[analogbear]

Originally Posted by leelover

So because the Lord of the Universe doesn't answer your mocking, He does not exsit? Maybe He just has grace for your unrepentant, hard heart. He has had mercy on worse than you. I think

I have no doubt of that...I am a pretty small and decent fish in the ocean of evil...

[analogbear]

Originally Posted by ratchetman

I don't think that you are objective at all. You say that people feel that they believe in God. See I think that the exact opposite is true. That there are people who think that they don't believe in God. As far as proof goes, all of creation is proof. That to me is a better proof that anything you can do to convince me that you are a real person.

Exactly my point, that we are all creatures of faith. It is not a question of IF you have faith it is a question of WHAT you put your faith in. Some try to establish everything with proofs and logic and philosophical arguments. This is merely a mental exercise in self deception.

You can think anything you want, but that doesn't make it so.

See, like many with a compromised or incomplete education, you are labeling as opinion those things that are not. I am completely objective when it comes to this stuff with one exception: I will not accept anything supernatural unless I have experienced it first hand ...And some bullsh!t experience either...It's gotta be unequivocal...I have a bias against anything not rational, because that ability to reason is what really seperates us from the lower animals, and wherever that ability came from, to fail to use it is an insult...

It's OK to make the opinion/reason/fact mistakes. I didn't go to college until fairly late in life, and boy was it a wake up call when I finally saw how much I really didn't know about information, knowledge, faith, the world, etc. That chip came crashing down off my shoulder, and I realized tht all the religious and spiritual mumbo jumbo I had refuted on my own over time was even more ridiculuous than I thought......I still don't know too much more about the actual nature of the universe, objectively, but I do know more about the nature of information, how to grasp it, and what it really means to analyze it, and that is why I am still enrolled in school, and will be for as long as possible...See, I am never happy with not knowing as much as I can...


There is a dividing line between us...You think faith is not an emotion, where I know it is. You will never, without a great deal more study away from your pro-religious bias be able to deal with the world of reason...I find that funny, because in most areas of your life reason, science, and the secular world is the most prominent thing, but then you abandon all of it when you talk about the bible and jesus...Very scary.

[leelover]

Originally Posted by analogbear

Name one thing about about human life that can't be explained by rational means? Cellular respiration? Nerve conduction with the sodium/potassium pump? Consciousness? (that last might be squirrelly, but I have an answer for that too, but I suspect you wouldn't be able to understand it...I kinda don't myself, though I kinda do too...)

Referring to the physical here, though it is rather miraculous. But don't be of the belief that scientists understand any more than a small bit of the bodies' complexity.

Originally Posted by analogbear

Second: there is no absolute innate sense of right and wrong among humans, and whatever guiding principles there may be, the directions do not always point in the same direction. The cultural differences you dismiss are actually very important...As are the biological, geographic, and psychological you neglected to mention. (Don't enter the McGregor's garden of morality or ethics with me flippantly or without a lot of research, peter rabbit...This is where I live and breathe, both as a current grad student of ethical philosophy, and as an undergrad with a legit minor in ethics and society, and even when I was in law school...I was one of only a handful of law students across the country who actually studied a focused program of "jurisprudence" as in legal philosophy, with a focus on ethical/moral issues, rather than the discrete subjects/disciplines of the law that most law students study...). One of the primary problems we face as a world growing close in some ways and apart in others is the fact that morality, beyond a few things, is NOT universal at all...Not across cultures or even within those cultures...Not every white man has the same ethical baseline for a given activity nor do they have a similarly-tuned moral compass...Not every chinese person has the same approach to privacy or responsibility as the next...Not every motorcycle rider rides Honda (though they should...).

That idea of interconnectedness in life and nature is very sexy, and is what those "intelligent design" dumbasses always refer to when they want to challenge science...But, although I might accept some of their "why" to some limited degree, the quasi-creationist "how" with which they seek to supplant scientific/physical mechanisms seems awfully cheap.

And, that is kind of the point of the scientific theories...Really, intelligent design is the faith-based perspective that really relie on an intuition of great complexity...Of course, there are NO real scientists that subscribe to that perspective...It lacks the intellectual rigor to be considered a theory, and itself is ONLY supported by coincidence...That the way life looked in the time of the bible is hoe god, in the bible, was said to have created the world...That is way too convenient. You see, scientific theories suggest that it wasn't coincidence, but was the same several physical mechanisms operating across the board, not a special development of humans and then everything else, (or heaven and earth after light....The order is not important to this conversation); and as for the alternative, why do chimps and humans share more than 98% of the same genetic code? Why do we have genes or a physical form at all? For that matter, why have language, if not to question the emotional assumptions? To exist in christ consciousness you don't need words...

