The Glade 4.0

Prior to the fire happening, I'd agree. He should have listened. But after the fire, they no longer have any moral authority to tell anyone anything, as far as I'm concerned.

Men and women, the value of whos life the homeowner showed contempt for by not paying them for services which they risk their lives to render have no moral authority? They certainly have more then the man making unreasonable demands of them.

Not to mention the fact that if the store gives free food to everyone who walks in saying they are hungry, soon there is no store, and everyone is hungry.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Offering to pay them to put out the fire is making an unreasonable demand, in your view? Interesting. He offered to pay the costs, and they refused anyway. So yes, they have no moral authority to tell anyone anything.

That isn't how insurance works. The situation you describe actually has a term: adverse selection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_selection

Pooled risk doesnt work as a system to mitigate disaster if those who wish to participate don't pool their risk before their likelyhood of needing relief has dramatically increased. The demands were unreasonable because at this point the man was essentially saying, "I don't want to purchase health insurance now because I'm healthy, I'll wait until I'm sick or injured, pay a tiny premium relative to the costs of my care, and stick these other poor bastards with my bill." When that happens the system collapses.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Way to shift the goalposts. First it was "Some of his followers are less compassionate than some who are not" now it's "You don't all agree". The double standard lies in the fact that you are not a follower of Jesus, nor are you Jesus himself. Trying to apply what you imagine his standards to be to His followers and complaining that some of them do not live up to them to your standards, but not applying the same to nonfollowers is a double standard because you are also trying to reject Jesus's authority to establish them in the first place. This is a stolen concept fallacy.

Moreover, You are misrepresenting a basic tenet of Christianity: No one can live up to Jesus's standards. Humans can try, but inevitably fall short; hence the need for salvation. Picking out one particulat event, claiming on nothing more than your own authority that the standards have not been met, and then castigating Christians because all Christians do not exceed all nonChristians in compassion by your personal estimation is essentially just saying "I'm going to cherry pick your beliefs to use them as a bludgeon."



If you're unwilling to listen to Jesus because of the excuse of the human failings of His followers, then there is little to be said for you. Your unwillingness to listen is your problem, not mine: it is written not to cast one's pearls before swine. Continuing to try to pick and choose from Jesus's teachings in order to complain about His followers indicates you are less concerned with consistency and are really just casting about for excuses to complain about them.



Thanks for your personal opinion. You still have not addressed any of the reasons why putting this fire out would be bad in the long run. Your personal feelings are noted but they are not much of an argument.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Except he offered to pay the costs, as I understood it. He wasn't talking about the 75, he offered to pay the actual costs.

I am somewhat familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan, a man who Jesus supposedly commended as acting as a neighbor to another human in trouble. Would you argue that the actions of the firefighters that day mirrored in any way the actions of the Good Samaritan?

Yes they do. This has been explained. If he does that, then more and more people will try to do that and then the fire department will have less money with which to maintain itself. It does no good to have payment when fires start because the equipment and training must be paid for beforehand in order to be available at all. If people stop paying on a regular basis, training and equipment will begin to degrade.

Furthermore, the people in town get taxed whether there is a fire or not; those outside the town would get away with paying only when there is a fire.

This has all been explained repeatedly. You've given no moral reason for why they should put out his house. Explain why a house burning down creates a moral obligation to put it out regardless of other considerations.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Irrelevant. It's quite obvious you're only somewhat familiar. Not only was it not a man Jesus commanded but a hypothetical man he used to illustrate a point, but the Samaritan was not an official of any kind. The Samaritan was a regualr passerby who had no obligation to help the robbery victim, nor to help people in general.

The firefighters, on the other hand, have a responsibility to protect the entire community from fire. Their situation is not the same as the officials that preceeded the Samaritan; they did not happen upon this fire at random nor did the officials in the story have any problem of helping the Samaritan negatively impacting their ability to do their duties in the long run. Moreover, the Samaritan was not doing anything physically dangerous to himself; the story is not an obligation to risk one's own safety.

Trying to take Bible story and oversimplify and generalize it in this way is precisely the mistake that fundamentalists make. Your example would have been pertinent had it been a lone firefighter happening upon the fire, but it was not.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Whatever the details, the point is that the author of the article I linked seriously condemns the actions of those firefighters as unchristianlike, and he claims to be a Christian. You claim to be a Christian, and said his article disgusts you. I happen to agree with the author, given what I understand about Christianity. The story of the Good Samaritan is the story of a man who went out of his way to help another man, even to the point of cost to himself. From the few Christians I know, that seems to be the way Jesus expects his followers to behave. If not, then keep your religion, and I'll keep my compassion.

Yes, your assessment of the article is correct.



The judgementalism of the article does, but basically yes.



That's nice, however you seem to admit that you don't know a great deal about Christianity.



In part, yes.



Yes, however that situation is not analagous to this one.

In the story, the man was beaten and left for dead by robbers. The Samaritan who helped him did not confront the robbers (analagous to the fire); he helped him when danger was passed.

Similarly, the Samaritan helped at cost to himself, not to anyone else. Later in the story he takes the man to an inn. He does not demand the innkeeper provide the man a room; he pays for the room himself. In this story, the firefighters helping the man would essentially be demanding of the rest of the community help by putting out the fire because the rest of the community had already paid the costs of maintaining the fire department.

