[Sin] hurts people. Even when you don't think it does, it makes people selfish and self centered, and cruel, and less able to form healthy relationships. Makes them like Nietzsche, who I still claim is self evidently wrong about everything.
The fact is, people lose their connection with each other when they sin, and it makes people ultimately have a harder time in the society, and it makes people rude, narcissistic, obnoxious, seedy, greedy, malicious, malefactors, rebellious, thieves, liars, adulterers and that leads to suffering.
{}I just think Morals aren't subjective, God's not dead, and that we don't create our own morality, or will ourselves to any power. I also think cruelty and selfishness are not the road to happiness, but rather community, and God's law is. I also think there's concrete laws of nature, that can be observed objectively, and that reality can be described. Because saying otherwise is just foolish, and leads down a bad road. And I think pleasure is a good thing, and pain a bad thing, and beauty is proof of the good, so is love, peace and joy. At least true love, true peace, and true joy. And I think God's law attains the higher pleasures of life, by restricting the lower pleasures but also giving recourse to grace and it beholds people to an ultimate judgment which moderates their behaviors in this life, where as Nietzsche wants the baser pleasures and elements to rule over man, like it did the Greeks.
I'm positive, if pressed you'd believe in a science to Ethics, and that moral sages and philosophers like Mencius, Christ, Moses and many others have found it. Ethics are objective, they don't change. Observing societies that have bad ethics, does not prove ethics aren't universal. It just proves that societies can have bad ethics. In fact, all the moral sages and philosophers have been in agreement for all of human history on what morality is--of which Christ and the God of the Bible had gotten all of it, which is further proof He's the Son of God.
Yes, societies have had bad morals. That's even more reason to need God. Because many societies have been hell on earth, without the God of Righteousness to guide them. And the ones that had the most beneficial systems, all mirrored the Gospel and Christianity, as well as the Old Testament.
Nietzsche's beliefs are inherently cruel and selfish. It's just the fact of what they are, if he elevates the Greek Ethic above the Christian one, that's selfish and cruel. Just about all of Nietzsche's work are about cruelty and selfishness, and abomination, of willing to power, and trying to set yourself up in power dynamics.
The proof of Christianity is the last 500 years, where people actually believed in it, and created stable societies like no other in history. And then the backslide we're taking without it. Sure, there could be a reversal of that, and some weird Theonomy gets created, but the ethics of Christianity are a science, and universal across all cultures. You can't argue with Jesus. Simply put, His morals would be the highest pleasure and lowest pain. Which is the objective standard, as there's pleasures that far exceed fleshly kinds, such as peace, love and joy, which the LORD Fosters in His law, and that Law is self evident by the effects it produces in people's hearts.
Nuanced in this, is Christ rebelled against the religious authorities for being too rigid in their dogma, too. You have to confront Christ, not Christendom. That will radically change your ability to navigate it.
And science isn't proving God doesn't exist, but quite the opposite, all science is pointing in the direction of the God of the Bible.
I mean, take the Canaanites. Why would a loving God command people to kill them? There's your answer, that maybe they were just too far gone? You understand? They were not innocent at all, and had they lived, we'd be living in hell already.
[I]t's good that God holds the sword, and ultimately holds you and I accountable. The Canaanites were rapists, pedophiles, child murderers, plain murderers, practiced all forms of sodomy... God was just i[n] holding them accountable through the Jews.
Yes, I do deserve to die, but Christ forgave me. As He'll forgive you, but those laws toward the Canaanites apply to both of us, that if we do not repent, He'll return with a sword one day. As He says, "I came not to bring peace, but the sword."
But ultimately, Nietzsche was very cruel. And I see his philosophy over you, that I understand him enough to know what he's saying. He wants a competing moral system, one derived from adventure and prowess, and doing what's needed in the moment.
But generally, I think you don't care to understand what I'm saying. I'm well aware of what Nietzsche is saying--even your quotation about nature hints at it, which is the dominion of the strong--but generally, there's something sociopathic about Nietzsche's philosophy, that Christianity is superior to, and has proven itself time and time again.
People who ultimately confront Nietzsche, come away with a set of false values--of which you demonstrated, by saying ethics aren't universal--when in fact they certainly are. And Muslims have good laws... don't get me wrong, I highly respect Islam as a moral framework, as I do Hinduism or Confucianism, but Christianity is far superior. I'd much rather prefer living under a Muslim world, than a Nietzschean world. As you critiqued the Stoics, but not the Greek religion, which Nietzsche certainly elevated, primarily for its Theseus like qualities. As I'd think Theseus would be a model of Nietzsche's ethics, would he not?
And frankly, scripture gives us Joseph, not Theseus, not Hercules, but rather compassionate characters who are in a sense not world grabbers, just noble herdsman, as the Slave Morality is actually more prosperous than the Master Morality.
As the Roman virtue of power isn't a very noble one. And even in the historians, and the poets, you see the effect of piety on the people. Which has its purely accidental forms that create prosperity no matter who does it. But, you add to that the power of God, and yes the Sword too--you need God to discern when to use it--then you understand the fact that Jesus is superior.
And also don't make veiled threats agaInst me, friend. I recognize I'm not perfect, but I'm not a canaanite. We can disagree, but you don't need to hate me. I'm not hurting you, by having this discussion, but you should use me as a metric that you can be forgiven too. I did everything as a youth, and nothing in adulthood, and even if I did, there deserves to be a second chance. But hasn't been any of those Canaanites for millennia. Like a society of Ted Bundy or Charles Manson would be the Canaanites. You don't understand it, obviously, because you've never read up on history, how awful people can become. You do sometimes need the sword to bring justice, and cause righteousness to flourish, but it's on God's discretion when that happens, and not man's.
Like, "Only have eyes for their social equals," like that's kind of wrong, and prideful. Do you have eyes for me? That I'm your social equal? Because my equal is the homeless man on the street corner, emaciated and begging for a dollar bill, and a car passes by and throws a twenty out the window, just to watch him crawl for it in traffic. Or it's the untouchable whose smell gets in my car for ten minutes, because she hasn't had a bath for months. My equal is the man lowered down by a basket, when a whole town was seeking to kill him. Certainly, I'm not your equal, but your inferior in everything. So, according to Nietzsche, you shouldn't even be humoring me. Yet you do, so why?
And I've read just enough of Nietzsche and dealt with his disciples enough, to know I want nothing to do with him. He's deeply depraved, and doesn't know what he's talking about. Just about every word he makes is a false statement, riddled with abusive narcissism and veiled egoism. I personally despise the man's philosophy, and see why it inspired a holocaust. The Bible, the wars it inspired were just. It's just good versus evil at a point, and Nietzsche even knows he's evil, by calling himself the antichrist. It's fitting, because that philosophy has nothing kind or right about it. It's good for a sociopath, and making yourself a villain. Not much more. I've also met enough true Christians to know who I prefer the company of, and would trust.
B. K. Neifert 