Would the police agree if you decided not to obey? Can you decide you're not under the authority of the President? No. Did you get to choose the form of the American contract (e.g. the Constitution)? No. The freedom you are given is to express your preference for who should fill that office.
Ironically, you are making an authoritarian argument when you appealing to John Locke as something I should agree with. The whole point of the thread is an argument against such mentality. But it's not a surprise that you would be making it. I don't care that who or when, I care about what and why.
You are not making an a good or valid argument for authoritarian preset either. You are merely appealing to plurality through appeal to authority, which is one formal fallacy wrapped in another one.
I've presented you with a scenario... Let's say that we strip away the current preset of "not having an option". What do you appeal to in order to reconstruct such preset? Majority? You understand why that would be problematic, right?
And, yes. I am a naturalized citizen, so I actually got to choose American contract as something I engage in. I've left a country where I had less options to make personal choices, and I moved into the country where I do have these choices. We are not living in a world where there's some ontological reality called "country" with borders. No matter how much we want to shape the world into a border-based territory that we collectively enforce, in the end it's a mental construct that one can easily avoid... hence why we have the illegal immigration issue. People don't have to agree to the contract if they don't want to. They can always find ways to do things on their own terms.
n Chapter 8 of Locke's Second Treatise he notes that a group of people "make one body politic, wherein the majority have a right to act and conclude the rest." IOW, if you're in the minority, your preference will not be realized. You actually don't get a choice. Locke goes on to talk about "tacit consent", whereby the mere fact that you live in a particular community means you have given the government consent to rule. You cannot, as an individual, decide that government has no authority over you. Instead, if you want to dissolve the government, you must persuade the majority.
Again, I don't care who said what and where
. It's only relevant and implicitly valid when we argue in context of logic that exist internal to the model constructed. We can successfully argue the details of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in context of that model, but it's irrelevant when we discussing certain reality and justification of certain ideas.
Yes, you can make a case from established status quo, but we can make such case in any system. We can justify the Nazi type of dictatorship by saying that majority of people wanted it, and they elected the party and were peeing hot water every time Hitler looked at anyone or held a baby. Pluralism is generally problematic without certain constraints. That's why we have Republican set up, although it's been devolved into pluralistic democracy recently. Can't actually call it democracy either, because the choice of the candidates to align one's beliefs with is severely limited. But I really don't want to discuss politics here.
Likewise, you are quoting Locke as though Locke's is a sole and the only valid ideology in play when it comes to political systems.
This is a semantic argument that isn't going to work with me. To begin with, I'm a scientific instrumentalist. IOW, I view the laws perceived by scientists as models of reality rather than reality itself. With that said, falling off a cliff and dying is not a construct of the human mind. I can't choose to not be subject to gravity.
A law is not a model a law is a generalization derived from some consistent observation. It has an element of a model in a sense that it's a description of some consistency, but it lacks explanation to be a model. It just says "pencil falls every time we let it go in a scope of X Y Z environment and parameters". A scientific theory is a model that integrates and uses these generalizations to explain reality and make consistent predictions.
While falling off the cliff and dying is not a construct of human mind... there's nothing in reality that you can point to that would be "the law of gravity". It's a concept that incorporate a natural process that works consistently, and we call that process gravity, and the observed generalized consistency "a law of gravity".
Here's a link that will explain a difference. I don't want to keep writing a book here, and it's a bit irrelevant to this discussion.
http://science.kennesaw.edu/~rmatson/3380theory.html
But, to your point... you are equivocating a natural consistency, which is undeniable and unavoidable in many cases, and a human construct, which is arguable and avoidable.
In some instances, we can avoid being subjected to natural consistencies by escaping the scope of these consistencies. You can avoid being killed by gravity by diving into water, and you can escape effects of gravity to a larger extend when you fly into space. Natural laws are not universal in a reality of context that we observe such laws.
How do you get from "natural laws" to "authoritarian preset is similar"? You seem to be equivocating concepts that don't have direct correlation. Are you arguing that authoritarian structure is natural? Why did you bring that up?
You've constructed a strawman. Your portrayl of the role of a pastor and of a church does not represent Confessional Lutheranism - the body to which I belong. Do you understand that?
Again, exceptions don't break the rules. These confirm the rules.
But you've avoided my question. What decisions do you think the leadership of a church should be allowed to make?
That's sort of like asking "how many shots should Lebron be taking per game... 20, 30?" It depends on the contextual agreement and structure of the community. It's not up to me to decide. If people want to be told what to do more, they can contract and enter such community. If they don't, then thy should enter community that's more geared to individual decisions.
But I'm really talking about the structure of beliefs here, and not merely a function. Generally, a pastor directs what any member of congregation should be believing, because people general delegate their beliefs to theologians "in charge". There's very little feedback, counter-arguments or anything else of that manner. Hence, you end up with communities that don't really understand what they personally believe, and they don't fully understand what congregations believe because they
generally outsource their ideology to someone else.
Further, your comments beg the question: Do you believe that just as there is a nature to the material world (since you don't like to call them physical laws) by which we are bound that there is also a nature to the spiritual world by which we are bound?
??? What do you mean by "Spiritual world" and how do you know it's there? Or perhaps, more accurately... what do you mean by the word "spiritual"?