I would like to discuss this part with you if you are able, and you say you are .

Before that though, a couple of things:

I have said that I would rather not have unnecessarily long posts and bouts of multi-quoting. This is not because I dislike "long" posts, or don't want to be thoughtfully, as you allege in an earlier post. This mode of communication is rather cumbersome (as you have pointed out repeatedly), but even verbal conversation neither party tends to go on for extended periods without the other being able to address what has been said. Um, unless the long winded party is an overbearing boor, set on overrunning the conversation with allusions of their brilliance.

The reason I am saying this is that you have missed the point I was making and took off on a related one that will come up later. I am not talking about morals at this point, you can chew me up later on that one .

[leelover]

Originally Posted by analogbear

there is no absolute innate sense of right and wrong among humans, and whatever guiding principles there may be, the directions do not always point in the same direction. The cultural differences you dismiss are actually very important.

OK, back to the point. I am not taking about morals here. I am talking about the sense that each of us has that somehow lets us know when something is right or wrong in general. This is not as disparate as you suggest. Test: even the most adamant believer in the "Everything is OK as long as nobody gets hurt" camp, wastes no time telling you that you have wronged them by telling them they are wrong (which didn't hurt them a bit). Or really any time they judge they have been treated unfairly. Maybe that is a better way to describe it.
As humans we tend to hold up certain attributes as being "good and others as being "bad". Certain behavior is refered to as "heroic", and other as "cowardly". These are the things I am saying are universal, with very small variations relative to the human populace.

[analogbear]

Originally Posted by leelover

Referring to the physical here, though it is rather miraculous. But don't be of the belief that scientists understand any more than a small bit of the bodies' complexity.

I would like to discuss this part with you if you are able, and you say you are .

Before that though, a couple of things:

I have said that I would rather not have unnecessarily long posts and bouts of multi-quoting. This is not because I dislike "long" posts, or don't want to be thoughtfully, as you allege in an earlier post. This mode of communication is rather cumbersome (as you have pointed out repeatedly), but even verbal conversation neither party tends to go on for extended periods without the other being able to address what has been said. Um, unless the long winded party is an overbearing boor, set on overrunning the conversation with allusions of their brilliance.

The reason I am saying this is that you have missed the point I was making and took off on a related one that will come up later. I am not talking about morals at this point, you can chew me up later on that one .

I allude to no brilliance, and in fact am quite self-deprecating...I do have a great deal of formal training (not in law school, as I found that to be less than intellectual for much of the traditional parts of it), but an unabashed and honest statement about my ability to grasp the point, and to analyze is surely not puffery!

Well, I dealt with your point, by saying that there is no direction personally for right and wrong inside people...Sorry, again refer back to the post if you missed it, I did throw it in quickly...But you stated something as axiomatic that has no basis in the real world. Sorry that I had to tell you that morality has no basic constant, but that is the case. You are looking to narrowly at the subject, I guess...I understand that you may have meant that people have a sense of right and wrong...I was merely indicating that unless there is some degree of constancy in the directions of right and wrong, it is less evidence of the divine, not more evidence...See, I was kinda on your side there, but you seem so obsessed with sticking it to me to really read my posts. You rush through the substance ang harp on my little stickler (I am from NY after all) rather than actually reason through. Italgirl had the same reaction to you as I do...You fail to deal with what we actually say, you just push and twist. I confess I dop push and twist too, but only after I answer the question. So, I propose the following: I will ask very brief questions, and you and ratchetman will give me really brief answers, and we will see who really has a point, OK?

[leelover]

Originally Posted by analogbear

I allude to no brilliance, and in fact am quite self-deprecating...I do have a great deal of formal training (not in law school, as I found that to be less than intellectual for much of the traditional parts of it), but an unabashed and honest statement about my ability to grasp the point, and to analyze is surely not puffery!

