OK, Mullaney. You said that one should love your neighbor as yourself. So, you would not do to another person what you would not have done to yourself. But if you were murdering people, wouldn’t you WANT to be put in prison? Since you believe in loving your fellow man, if your actions kept resulting in people dying, logically you should want to be restrained from those actions. Therefore, since you would want to be sent to prison if you murdered someone, you should also want to send other people to jail for murdering someone.
I suppose I am of two minds about it. Several minds, even. I don’t think that makes me a duplicitious troll. I don’t think it is of any particular importance whether Jesus ever even existed because I am sure that the Holy Spirit is a universal. I believe if you obey this law of love your will recieve this Spirit and it will show God to you. At the same time it is difficult for people to properly understand the strictures of the divine love required for such an epiphany. Do I think Jesus taught how to reach such perfection? Yes. (Did Buddha? Yeah, apparently. Buddhism has gotten much more watered down over time and leads to gnosticism much more readily IMHO, so I’m more than willing to prefer teachings which are more lucid.)
On the other hand: is loving your fellow man a bad idea? Well, I have certaintly been willing to make some compromises. Does that make me a bad person? Probably. Does that make me the worst person who ever lived? No.
Do I think people have eternal souls? Yes – otherwise our ability to experience God makes little sense.
The afterlife? I have no idea. If I truly knew I was hellbound, I would change my ways. Do I think people who die in a state outside of divine bliss or Nirvana or whatever you want to call it might just continue to suffer separated from God? It seems possible. Buddha taught that. Jesus taught that. Could be.
No afterlife? Then people should want joy in this life anyway – and the law of love seems to be a good way to that joy. Yet, no one listens. That completely perplexes me and I find it very puzzling. I can understand people wanting to compromise, settle down, etc. But people, over a Billion of them, like me, point to Jesus and say what he taught was right, and then do nothing towards it. These people are a complete mystery to me: if I could understand them, I could better understand myself, but to them I am just an unflattering reflection of themselves.
Well, there I go being honest and straightfoward with my feelings again, so I’m sure Jodi will come along soon and point out how arrogant I’m being.
Y’know, I go away, calm down, but then when I come back and read the further dreck you post, you piss me off all over again.
Then why on earth would you feel justified in pointing to it as the ultimate and only word on how other people should live their lives?
Lazy? You’re intellectually dishonest. Rather than think for yourself and come up with reasoned explications for why you hold the views you do, you simply assert they are Biblically mandated – when you don’t follow the Bible yourself.
Well that is certainly a simplistic code, isn’t it? Leaves out all that pesky work of separating right from wrong and encouraging one while discouraging the other. It also conveniently overlooks that the practical problem with “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is that not everyone in the world lives by that adage; lots of people are willing to do unto others with fists and knives and guns. Apparently, we as a society should let such people just walk around wreaking havoc because we as individuals do not want to go to prison. I’ve never heard such a retarded and indefensible thing. Oh, and if you are not in fact the only thinking person on the face of God’s green earth who ascribes to that believe, point me towards ONE other that does. I’ve already asked you this one.
How do you know what God would want, seeing as how you only believe in Him when it suits you to do so? Who are you, who admittedly lives in unrepentant sin and does not try to do otherwise, to tell the rest of us what God wants?
Well, at last we agree on something.
You are a hypocrite. You are perhaps the biggest hypocrite I’ve ever seen in my life. You do not follow the teachings of Jesus, but you tell everyone else how they must do so. You are not even sure you believe in God, but you act as if you are the sole authority on how Biblical text should be interpreted and applied – even if your intepretation is ridiculous and your application unworkable. You live in sin by your own admission, then tell others they are wrong to live sinless lives. You are not a Christian, yet you busy yourselves telling others how they should live according to the teachings of Christ – something you do not even attempt to do yourself.
I cannot imagine how you could not see how extremely offensive this is. You are a morbidly obese man who tells the rest of us we need to lose weight. You are a man who sits on his ass while telling others to work. You are a man who wallows in shit who tells the rest of us to take a bath. You are, in short, the very definition of a hypocrite. If you truly believe people ought to follow the teachings of Christ but yet do not have the time or energy to do so yourself – because you are “lazy” – then you have NO FUCKING RIGHT to tell ANYONE how they should live their lives or order their society. NONE.
Oh, that frowny face really touched me. Look, I have ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM wiht you “being honest with your feelings.” Go crazy.
What I have a problem with is you presuming to tell people how to live their lives when your not sure how to live your own, and in exhorting people to follow the teachings of Christ as you understand them, when you do not even attempt to follow them yourself.
Discuss your feelings to your heart’s content. Just stop telling others how to live their lives and how they should walk a path so arduous you don’t even attempt to walk it yourself. And stop acting (a) like the Bible is authority of everything under the sun (since you don’t believe that yourself) and (b) you are the only person who knows how to interpret it. THAT is your arrogance, and it is EXTREMELY annoying.