You seem intent on ignoring the larger costs to the community if the behavior of failing to pay one's fire subscription and yet still receive fire services is allowed to continue. This is not an element that is present in Jesus's story; there are no larger, long term costs to anyone but the Samaritan.

If you wish to "keep your compassion", you're welcome to sit there and congratualte yourself on what a great guy you are all you want. In the meantime I'll be happy to "keep my religion" as I'm quite confident that I understand it better than you do, and there is no deficiency in my compassion.

I'm certainly not swayed by your attempts to pick out whatever elements of Christianity you can call to mind and then implications that somehow I should conform to your understanding. This despite your "whatever the details" that indicates, along with your repeated ignoring of the long-term issues I and others have cited, that you simply wish to dismiss details or factors that are inconvenient to your position.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Farther:

What you understand about Christianity clearly isn't enough then. You would be well served to take on an honest and heart-felt study before rendering your expert judgements.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I prefer to think of myself as a simple human being with enough human decency and compassion for another simple human being who is in distress that I would help him, even if he brought the trouble on himself.

But of course, you've never made any mistakes or did anything wrong, so you can sit on your high throne and pronounce that the man got what he deserved. Otherwise, it'd quite hypocritical of you to complain about the article being judgemental.

Fine, I concede. The man got what he deserved. I'd have helped him anyway.

However you want to think of your attempts to put yourself on some pedestal are your business.



I can safely say that, since leaving childhood, I can recall no instance of failing to take a precaution, having something bad happen, being bailed out, then being told to take the precaution, ignoring it figuring I could just get bailed out again, then having the same thing happen over again and going running to someone for a bailout. You see, while I am not perfect, I am not the sort to game the system.

Furthermore, the nature of the judgementalism in the article is entirely different, and your analogy is silly. But then again, I suppose you have always treated everyone with perfect compassion and therefore are in a position to lecture the rest of us? No? Good, then you see how silly this "but you're not perfect!" complaint is.



I wasn't asking you to concede that he got what he deserved. I don't care if he deserved it or not. I care that the rest of the community not have their fire protection degraded by people taking this man's example and only paying when they have a fire.

But fine, whatever allows you to congratulate yourself.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

And you can round up all the justification you want for why you'd sit on your hands while a man's house burned down, if it makes you feel better about yourself and your religion. I'd have helped him anyway.

I respectfully disagree with you. Your example of the good samaritan is why. "...is the story of a man who went out of his way to help another man, even to the point of cost to himself." If the Firefighters or community wanted to pay the fee for this guy beforehand, awesome. But it would be very unchristian like in my opinion, for the firefighters to take from the community to compensate for someone who decided to risk their own home by not paying the fee. What if a fee payers property was destroyed in another area due to the fireman taking it upon themselves to put out this fire? Do we just say "boo hoo thats what homeowners insurance is for!"? Or would that homeowner have a good reason to see reparations from the fire department?

If it's yours to give someone, by all means give away. However in this situation, it's not morally permissable to allow community resources to be squandered.

Never gamble with what you can't afford to lose. I feel for the homeowner, and have a feeling he will be paying the fee in the future. Or he's a damned fool.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

As an individual absolutely.

As a fire company. No. You're failing to see the difference between a company's responsibility and individual compassion.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I never claimed to be Christian at any time.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Then I probably wasn't talking to you.

Then I am sure the man who's house has burned down has expressed his thanks for all the "help" you have sent him, correct?

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Yeah, because I got there in time to help him put out the fire.

Ahhh, I see.

Your "human decency and compassion" only extend to the point when the actual incident is taking place, not when someone can use your help after the immediate incident has passed, and the aftermath must be dealt with. I guess that's not flashy enough to cause all that "human decency and compassion" to rise to the surface (maybe you should read this parable someone told me about - something about a good Samaritan). I understand; many of us would like to think we are better people than our actions demonstrate us to be.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

The emergency is the fire, after that he is getting the help he needs from his insurance company, or so I understand it. Maybe you think his insurance should refuse to pay as well, so those of us who would help can do so? Don't be an ***. As I said, I help when it's needed, which apparently is more than some of you can say. I guess the cash I gave the homeless guy last night doesn't count as meeting an immediate need? Unless you know me and know what I do (that my actions out there match my words in here), you have no basis to shoot off your mouth. But don't let that stop you, go ahead.

Major strawman there. If Jesus had been "standing there", he wouldn't have had the same issues with resources/funding that the firefighters would be risking, for one thing.



Well, it certainly hasn't seemed to stop you from shooting off your mouth about other people the same way.

I can only go by what they say here. I've said I would have helped put out the fire instead of sitting on my hands, and I would have. Some here have said they would not, and the article I linked was quite critical of that stance, for anyone who calls himself a Christian. Did the Good Samaritan ask the beaten man if he was up to date on his taxes and fees? I would venture not, though maybe I should find a bible somewhere and check.

Vindicarre tried to twist things with his commentary. I would have helped, when the man actually needed it. Had the fire dept. manned up instead of acting like petulant children, my help would not have been needed. Now that he is getting help from his insurance, my help is not needed. it was a stupid attempt at deflection.