

#257

Post by _urga »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #253
_urga wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a ... folklore collection" Are you implying the Old Testament is not historical? Or not accurate with regards to history? Or what do you mean by folklore?

Yes, that is what folklore means. And apart from people who really believe that the world is 6,000 years old or that bronze-age jews lived hundreds of years, nobody takes the Torah as accurate history. Do you?

"nobody takes the Torah as accurate history. Do you?"

Sure, as someone interested in history, I certainly take the Torah as accurate history. And I think that not a few ancient historians and archaeologists would do the same, irrespective of their views on Genesis 1.

For example, and I am referring to the entire Tanakh, I understand that Hezekiah was a real king in history who built a real tunnel which people really walk through today. I have no problem with that. I wouldn't consider that "folklore".

As someone interested in the historical method, I understand that the fact of an event, whether it happened or not, does not depend on the perceived likelihood I myself or others impute to it. I don't have any Naturalistic presuppositions. I don't subscribe to Naturalism as a philosophy, nor would I mistake it for science. So I won't immediately grab at revising the date for say Isaiah if he happens to mention Cyrus ahead of his birth.

Coming back to Genesis 1, you're forcing many literary and scientific issues if you want to tie Genesis 1 down (and dismiss it) as claiming a 6,000 (or 7,000) year old earth.

From a purely scientific perspective, the "age of the world" discussion needs to be wary of Hume's is-ought distinction. It would be a mistake to assume that the laws of physics have always been (and always will be) as they currently are. That would be to derive an "ought" (they must always have worked this way) from an "is" (the way things work today as we observe them).

In fact, from a literary point of view, if we read as far as Genesis 3, we see that Genesis itself suggests a seismic shift in the way things work, when death enters the world.

The point of Genesis 1-3 is that the world as we know it, is markedly different to the way God created it. I don't think we should overlook that.

So I see no contradiction between science and the Bible. In fact, I think they encourage and support each other.

Re: The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”

#258

Post by Aloha »

jdietrich wrote: post #177
Aloha wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an engineer, being "really useful" is a goal that fits within my worldview as good and noble.

21st century society considers me extremely useful, because I happen to be very good at solving certain kinds of puzzle. Medieval society would consider me practically useless, because I'm frail, clumsy and almost blind. My usefulness now and my uselessness then is almost entirely a fluke of genetics. Valuing people for their utility is incredibly dangerous, because it logically invites us to devalue people for their…

Would it? today's programmers are yesterdays mathematicians.

My understanding of technology bridges many islands - I know I'd be useful in the 19th or even 18th century because of my other characteristics.

Re: The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”

#259

Post by darepublic »

dmlorenzetti wrote: post #85
paulddraper wrote: post #13

Thomas & Friends is gold. The show is dignified and wholesome. It is always about respect, diligence, and humility. It isn't there for stupid antics and wacky laughs. It doesn't blast color explosions and ADHD-fueled off-the-charts mind-numbing exuburance to capture kids attention. And it's been doing that for decades (pretty much eternity, as far as kids TV goes). Not since Mr. Rogers has there been a better kids TV…

The comparison with Mr. Rogers is instructive. Both shows seem rooted in a minister's desire to encapsulate ideals derived from the Bible. But while Mr. Rogers is New Testament, the Thomas books are Old Testament. Henry, for example, gets punished for the sin of VANITY -- he doesn't stop in the tunnel in order to shirk work, but rather to avoid getting his nice new paint messed up. To see the difference between the s…

I think snl or a YouTube parody channel could run with your description of evil Mr. Rogers

Re: The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”

#260

Post by derefr »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #147
derefr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diligence and selflessness are admirable. Obedience is, at best, sometimes necessary, and at worst a source of atrocities. (You might be thinking of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intent_(military)#Common_inten... . The desire to establish—and function under—common intent, whether through consensus or authoritative credence, is an admirable quality in a person. But that is not the same thing as obedience.)

That's a very interesting way of slicing things. You think that the importance of the rule of law (obedience) isn't something which should be instilled at a young age? It's totally possible to simultaneously teach that following and questioning the rules is possible/appropriate/good. Consider that the US military simultaneously teaches the importance of following orders and every soldier/sailor/airman/marines obligat…

Look into the concept of "common intent" that I linked. It gives you all the same things obedience does, but for much more sensible, egalitarian reasons.

(And the military itself knows this; scroll further down on the same page to read about "Command intent"—which is sort of, 1. the planned incentivization that commanders and law-makers do, giving orders that will be misinterpreted and misapplied by people with conflicting preferences to give results they ultimately want, rather than giving orders that are "right" at first but which go wrong after a fifteen-layer game of hierarchical telephone; and 2. the knowledge that the orders you've been given are of this "robust under misinterpretation" type, and so knowing to not read too much about the original "Commander's intent" into them.)

Teaching a child that following orders is good, but that disobeying "bad" orders is also good, is virtue ethics, and has all the same problems as virtue ethics: there's no clear test for which virtue wins when two virtues come into conflict.

Common intent sets a much clearer standard: just understand the intent of the person giving the order—the "spirit of the law"—and then obey that, disobeying the letter of the law if-and-only-if it conflicts with the spirit of the law. This shakes out to obedience to good orders (or orders given by trusted commanders) but disobedience to bad orders (or orders given by untrusted commanders) ...except where a good law/trusted commander applies a meta-order to the effect of "please do me the favor of following the bad orders; it advances the spirit of the law in a hard-to-follow consequentialist way that you'll be able to see in retrospect."

Which is pretty much what humans who we consider to have "character" already do intuitively, so it's (hopefully) a good thing to systematize.

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