"mathēteuō: "to make a disciple, to teach, instruct" (not much alternative possibility here)"
I'm not sure how you can there's not much alternative possibility. To make a disciple (to cause someone to become a follower) seems to be quite different than simply to teach, since the latter usage has been used by Draugnar and others to imply that this command is somehow voluntaristic and simply a call for people to teach Jesus's commands. From the entire context of the passage, where Jesus tells his followers to get all nations to obey his commands, it takes some serious midrashing to twist this into being a voluntaristic enterprise. Why wasn't the word "διδάσκω" didasko used instead?
http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?strongs=G1321
"pas: the collective "some from every" translation makes the most sense (would Christians really be able to make everyone a disciple? Jesus himself did not make every jew his disciple, thus it doesn't make sense for Him to instruct his followers to convert each and every individual.)"
So this isn't an actual translation, just you surmising it once again. These word games "well it *MUST* mean this, just because I said so" are really infuriating. Is there anything in the actual text of the phrase to indicate "some from every"?
"Jesus himself did not make every jew his disciple, "
Is this from lack of trying? Surely he tried to convert as many people as possible. Or are we equivocating with the word disciple now, since in Jesus's context it usually refers to "The Twelve"? What kind of disciples are we talking about?
"So it appears that we aren't to continue teaching or instructing people who choose not to listen. And what are we as Christians supposed to do with those unbelievers? Nothing more than shake the dust off our feet. We aren't to pass judgement just move on to the next house or town."
Because they're going to face a fate worse than Sodom and Gomorrah. How benevolent of you. This is exactly what I was talking about earlier with your "choice" of hellfire and torture or belief.
"
A. No one believes except that God reveals Himself to human kind first."
I have no idea what this sentence means.
"B. Everyone is born sinful, in rebellion against God, and commiting sin both by doing bad, and not doing good.
C. Not only that, no one is capable of doing good and not doing bad."
So this is your excuse, that everyone - even the newborn infant, is born bad? And this is supposed to convince me your worldview isn't perverse? Condemning all of humanity as guilty before they've even done anything and deserving of eternal torture by fire unless they belief in your scapegoat, Jesus Christ, who is ritually sacrificed for humanity's alleged "sins"?
"what hell looks like is another debate"
It's supposed to be at least worse than the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah (which was utterly destroyed by fire and brimstone), since you made that statement earlier. Now we're going to pretend that it might not be that awful or that like everything else in your belief system, it's ridden with ambiguity. Convenient. At any rate Jesus said it was a place where fire never stops burning, and that the punishment of hell is worse than gouging out your eyes or cutting off your arms. Seems like a fun place, fitting for a benevolent and merciful "god".
"Now if you don't believe in hell, how sinister really is the "fairy tale" that I tell you? Or do you really believe in hell then, in which case why do you choose "the bullet in the head" as you put it? (thus I contrast with the overt threats of communist and socialist thought, rather than the "fairy tale" intangible hell that no christian is ever able to send you to.)"
Now your excuse is that the threat of eternal spiritual hell is not really coercion because unbelievers believe it's a fairy tale? What? This makes no sense. You use the threat eternal torture (whether real or not) to convince people to believe and then your defense for it not being coercive is that might not be real. So you're engaging in the moral equivalent of fake bomb threats and holding up convenience stores with toy guns. People who insist on not believing despite your vile threats aren't "choosing the gun", they're calling your bluff that your gun is fake. To make the claim that this kind of behavior on the part of Christians isn't coercive is akin to saying that fake executions in Guantanamo aren't coercive.
And once again I'm supposed to be persuaded that yours is a system of moral guidelines for the rest of us.
" Instead, publicy, I seek to present the Bible as it is written, in its entirety"
Really, I don't know how anyone can present this monstrosity as it is written in its entirety and still claim to be a moral human being. It's a vile book full of lurid descriptions of sex, rape, incest, murder, mass murder, torture, and child killing. Most if not all of it sanctioned by your "god". But I assume you're saying that you're one of the lucky few that knows the "correct" translation of the Bible, while these other dozens of commonly used Bibles are sadly followed by fools and idiots who don't know the truth.
"because every argument potentially has some idiot who subscribes to it, who is irrational and does stupid or horrible things, and anyone who tries to argue that position can be held responsible for that individual's actions, thus they risk losing the argument."
You continue to speak as if these interpretations were only made by a small select few extremists throughout history, instead of being the predominant interpretation of the Bible. I also like how the "Word of God" wants to be held to the same standard as every other misinterpreted text, kind of odd for something that is supposed to be inerrant and divinely inspired. One would think that, if this is really divinely inspired, it wouldn't be such a convoluted, poorly constructed text so subject to misinterpretation and misuse.
And if you've paid attention to anything I've ever said on this board, I reject completely the claim by "socialists" which dodge the question of the Soviet Union by claiming it's "not really socialism". My common reply is that these "socialists" love every kind of socialism except actually existing socialism. I do the same thing for free market ideologues who try to dismiss the crimes associated with their ideology for not being "real" free market capitalism. It's intellectually and morally cowardly to continue to dodge accountability for widely held interpretations of your belief system, and dodge accountability for the history of Christianity.
"Capitalism at least acknowledges the greed of man and that he will always be greedy, and attempts to both limit (and unfortunately enable) mankind's greed through market forces."
Sort of weird to be a capitalist apologist and a Christian, don't you think? Somehow you people manage to do it. And the idea that capitalism "limits" greed by creating a system governed by the profit motive and self-interest is sheer nonsense. But I'm allowing you to change the subject again, so I'll stop this obliging you in your redbaiting tangents.
"As churchil said of Democracy, which is the government that best champions capitalism, it is the worst form of government except for all others that have been tried. "
That's a butchery of the drunken fascist's quote. His quote was about democracy, not capitalism.
" It puts the onus of fixing things on God and not on mankind, which has done a rather less than poor job so far."
Your god didn't exactly do a brilliant job of it either.
"I never said this was a marxist/leninist view, but a socialist view, and not an overtly publically acknoweledged one at that. "
It's neither. Non-ML "Socialists" believe in establishing socialism through gradual reforms and bourgeois democracy. They don't believe in a dictatorship of intellectuals. Stop making stuff up.
New game: gameID=61317
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