Who’s church is closer to following “true” Christianity: BRTD’s, or ER’s?

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

What do you think?

Whose

[John Dule]

Yeah, pretty much what Nathan said. I would have compared it to interpreting the law-- whether or not you agree with a particular statute, you can still objectively assess whether certain actions or procedures conform to that statute.

I mean again the law is a social convention. Whether same-sex sexual relations are a sin or not is to Christians a truth claim about material reality.

I could easily say that I think ER's Christianity is on that score more faithful than BRTD's to my 'literary' interpretation of Christianity. This is what Paul said, what most churches said until the 20th century etc.. But I don't see how I could make that a theological claim, because I don't know how I would falsify BRTD's theological justification on the plane of theology, something I don't believe is a valid path to knowledge.

Studying "theology" doesn't necessitate any religious belief. If one studies a religious text or tradition, one is engaging in a form of "theology." An atheist is just as capable of reading a religious text and applying it to a given situation as a believer is.

I agree that theology can't provide any important or interesting answers (or indeed, questions) about the fundamental nature of reality, but studying religion can still be useful from an anthropological/cultural perspective.

[PSOL]

There seems to be a strange viewpoint here that conservatism is by default always closer to "true" Christianity.

True Christianity is based off teachings from 2,000 years ago, so yes, it is conservative.

Karl Marx's writings are almost 180 years old. Conservative?

Certainly are in some parts of the world.[/b]

Karl Marx had unsavory views of unemployed people that are immensely classicist and was conservative relatively to relationships between the sexes and social rights to LGBT people. He also did not talk about racism all that much which to other theorists became very important.

I’ve spoken against egregious attacks on his character before from these angles, but he was not some perfect individual for whom is the end all be all, he had issues and was a guy with many smart ideas.

You have a BS Bob-esque tendency to think of "conservative" as indicating a specific set of political stances across time periods and cultures, rather than as a set of attitudes and social emotions that people can take towards a variety of historical conditions and processes. This has led you on several occasions to what strike me as unhelpful and unnecessary misunderstandings of how other posters are using the word.

Well excuse me, I thought they were referring to the “now” and how many Marxists in the “now” are viewing this.

[Georg Ebner]

An atheist is just as capable of reading a religious text and applying it to a given situation as a believer is.

No, he isn't - as, for example, the history of nonChristian BibleCritics has proven very well with its endless series of as arrogant as ignorant hypoTheses, most of them having already been refuted.
Generally a historian must - like any novelist, with whom he is not unrelated - first of all love (at least a little bit), what he describes then critically.
"Whatever is, is right." is finally certainly insufficient from a logical point of view, but nonetheless necessary to understand anything empirical.

[John Dule]

An atheist is just as capable of reading a religious text and applying it to a given situation as a believer is.

No, he isn't - as, for example, the history of nonChristian BibleCritics has proven very well with its endless series of as arrogant as ignorant hypoTheses, most of them having already been refuted.
Generally a historian must - like any novelist, with whom he is not unrelated - first of all love (at least a little bit), what he describes then critically.
"Whatever is, is right." is finally certainly insufficient from a logical point of view, but nonetheless necessary to understand anything empirical.

So in order to be a decent historian of the Khmer Rouge, one must "love" Pol Pot?

[Georg Ebner]

An atheist is just as capable of reading a religious text and applying it to a given situation as a believer is.

No, he isn't - as, for example, the history of nonChristian BibleCritics has proven very well with its endless series of as arrogant as ignorant hypoTheses, most of them having already been refuted.
Generally a historian must - like any novelist, with whom he is not unrelated - first of all love (at least a little bit), what he describes then critically.
"Whatever is, is right." is finally certainly insufficient from a logical point of view, but nonetheless necessary to understand anything empirical.

So in order to be a decent historian of the Khmer Rouge, one must "love" Pol Pot?

Yes - no historian writes without passion, no historian writes cum studio et ira.
The historian forgives the stupid for they did not know, what they were doing. What requires to be - contrary to all the ideoLogues&uTopists - so used to human tragedies&catastrophies, so used to expect the worst, that he is already in the cloud-free Olymp (HERODOT was the ideal in this regard). And is another reason, why the greatest of them (BURCKHARDT, RANKE, HUIZINGA aso.) were fairly close to Christianity.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Studying "theology" doesn't necessitate any religious belief.

No, but making positive doctrinal statements does.

