I read you loud and clear and I already understood what you said here the first time. It was not a hard concept to understand. I really can't even believe that you gave me such little credit that you kept on insisting I did not get the concept.Philosch wrote: There's a clear difference between saying if you challenge my human claim I'll send you to a Siberian prison or execute your family and if you say that when you challenge "God's" authority your soul will be eternally dammed.
The reason is simple.....maybe I get together with 10,000 of my closest friends and stage a coup to over throw this authoritarian human Marxist regime or maybe I find some other way to undermine or challenge the "human" authority. But what can I do to a "God" who's going to dam me to hell? Nothing at all, I have no recourse until I dispel the belief precisely because a "God" would be supreme and it's "authority" is supreme. It's just much trickier to challenge. Now of course people do challenge divine authority, I am right now, it's just much harder. The point I was trying to make from the very beginning without watering it down is that it's much easier to challenge someone's authority if you remove any claims to divinity or supernatural authority from the foundation of the claims being made. I hope this is clearer to you now. I stand by this statement as self evident.
But aside from that, I STILL challenge you. On Claim C, since Claim A and B are immaterial. Not to me, but I don't want to bother with them, and you're right in saying that your claim C is the important one.
Your strong response to my challenge is that Marxian regimes forced the populace to accept that weltanschauung. Yes, that is true. It is also true that Christianity spread throughout Europe with the same MEANS. Yes. There was resistance, notwithstanding the "divine punch behind the Words of the Bible". Many missionaries were executed by painful, torturous methods by pagan worshipers, who wanted nothing to do with Christianity. Christianity responded with the same tactics.
Take Hungary, for example. Toward the end of the first millennium, Geza decreed that the nation be Christian. He forbade anyone under the threat of painful execution to recite old-time and traditional verses and legends which were, and because they were, pagan in nature. The entire nation converted because of force, fear, and oppression. Same as with the Marxists. Nary a difference. None. Nada.
So.... who is to say that the word of God is harder to resist and to challenge than the word of a mortal? If the SAME methods had to be employed to get the populace accept the dogma, then the SAME strength of conviction (and resistance thereto) purely by the text exists. (Text being the Scriptures and Marx's and Lenin's writings and teachings.)
Sometimes I wish I and my debating partners would have had the same educational background on this forum. In history, literature and sciences. I miss just as much of your points due to cultural ignorance as you of mine. I could use more theoretical religion knowledge, that's for sure. On your part (not you, personally, but a lot of debating partners on these forums) could have used a lot more science education. A lot more would have been a lot more.