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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (363996)	12/21/2007 3:09:38 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1573927

CJ, > Read his sermons and know something about the society of the time. I don't see any evidence of the notion that Jesus would have supported high taxes and expensive government social programs. Just because his followers had no influence in government doesn't prove a thing. Tenchusatsu

To: combjelly who wrote (363996)	12/28/2007 4:52:04 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573927

As Tench said "I don't see any evidence of the notion that Jesus would have supported high taxes and expensive government social programs." Noting in his sermons indicates that he would have done so. You replied that you didn't say he would have or that he wouldn't have. Well if there is no clear evidence that he would have supported such policies if asked about them, and there is no evidence at all that he directly did support such policies in any way, that supports my original point. Its not reasonable to claim that opposing big government is opposing Jesus's teachings. As for "And a large part of the reason is the people he was preaching to didn't have a prayer of influencing government policy." combined with "Tim, use your brain. Read his sermons and know something about the society of the time." 1 - The masses at the time has some ability to affect policy. This was strongest in Rome, and was never a consistent thing, but it did happen. The masses far away from Rome had less ability, but they had some ability to affect local policy if enough of them were worked up about it enough (of course if they where too worked up about something and pushed to far, they would be likely to face a crackdown from the legions). I'm not saying it was something that could have been counted on, but it was a lot more than "not having a prayer". 2 - Social programs, food giveaways and such, where far from unknown at the time. "Bread and circuses..." 3 - Even if one assumes that there was essentially no chance to influence policy, that doesn't amount to evidence of Jesus, or anyone else's motivation. The motivation could just as easily be that the policy change talked about "high taxes and expensive government social programs", was either something he opposed, or just didn't care much about.