If one studies a religious text or tradition, one is engaging in a form of "theology."

Or history, or philosophy, or literary study. The point is it's difficult to see how those can adjudicate competing theological claims.

[John Dule]

Studying "theology" doesn't necessitate any religious belief.

No, but making positive doctrinal statements does.

If one studies a religious text or tradition, one is engaging in a form of "theology."

Or history, or philosophy, or literary study. The point is it's difficult to see how those can adjudicate competing theological claims.

Whether or not one agrees with a religious text, one can still assess whether a person's actions comply with the prescriptions and proscriptions of that text. Even as an atheist, I think I pretty much understand that murder is an unChristian act. I'm not sure why you're pressing this point. It seems apparent to me.

[DaleCooper]

Both are completely unrecognizable compared the the Christianity of the Bible.

[they don't love you like i love you]

Both are completely unrecognizable compared the the Christianity of the Bible.

Does any church exist today that isn't?

[Georg Ebner]

An atheist is just as capable of reading a religious text and applying it to a given situation as a believer is.

No, he isn't - as, for example, the history of nonChristian BibleCritics has proven very well with its endless series of as arrogant as ignorant hypoTheses, most of them having already been refuted.
Generally a historian must - like any novelist, with whom he is not unrelated - first of all love (at least a little bit), what he describes then critically.
"Whatever is, is right." is finally certainly insufficient from a logical point of view, but nonetheless necessary to understand anything empirical.

So in order to be a decent historian of the Khmer Rouge, one must "love" Pol Pot?

Yes - no historian writes without passion, no historian writes cum studio et ira.
The historian forgives the stupid for they did not know, what they were doing. What requires to be - contrary to all the ideoLogues&uTopists - so used to human tragedies&catastrophies, so used to expect the worst, that he is already in the cloud-free Olymp (HERODOT was the ideal in this regard). And is another reason, why the greatest of them (BURCKHARDT, RANKE, HUIZINGA aso.) were fairly close to Christianity.

Instead of saying my own thoughts like a naked primitive and idiótes i should have wrapped myself into the clothes of ... perhaps GOETHE: "Were not the eye itself a Sun | No Sun for it could ever shine; | By nothing Godlike could the heart be won | Were not the heart itself divine." ["heart itself divine" was meant in a pagan way, not in a monistical one]. As a conSequence He - an established poet and honourable minister - admitted, that "In every moment of my life i was capable of committing any crime."
And for those, who do not take poets serious (exactly those, who i do not take serious...), DILTHEY wrote it in prose: "You cannot go back behind life." (His famous "hermeneutical circle": we can understand only, what we have already understood).
"Any historiography is obviously always an autobiography." (GOMEZ DAVILA)
All empirical science is based purely on anaLogy.

So it's even worse than i said: In order to understand Mr.PolPot You must Yourself incorporate Mr.PolPot...

[PSOL]

An atheist is just as capable of reading a religious text and applying it to a given situation as a believer is.

No, he isn't - as, for example, the history of nonChristian BibleCritics has proven very well with its endless series of as arrogant as ignorant hypoTheses, most of them having already been refuted.
Generally a historian must - like any novelist, with whom he is not unrelated - first of all love (at least a little bit), what he describes then critically.
"Whatever is, is right." is finally certainly insufficient from a logical point of view, but nonetheless necessary to understand anything empirical.

So in order to be a decent historian of the Khmer Rouge, one must "love" Pol Pot?

Yes - no historian writes without passion, no historian writes cum studio et ira.
The historian forgives the stupid for they did not know, what they were doing. What requires to be - contrary to all the ideoLogues&uTopists - so used to human tragedies&catastrophies, so used to expect the worst, that he is already in the cloud-free Olymp (HERODOT was the ideal in this regard). And is another reason, why the greatest of them (BURCKHARDT, RANKE, HUIZINGA aso.) were fairly close to Christianity.

Instead of saying my own thoughts like a naked primitive and idiótes i should have wrapped myself into the clothes of ... perhaps GOETHE: "Were not the eye itself a Sun | No Sun for it could ever shine; | By nothing Godlike could the heart be won | Were not the heart itself divine." ["heart itself divine" was meant in a pagan way, not in a monistical one]. As a conSequence He - an established poet and honourable minister - admitted, that "In every moment of my life i was capable of committing any crime."
And for those, who do not take poets serious (exactly those, who i do not take serious...), DILTHEY wrote it in prose: "You cannot go back behind life." (His famous "hermeneutical circle": we can understand only, what we have already understood).
"Any historiography is obviously always an autobiography." (GOMEZ DAVILA)
All empirical science is based purely on anaLogy.

