Kill the Innocent

Question: Do those who take the bible literally and believe that the Christian god's justice is best, seriously entertain the notion that his justice is best?

I would say not. The Christian god's justice, as far as literal interpretations go, is as follows: create beings, create laws that you know they won't follow, demand the death penalty for those who break the laws, sacrifice an innocent life, forgive the guilty. Most people, I'd think, would realize that the third party justice system is not a legitimate system of justice. I cannot foresee many Christians  being pleased with the America justice system if there were a serial robber/rapist/killer on trial, who was acquitted so long as the thanks the innocent person who was killed in his place. 

I think this sort of obvious wrong justice systems is also evidence of the fact the the bible is not actually for literal interpretation. A figurative interpretation makes all these problems not problems at all.

Christmas and Ishtar

In response to Emily - full post here

So, interestingly, the Christian holidays of Christmas and Easter are basically stolen from the Pagans. The vernal equinox is celebrated in honour of Ishtar, and the idea of the ceremony revolves around rebirth and fertilization and sprouting flowers and so on. Christmas comes from celebrating the winter solstice. People would gather to celebrate because it was cold and because they wanted food. The families would all get together to feast. The Catholics came along sometime in the 4th century CE and in order to make Christianity more appealing to both Christians and Pagans, they started to incorporate the celebrations.

As you mentioned in your post, these holidays have become, more than before, capitalist holidays, wherein people feel obligated to buy gifts for others. The tradition is still there, I suppose, it's just slightly more non-thoughtfully completed; done without challenge or desire.

Choosing Who to Save

In response to Osa - full post here

You are saying that given the choice between saving person A's life or person B's life, you would choose to let both die? The possibility of being considered unpatriotic should not sufficiently deter you from saving someone's life. I think the label of playing favorites or being unpatriotic should be overlooked when a person's life hangs in the balance. Additionally, if you have the ability to save a person at little cost to yourself and chose not to do it, it is essentially akin to murder; meaning that if you chose to save neither, you have effectively murdered one of them.

I, personally, would save one person trying to base it off of chance or something else. I could blindly run towards one, or make an instinctual choice, or I could even choose on the basis of country of origin (I would likely choose the non-American and receive that unpatriotic title), anything is better than letting one of them die when I could have saved them.

Patriotism Response

In response to Lyndsey - full post here

Patriotism is bad when it prevents you from progressing forward because you are so caught up on your country being the best. Also, I do not think you can be proud of being an American. What can you be proud of? Can you be proud that your heart beats? Can you be proud that you can breathe? Can you be proud of the fact that you worked for years to create something or to save up money for something? I think you can only be proud of the last one; you can only be proud of something that you accomplished with varying degrees of work. You, therefore, cannot be proud of the mere chance of your birth location; nor can you be proud of ethnicity, skin colour, or hair colour - you did not work for those things.