Nah, knowledge is the only true intimacy, the only way to really get close to someone is to understand them.

Also, most hatred is based on ignorance and a lack of understanding therefore, love cannot be greater than knowledge.

Whoops I made a mistake the reason for the squared is because
the speed of time energy absorption is equal to the speed of light
so it is not e=mc² it is e=m(ct).

t=time energy absorption.

While I agree knowledge is necessary, I would rather believe 1 Corinthians 13 in saying that love is greater than knowledge - as knowledge will pass away but love/charity remains.

My mistake thought she was talking about human love. I stand corrected.

In human language charity and love are not synonymous, that is how I made the error.

I that point.

Does the conquest of Canaan count as a religious war? That takes us back past the past 2000 years.

On the larger point, surely comparing humanities - or who is most humane - is a fairly doomed enterprise, since such a comparison depends entirely on assumptions about what counts as human, which are deteremined before making the comparison?

Incidentally, rather than invoking Godwin's Law by talking about Hilter's dehumanisation of the Jews, let me quote the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy instead:

... dehumanizing the victim makes things simpler
It's like breathing with a respirator
It eases the conscience of even the most conscious
and calculating violator
Words can reduce a person to an object,
something more easy to hate
An inanimate entity, completely disposable,
no problem to obliterate

But death is the silence
in this language of violence
Death is the silence

But death is the silence
in this cycle of violence
death is the silence

Conquest?

Are you saying that the Jews would have sat around twiddling their thumbs and never conquer anyone if it wasn't for mean old God?

Wars over land or resources are fought regardless of God's existence.

Dehumanize?

I think you got it all wrong, what makes you think people are human. According to evolution people are random piles of meat to be used to one's heart's content. Dehumanization is actually a product of the idea that humans matter.

OK, so wars directly ordered by God don't count as religious wars, and giving people value dehumanises them. Got it.

Say "G'day" to the Cheshire Cat for me, next time you see him.

Not you again.

I will explain carefully-er.

Conquest wars are fought regardless of God's existence, therefore a conquest war is not a religious war, a crusade would be a religious war. Or a Jihad.

The ancients did not have to dehumanize people because they did not believe they were their "brother's keepers." Only in a world with human rights does one need to make a person less human.


No! Those mushrooms make your brain smaller!

Heh, and to think I actually *grinned* when I saw that you'd followed up to my post!

Perhaps. But is that then our goal? Is that something Jesus made a habit of doing? Is taking away the humanity of our opponents in an argument the Christ-like thing to do? Or does it, as the song suggests, make it simpler to persecute them?

Earlier you made the comment (in a discussion about the desire to 'win') that everyone but God is selfish. True, but is that something we should embrace, or something that, in God's grace, we should try to remove from our lives?