So it's even worse than i said: In order to understand Mr.PolPot You must Yourself incorporate Mr.PolPot...

Oftentimes the people with the most experience on the matter of what is wrong are people of that "lane", yes, but you don't have to incorporate or respect a failure–indeed the harshest critiques of DK and the leader in particular are former members in the movement who soured on him or former supporters abroad who soured on him from a marxist perspective. There are a ton of those who knew that he did make mistakes, very big ones, but know the nuances and exact examples of those mistakes. However, even these people are oftentimes blinded by spite or even implicit nostalgia, so it takes a diverse range of people to get the story exactly right.

I am not responding to the gobbledygook of poorly cited references of late romantic writers and pure errors regarding definitions here, if we are basing your ideals on citations alone you would fail high school Lit. Also get better and more interesting citations and sources for inspiration rather than long dead people in your fields course of focus, it would be more relevant to explaining the "now". At least Vittorio used and cited at least one person's work who died less than fifty years ago as his go-to, and with all his citations he was fairly good at proper citations that would not lead to a zero in high school Lit. Plus he kept some things current too by pointing out stuff people were doing and saying now that defended his argument, always keeping it fresh.

[Georg Ebner]

An atheist is just as capable of reading a religious text and applying it to a given situation as a believer is.

No, he isn't - as, for example, the history of nonChristian BibleCritics has proven very well with its endless series of as arrogant as ignorant hypoTheses, most of them having already been refuted.
Generally a historian must - like any novelist, with whom he is not unrelated - first of all love (at least a little bit), what he describes then critically.
"Whatever is, is right." is finally certainly insufficient from a logical point of view, but nonetheless necessary to understand anything empirical.

So in order to be a decent historian of the Khmer Rouge, one must "love" Pol Pot?

Yes - no historian writes without passion, no historian writes cum studio et ira.
The historian forgives the stupid for they did not know, what they were doing. What requires to be - contrary to all the ideoLogues&uTopists - so used to human tragedies&catastrophies, so used to expect the worst, that he is already in the cloud-free Olymp (HERODOT was the ideal in this regard). And is another reason, why the greatest of them (BURCKHARDT, RANKE, HUIZINGA aso.) were fairly close to Christianity.

Instead of saying my own thoughts like a naked primitive and idiótes i should have wrapped myself into the clothes of ... perhaps GOETHE: "Were not the eye itself a Sun | No Sun for it could ever shine; | By nothing Godlike could the heart be won | Were not the heart itself divine." ["heart itself divine" was meant in a pagan way, not in a monistical one]. As a conSequence He - an established poet and honourable minister - admitted, that "In every moment of my life i was capable of committing any crime."
And for those, who do not take poets serious (exactly those, who i do not take serious...), DILTHEY wrote it in prose: "You cannot go back behind life." (His famous "hermeneutical circle": we can understand only, what we have already understood).
"Any historiography is obviously always an autobiography." (GOMEZ DAVILA)
All empirical science is based purely on anaLogy.

So it's even worse than i said: In order to understand Mr.PolPot You must Yourself incorporate Mr.PolPot...

Oftentimes the people with the most experience on the matter of what is wrong are people of that "lane", yes, but you don't have to incorporate or respect a failure–indeed the harshest critiques of DK and the leader in particular are former members in the movement who soured on him or former supporters abroad who soured on him from a marxist perspective. There are a ton of those who knew that he did make mistakes, very big ones, but know the nuances and exact examples of those mistakes. However, even these people are oftentimes blinded by spite or even implicit nostalgia, so it takes a diverse range of people to get the story exactly right.

I am not responding to the gobbledygook of poorly cited references of late romantic writers and pure errors regarding definitions here, if we are basing your ideals on citations alone you would fail high school Lit. Also get better and more interesting citations and sources for inspiration rather than long dead people in your fields course of focus, it would be more relevant to explaining the "now". At least Vittorio used and cited at least one person's work who died less than fifty years ago as his go-to, and with all his citations he was fairly good at proper citations that would not lead to a zero in high school Lit. Plus he kept some things current too by pointing out stuff people were doing and saying now that defended his argument, always keeping it fresh.