Well, I dealt with your point, by saying that there is no direction personally for right and wrong inside people...Sorry, again refer back to the post if you missed it, I did throw it in quickly...But you stated something as axiomatic that has no basis in the real world. Sorry that I had to tell you that morality has no basic constant, but that is the case. You are looking to narrowly at the subject, I guess...I understand that you may have meant that people have a sense of right and wrong...I was merely indicating that unless there is some degree of constancy in the directions of right and wrong, it is less evidence of the divine, not more evidence...See, I was kinda on your side there, but you seem so obsessed with sticking it to me to really read my posts. You rush through the substance ang harp on my little stickler (I am from NY after all) rather than actually reason through. Italgirl had the same reaction to you as I do...You fail to deal with what we actually say, you just push and twist. I confess I dop push and twist too, but only after I answer the question. So, I propose the following: I will ask very brief questions, and you and ratchetman will give me really brief answers, and we will see who really has a point, OK?

Thanks

[analogbear]

Do you believe that God is omnipotent, omniscient and the omnipresent creator of all?

Taken from Slorider's post!
So he can weigh in too...Sorry Slo!

[analogbear]

Too much?
OK
Do you believe God is omnipotent?

[leelover]

Yes, and yes.

Now please refer to post #574 and answer my question.

Thank you!

[analogbear]

Originally Posted by leelover

Yes, and yes.

Now please refer to post #574 and answer my question.

Thank you!

This post will be long...Sorry, but it is not a simple ques--er, issue...My next one will follow up my last.

There was no question in post 574. In order for something to be a question, a question mark, "?" for example, or perhaps the phrase "whether or not" or even merely "whether" needs to be present...

However, I take some umbrage at the oversimplification of the concept of morality, applied morality (ethics) and the concept of "being wronged."

Morality is the sense of right and wrong, or what may be called either subjectively or objectively right or wrong, and as a subject of discussion it can be truncated and narrow or lengthly and broad, depending on context. I will keep it both truncated and narrow in this post.

Now, that thing "inside us," as you say in the post without a "?," that tells us what is right and wrong might be referred to as the "moral compass" or innate moral sense, right? Both of these are very "in" terms now in pop-culture. However, the existence of a sense of right and wrong is fine, and that existence might be universal...The sociopath, of course, has no sense of this.

What each person might describe as right and wrong, the given orientation of their compass, as it were, and any subsequent polar coordinate actions based on following some given moral azimuth (I must say, I am quite proud of making, and holding, the land-nav metaphor...) is quite a different proposition...

See, there really is no innate human sense of right, encompassing the same behaviors, actions, and motivations, that is shared generally across the species. That is a common illogical leap. That because we all have a sense about right and wrong, that we all have "generally" the same sense...That is called ethical-centrism, and is commonly based upon ethnocentrism or cultural-centrism...

It is true we humans do have a sense, nearly all of us, but most of us have a vastly different sense about what is right and wrong, barring perhaps a few simplistic (to the point of being uninteresting) examples about killing other people when not being attacked, or raping little kids (of course, there are certainly exceptions to that; the pacific island nation where it is a custom, and therefore to those folks -morally right- to have 6-9 year old boys fellate their 12-15 year old older brothers and friends comes to mind...That is certainly a variety of rape of a child, I find it abhorrent, but it is accepted in their society as morally right, and in point of fact is a moral duty imposed upon the younger kids).

These differences are most obvious when looking at economic disparity...But more on that in a later post.

Your point was a bit muddled at the end of the first paragraph, so let me jump to the second:

Sure, I can see where you are coming from, but do we look at this from a consequentialist point of view? Is it good or bad, or heroic or cowardly, based on the results of the behavior?

Or, do we assign moral values based on something motivational?

Is the evaluation of goodness, badness, heroism or cowardice a question of means or ends?

Oversimplified and admittedly kinda stupid example:
My family is starving, so to feed them I poison a rich guy and take his money...I had the best of intentions for my family, I wished to do a good thing for them, but the consequences of my indisputibly bad actions were terrible and undeniably wrong...Unless he was the next Hitler, of course; in which case, by trying to do the good thing, I did a bad thing, which really accomplished an actual pair of good things...Too confusing, I know...To "off your point?" sorry...

Here: I am not sure whether you think morality is objective or subjective, axiomatic/rule-based or consequentialist, universal or personal (which is different from objective/subjective, of course)?

I suppose to deal with the subject, we should narrow it down. Ask a simple question about one aspect of the subject at a time, and I will try to deal with that.