Give me strength. Your arrogance is manifested by your insistence on telling people what to do spiritually when you yourself apparently feel a great degree of uncertainty about it your
But there is no room for hypotheticals in the golden rule. I should not consider people “not my neighbors” because they have certain spiritual flaws. If I murdered someone, and was sorry about it, and knew I would never do it again, I wouldn’t want to be in prison.
There are examples all the time of people who want to go to prison, or be castrated, or be otherwise put out of their misery. I have no problem with these people wanting themselves to be locked up because they know they can not control themselves. These people usually plead guilty and don’t request a jury trial to determine the guilt they have already plead to.
If any of you wish to be imprisoned, please refer to the classified section of your local weekly. There you will find a man named Zed with a gimp outfit and a walk in closet more than willing to oblidge you.
Well, I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work like that. If I were a quadrapledgic, I might want to die. That wouldn’t give me free reign to go around shooting quadrapledgics. Do you see the flaw in your logic?
Oh, for God’s sake! Just because you live by the golden rule does not mean you do not have the ability – even the duty – to restrain those who manifestly do not – like rapists, murderers, and child abusers. You have an obligation to assist in the protection of society from such people, just as you would want society to assist in protecting YOU from them. That IS the golden rule. Get it?
So waffling gives you the right to post under the pretense of being devout?
There is. When are you going to learn how to apply that here.
Select a concept relevant to this thread. See your citation offered in support of your opinion. See another citation offered by another to refute your opinion. You are not an idiot, hence, you are aware these contradictory citations exist.
Everything I hold to be right I can show from two basic axioms:
the Golden Rule.
the ends never justify the means.
If someone by virtue of being bad can’t discern what is right, then I assure you we are all screwed.
Love your neighbor as you love yourself? I suppose so. But it’s simplicity should not imply it’s inferiority compared to other codes.
I think if people repent they should be forgiven. Our system of justice does not allow for that, so I can not support it. (well, except through my tax dollars. crap. sorry.)
One other person who believes in the Golden Rule. I would not think that would be so difficult. But, God’s kingdom is not of this world – I can’t exactly hop over to http://www.peopleWhoActuallyBelieveWhatJesusTaught.com and solicit their help. Would the Truth and Reconciliation Commision in South Africa be a good start? Perhaps Bishop Tutu (spelling?) would see things from my point of view since under his guidance many many murders are walking the streets down there in South Africa.
I would not want to be punished if I were to repent, therefore I don’t. Perhaps God, who is Love by another name, doesn’t actually want people to love. Seems nutty to me, but you run with that idea and see where it takes you.
I am not telling you anything you should not be able to figure out for yourself, Jodi.
I have never said people must do anything. I’m really starting to tire of all these false accusations. People can do whatever they like.
Well, that is why we have debates, right?
I might have said: lose weight or you will die young of a heart attack. That isn’t a false statement, is it?
So should I lie and say obsesity isn’t bad for the heart? Just tell me what you want. You don’t want me to tell the truth. You don’t want me to lie. What???
You are the one who wants to tell people how to live their lives and if they fail to do as you say, to put them into PRISON, not me.
Actually, the flaw is in your logic. If you are to “love your neighbor as yourself” and “do unto others as you would have others do unto you”, with no regard for the greater society in which you live, then (1) only you know what you want, (2) because it’s what you want, it’s what everyone should/does want, and therefore (3) you should go around shooting quadriplegics, because you’d want someone to shoot you (suicide being a sin and all).
By the way, I’m curious - if I kill someone and repent, you say I shouldn’t go to prison. That’s fine for my lifetime. After I die, say I haven’t repented. Now I’m condemned to Hell - forever? What if I repent? By your logic, I shouldn’t be punished anymore. And if I am nevertheless damned eternally, then God Herself isn’t playing by your rules, which logically means that they are your rules and not Her rules, which kind of puts the kibosh on your whole argument.
No Jodi. You don’t get to pick and choose you your neighbors are. It is not “us” versus “them.” If you say people can pick and choose who I want to love, then you open the door to all manner of evil.
I could be wrong, but I think Jodi knows we’re all in this together. In fact, I think that’s her whole fucking point. We have an obligation to look after each other. We can do this by removing destructive people from situations in which they can cause harm. Now, what the fuck are you babbling about?
One more time. “If I were of person-type X, I’d want bad-thing Y to be done to me, so it is OK to do Y to people of type X” is a strawman, period. You can justify doing anything if that is the rule you want to live by.
I’ve never pretended to be devout.
So I should lie about what is right, right?
You mean where someone said, Paul said it was good to submit to authority, and I said, yes, it is good to submit to authority, and they said, ah ha – see, you are waffling, and I asked, what do you mean, I’m agreeing with you?
What was my error there?
Monk escapade? Someone asked a question, and I gave them an honest answer.
I say if they repent, you should forgive them. If they do not repent you shouldn’t. Our system of justice has no forgiveness so I can’t support it. Sorry.
So should I lie and say obsesity isn’t bad for the heart? Just tell me what you want. You don’t want me to tell the truth. You don’t want me to lie. What???