Ah, You are the one, who has problems with me since i unmasked homosexual partnerships as illusory. (But that even fits to heterosexual ones!)

[PSOL]

An atheist is just as capable of reading a religious text and applying it to a given situation as a believer is.

No, he isn't - as, for example, the history of nonChristian BibleCritics has proven very well with its endless series of as arrogant as ignorant hypoTheses, most of them having already been refuted.
Generally a historian must - like any novelist, with whom he is not unrelated - first of all love (at least a little bit), what he describes then critically.
"Whatever is, is right." is finally certainly insufficient from a logical point of view, but nonetheless necessary to understand anything empirical.

So in order to be a decent historian of the Khmer Rouge, one must "love" Pol Pot?

Yes - no historian writes without passion, no historian writes cum studio et ira.
The historian forgives the stupid for they did not know, what they were doing. What requires to be - contrary to all the ideoLogues&uTopists - so used to human tragedies&catastrophies, so used to expect the worst, that he is already in the cloud-free Olymp (HERODOT was the ideal in this regard). And is another reason, why the greatest of them (BURCKHARDT, RANKE, HUIZINGA aso.) were fairly close to Christianity.

Instead of saying my own thoughts like a naked primitive and idiótes i should have wrapped myself into the clothes of ... perhaps GOETHE: "Were not the eye itself a Sun | No Sun for it could ever shine; | By nothing Godlike could the heart be won | Were not the heart itself divine." ["heart itself divine" was meant in a pagan way, not in a monistical one]. As a conSequence He - an established poet and honourable minister - admitted, that "In every moment of my life i was capable of committing any crime."
And for those, who do not take poets serious (exactly those, who i do not take serious...), DILTHEY wrote it in prose: "You cannot go back behind life." (His famous "hermeneutical circle": we can understand only, what we have already understood).
"Any historiography is obviously always an autobiography." (GOMEZ DAVILA)
All empirical science is based purely on anaLogy.

So it's even worse than i said: In order to understand Mr.PolPot You must Yourself incorporate Mr.PolPot...

Oftentimes the people with the most experience on the matter of what is wrong are people of that "lane", yes, but you don't have to incorporate or respect a failure–indeed the harshest critiques of DK and the leader in particular are former members in the movement who soured on him or former supporters abroad who soured on him from a marxist perspective. There are a ton of those who knew that he did make mistakes, very big ones, but know the nuances and exact examples of those mistakes. However, even these people are oftentimes blinded by spite or even implicit nostalgia, so it takes a diverse range of people to get the story exactly right.

I am not responding to the gobbledygook of poorly cited references of late romantic writers and pure errors regarding definitions here, if we are basing your ideals on citations alone you would fail high school Lit. Also get better and more interesting citations and sources for inspiration rather than long dead people in your fields course of focus, it would be more relevant to explaining the "now". At least Vittorio used and cited at least one person's work who died less than fifty years ago as his go-to, and with all his citations he was fairly good at proper citations that would not lead to a zero in high school Lit. Plus he kept some things current too by pointing out stuff people were doing and saying now that defended his argument, always keeping it fresh.

Ah, You are the one, who has problems with me since i unmasked homosexual partnerships as illusory. (But that even fits to heterosexual ones!)

You’ve always had a weird schtick, but obviously when you move on to my turf in the political and personal and do so with poor yet excessive citations, I’m going to comment on that.

This doesn’t detract from the main message that you don’t need to love or really know anyone to get a good sense of history or even write down reality, just go for the good sources and you’ll see most of reality similar to as it was.

[bagelman]

ER represents southern fried white evangelical Christianity, which best echos the Christianity of ~1000 AD. BRTD might be a better fit for the Christianity that existed before its adoption by the Roman Empire, although still out of place in many ways.

[Former President tack50]

Both are completely unrecognizable compared the the Christianity of the Bible.

Does any church exist today that isn't?

The one directly descended from Saint Peter. Aka, the Roman Catholic Church

[they don't love you like i love you]

Both are completely unrecognizable compared the the Christianity of the Bible.

Does any church exist today that isn't?

The one directly descended from Saint Peter. Aka, the Roman Catholic Church

The Orthodox Church has a far stronger claim to that (not that I believe in it either of course), and one could argue that small Nestorian churches in the Middle East or the Coptic Church have an even stronger one.

