Sulla: Golly. I had it all wrong:r You really are some kind of hero! Lost your cherished family relationships for deciding to leave the JWs! Who among us could ever question your moral superiority after that? You've earned it, SBC, you've earned it!
Oh, come on now, Sulla. I'm not comparing my morals to yours nor am I claiming to have outstanding morals. I'm just saying that some of us have stopped letting our actions be guided by fear of a deity who gets his jollies from the smell of burning flesh and the cries of drowning children or of those being mauled by bears. Or perhaps you think I have no room to talk about morals since my compass doesn't tell me which day it's okay to eat fish?
Sulla: Anyhow, once you ignore your comments that are designed to change the topic, we really are left with my basic claim that everybody here would have merrily sacrificed kids along with everybody else at the time.
Comments designed to change the topic? You mean like the one below, which was spot on topic, but you ignored because you just don't know these statistics and it helps your assertion to pretend nobody could've ever demonstrated "relatively progressive" thinking?
SBC: It would've been incredibly difficult to evolve morally under those circumstances. Does that mean not one individual among them fled, defected, or at some point voiced objection?
... or this one, which contains a link to peer-reviewed archaeological research entitled Skeletal Remains from Punic Carthage Do Not Support Systematic Sacrifice of Infants...
SBC: To insist that you know exactly what I or anyone else on this forum would've done in Carthage - even while uncertainty exists as to how prevalent child sacrifice really was there - is decidedly arrogant of you.
Of course, that doesn't diminish the evidence for ritualistic human sacrifice in numerous ancient religions. I just wanted to point out that you might not have picked up the latest memo on Carthage since you were so fond of referencing it.
Regardless, I can't make this clearer: you seem to be full of shit with your arrogant certainty. You don't know what Martin Luther King, Jr or Adolph Hitler would've done in a different culture/context. "Maybe", "probably", "likely", and "most likely" are words that even simple-minded folk like me can understand. (To be fair, you make me want to be more conscious of how I put things. Thanks for that.)
Sulla: One is left to presume guys like you, who after all have been through the crucible of unanswered text messages from cherished family members, would have launched some sort of "occupy Moab" movement and brought the whole thing down.
Yes, well, I wouldn't expect someone with your impeccable social graces to place much value on genuine relationships with flesh and blood when you have an invisible, omnipotent, miracle-working friend you can talk to at any moment.
You and your moral vanity really outta get a room.
So sayeth the fellow with Santorum dribbling down his chin after a vigorous romp with his own intellectually pretentious ego.
Listen.... ultimately, it's your god I'm mocking, not you. Okay, no. Scratch that. Ultimately, it is you I'm mocking because your god is conveniently absent. But to be totally honest, this whole exchange is really only happening because you were a true douche canoe to NC - who (whom?) I respect - and it seemed rather undeserved.
Sulla: NC, you make me smile when you are so charmingly clueless. I know a lot of charmingly clueless people and, if I knew you, I bet you'd be my favorite one of all! ...... Is there any point in reminding you that the moral is that you're not supposed to do human sacrifice?.... Probably not, because you have such industrial strength cluelessness.
So maybe we just got off on the wrong foot, Sulla. Maybe I mistakenly assumed your above post was condescending and spiteful when it was just your socially inept way of flirting.
Either way, I see that we're reducing this thread to a grade-school playground so I'm just gonna let myself out the door. Have a flipping awesome week!