[analogbear]

If god is all knowing, what does it mean to be all knowing?

[bryan4980]

Originally Posted by leelover

Sex outside of marriage. Do you think there is no harm in it if both parties are consensual?

There are countless repercussions to any act, brushing your teeth getting out of bed, going to sleep. There is nothing regarding any of those in the bible. Have you read the text that the bible comes from the Torah?

[bryan4980]

Originally Posted by leelover

Right, that is one possible occurrence. Do you think you can possibly envision all that there could be?

So, anyone who does something that turns out wrong is a hypocrite, if they say it can/will lead to trouble? That doesn't sound reasonable. Sounds more like you are tying to say that unless someone lives a perfect life they have no right to share their opinions of whether a thing is good or bad.

Re-read the rest of my response.

[bryan4980]

Originally Posted by leelover

Well, lets start with human life in general. There are far too many things that go on that can't be explained by "rational" means. And are to interconnected to be coincedence.

Lets start with the fact that all human's have an inate sense of right and wrong/good and bad, at least as to how it pertains to us personally. Even though there are some differences concerning culture, etc, it is overwhelmingly universal.

Humans may have developed a sense of right and wrong to co-exist peacefully, you talk as though I do not have faith. I do have a faith it is called Wicca which I have stated multiple times already. I have witnessed things to prove supernatural but what specifically have you experienced to justify it? Supernatural is not something naturally occurring in nature so human birth does not count. I am rather doubtful you can come up with anything legit.

[bryan4980]

Originally Posted by leelover

I am not sure they are not "gods", how do you define "god" (note the small "g").

They are worshiped by those who don't worship the Creator.

He is also known as the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob.

If you haven't noticed all the comments I have made regarding your religion have been in lower case including christianity. You called them gods so you define it, you used the word I have no idea what's in your head.

[leelover]

Originally Posted by bryan4980

Have you read the text that the bible comes from the Torah?

Yes

[leelover]

Originally Posted by analogbear

If god is all knowing, what does it mean to be all knowing?

Knowing everything.

[leelover]

Originally Posted by bryan4980

Humans may have developed a sense of right and wrong to co-exist peacefully, you talk as though I do not have faith. I do have a faith it is called Wicca which I have stated multiple times already. I have witnessed things to prove supernatural but what specifically have you experienced to justify it? Supernatural is not something naturally occurring in nature so human birth does not count. I am rather doubtful you can come up with anything legit.

I never said or implied you don't have faith.

I don't think the sense of right and wrong are natural phenomenon. There is too much similarity across cultures and ethnicities. It is something that we all share as humans even though we don't live up to it.

[analogbear]

Originally Posted by leelover

Knowing everything.

Does god know what I am going to do before I do it?

[bryan4980]

Originally Posted by ratchetman

I think that part of the point of the story was that repentance and righting wrongs is for this life and once this life is over so are all the second chances.

Seems pretty petty for an all seeing being.

Originally Posted by ratchetman

So if some who claim to be wiccans violate some of the tennats that you hold sacred can I lump you in with them? And paint the whole group with the same brush?

Once we have done half of the atrocities yours has done then go right ahead. Btw your religion still does discriminate against us, if this were not on the internet I would have kept my mouth shut. I have known people to lose jobs get divorced because it was know they were Wiccan or some variant.

Originally Posted by ratchetman

Exactly my point, that we are all creatures of faith. It is not a question of IF you have faith it is a question of WHAT you put your faith in. Some try to establish everything with proofs and logic and philosophical arguments. This is merely a mental exercise in self deception.

The point is you discount her points but there is the same or less logic to your argument so to deny her is to deny your own argument and make you a hypocrite.

[leelover]

Originally Posted by analogbear

I suppose to deal with the subject, we should narrow it down. Ask a simple question about one aspect of the subject at a time, and I will try to deal with that.

Sorry to muddle that up. I got distracted and said "question" when it was not the correct term at all.

Even before you can apply morals (in the sense your examples did), you are some how judging good or bad. Your example of someone poisoning someone to feed someone else still assumes that we would call poisoning (or killing someone in anyway) to be a bad thing. Without the sense of fair play or right or wrong it would seem beneficial to kill off a competitor for food, etc.

I realize there are exceptions to the rule, but they are few in comparison.

[leelover]

Originally Posted by analogbear

Does god know what I am going to do before I do it?

Yes