[Georg Ebner]

An atheist is just as capable of reading a religious text and applying it to a given situation as a believer is.

No, he isn't - as, for example, the history of nonChristian BibleCritics has proven very well with its endless series of as arrogant as ignorant hypoTheses, most of them having already been refuted.
Generally a historian must - like any novelist, with whom he is not unrelated - first of all love (at least a little bit), what he describes then critically.
"Whatever is, is right." is finally certainly insufficient from a logical point of view, but nonetheless necessary to understand anything empirical.

So in order to be a decent historian of the Khmer Rouge, one must "love" Pol Pot?

Yes - no historian writes without passion, no historian writes cum studio et ira.
The historian forgives the stupid for they did not know, what they were doing. What requires to be - contrary to all the ideoLogues&uTopists - so used to human tragedies&catastrophies, so used to expect the worst, that he is already in the cloud-free Olymp (HERODOT was the ideal in this regard). And is another reason, why the greatest of them (BURCKHARDT, RANKE, HUIZINGA aso.) were fairly close to Christianity.

Instead of saying my own thoughts like a naked primitive and idiótes i should have wrapped myself into the clothes of ... perhaps GOETHE: "Were not the eye itself a Sun | No Sun for it could ever shine; | By nothing Godlike could the heart be won | Were not the heart itself divine." ["heart itself divine" was meant in a pagan way, not in a monistical one]. As a conSequence He - an established poet and honourable minister - admitted, that "In every moment of my life i was capable of committing any crime."
And for those, who do not take poets serious (exactly those, who i do not take serious...), DILTHEY wrote it in prose: "You cannot go back behind life." (His famous "hermeneutical circle": we can understand only, what we have already understood).
"Any historiography is obviously always an autobiography." (GOMEZ DAVILA)
All empirical science is based purely on anaLogy.

So it's even worse than i said: In order to understand Mr.PolPot You must Yourself incorporate Mr.PolPot...

Oftentimes the people with the most experience on the matter of what is wrong are people of that "lane", yes, but you don't have to incorporate or respect a failure–indeed the harshest critiques of DK and the leader in particular are former members in the movement who soured on him or former supporters abroad who soured on him from a marxist perspective. There are a ton of those who knew that he did make mistakes, very big ones, but know the nuances and exact examples of those mistakes. However, even these people are oftentimes blinded by spite or even implicit nostalgia, so it takes a diverse range of people to get the story exactly right.

I am not responding to the gobbledygook of poorly cited references of late romantic writers and pure errors regarding definitions here, if we are basing your ideals on citations alone you would fail high school Lit. Also get better and more interesting citations and sources for inspiration rather than long dead people in your fields course of focus, it would be more relevant to explaining the "now". At least Vittorio used and cited at least one person's work who died less than fifty years ago as his go-to, and with all his citations he was fairly good at proper citations that would not lead to a zero in high school Lit. Plus he kept some things current too by pointing out stuff people were doing and saying now that defended his argument, always keeping it fresh.

Ah, You are the one, who has problems with me since i unmasked homosexual partnerships as illusory. (But that even fits to heterosexual ones!)

You’ve always had a weird schtick, but obviously when you move on to my turf in the political and personal and do so with poor yet excessive citations, I’m going to comment on that.

This doesn’t detract from the main message that you don’t need to love or really know anyone to get a good sense of history or even write down reality, just go for the good sources and you’ll see most of reality similar to as it was.

As an antiEgalitarist i cannot be unhappy, when You cannot cope with GOETHE or DILTHEY. But as a rational man i cannot be happy, when You deride a forum for elections into a platForm for Your irrational and hysterical pychoDramas.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

ER is of course closer to biblical text in the sense that he has social views that wouldn't be out of place millennia ago.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

There seems to be a strange viewpoint here that conservatism is by default always closer to "true" Christianity.

True Christianity is based off teachings from 2,000 years ago, so yes, it is conservative.

Karl Marx's writings are almost 180 years old. Conservative?

Certainly are in some parts of the world.[/b]

Karl Marx had unsavory views of unemployed people that are immensely classicist and was conservative relatively to relationships between the sexes and social rights to LGBT people. He also did not talk about racism all that much which to other theorists became very important.

I’ve spoken against egregious attacks on his character before from these angles, but he was not some perfect individual for whom is the end all be all, he had issues and was a guy with many smart ideas.

You have a BS Bob-esque tendency to think of "conservative" as indicating a specific set of political stances across time periods and cultures, rather than as a set of attitudes and social emotions that people can take towards a variety of historical conditions and processes. This has led you on several occasions to what strike me as unhelpful and unnecessary misunderstandings of how other posters are using the word.

Well excuse me, I thought they were referring to the “now” and how many Marxists in the “now” are viewing this.

There are still parts of the world now where this or that view that's "conservative" in the American sense might not be seen as "conservative". The fact that in much of Japan opposing abortion is thought of as a niche disabled-person issue, kind of like opposing applied behavioral analysis or something in the US, comes immediately to mind.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

There seems to be a strange viewpoint here that conservatism is by default always closer to "true" Christianity.

True Christianity is based off teachings from 2,000 years ago, so yes, it is conservative.

Karl Marx's writings are almost 180 years old. Conservative?

Certainly are in some parts of the world.

Karl Marx had unsavory views of unemployed people that are immensely classicist and was conservative relatively to relationships between the sexes and social rights to LGBT people. He also did not talk about racism all that much which to other theorists became very important.

I’ve spoken against egregious attacks on his character before from these angles, but he was not some perfect individual for whom is the end all be all, he had issues and was a guy with many smart ideas.

You have a BS Bob-esque tendency to think of "conservative" as indicating a specific set of political stances across time periods and cultures, rather than as a set of attitudes and social emotions that people can take towards a variety of historical conditions and processes. This has led you on several occasions to what strike me as unhelpful and unnecessary misunderstandings of how other posters are using the word.

Well excuse me, I thought they were referring to the “now” and how many Marxists in the “now” are viewing this.

There are still parts of the world now where this or that view that's "conservative" in the American sense might not be seen as "conservative". The fact that in much of Japan opposing abortion is thought of as a niche disabled-person issue, kind of like opposing applied behavioral analysis or something in the US, comes immediately to mind.

The political situation in Japan is affected by the fact it's fundamentally a Buddhist/animist country to this day. Polling shows that Japan and its neighbors are among the countries with the lowest share of people who think of drinking as immoral, and various Abrahamaic-rooted taboos/cultural views are really not as relevant. Japan is a place where more people care about nuclear power, the topic of war itself, or the specifics of surname policy, than LGBT issues and abortion.
Comes to show this stuff can vary massively from country to country. If anyone here can create and lead a successful prohibitionist movement in Japan, I'm ready to give them a billion dollars.
Business Insider polls from 2014

(Business Insider, 2014)

[they don't love you like i love you]

It seems pretty strange that Italy and Latin American countries consider it more unacceptable than the US....

What's with El Salvador? Nowhere in Central America is a nation of teetotalers.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

It's really less that Japan is Buddhist and more that Japan is Japan. Plenty of Buddhist countries have public consensuses very hostile, at least on paper, to both abortion and alcohol use, since in traditional Buddhist ethics both are clearly karmically negative acts (which isn't necessarily the same thing as being "a sin" in the Christian sense).

[Statilius the Epicurean]

It's really less that Japan is Buddhist and more that Japan is Japan. Plenty of Buddhist countries have public consensuses very hostile, at least on paper, to both abortion and alcohol use, since in traditional Buddhist ethics both are clearly karmically negative acts (which isn't necessary the same thing as being "a sin" in the Christian sense).

I wonder if this is a divide in Theravada and Mahayana Buddhist attitudes, because I know in the Pali Canon there are many strict prohibitions on things like games of chance but don't know if they have equivalents in the Chinese texts.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

It's really less that Japan is Buddhist and more that Japan is Japan. Plenty of Buddhist countries have public consensuses very hostile, at least on paper, to both abortion and alcohol use, since in traditional Buddhist ethics both are clearly karmically negative acts (which isn't necessary the same thing as being "a sin" in the Christian sense).

I wonder if this is a divide in Theravada and Mahayana Buddhist attitudes, because I know in the Pali Canon there are many strict prohibitions on things like games of chance but don't know if they have equivalents in the Chinese texts.

It is to an extent. The Sanskrit and Chinese texts do still have plenty of the stricter vinaya and orthodox expositions of the Five Precepts on the books, but the general Mahayana approach to applied ethics is much more lenient than in many Theravadin countries. This is especially true for any school whose cosmology has mappō in it.