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To be honest, I don't even know what we're calling evil exactly any more. Chimps do pretty horrible things though, things that would be called unequivocally evil if humans did them.
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Apr 30, 2015 18:06
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Kyrie eleison posted:How many people -- if you created a button that would blow up the world, how many people would press it? It's already been addressed that your scenario is flawed because only kooks would believe the button did what was advertised, but as a contrived thought experiment I'll go along with it. Many people would try to push it. People who are overcome with long-term depression, momentary rage, and various forms of delusions or hallucinations might press it. Religious fanatics convinced of some irrational moral calculus might press it. Imbeciles might press it. So might squirrels, for that matter. However many people you think might press it, I contend that many more would protect it, with their lives if necessary, to see that it wasn't pushed. It would become the most obviously moral public service in the history of the world to guard the button. Also, 
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Apr 30, 2015 19:16
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Chimps cannot be evil. What is evil is a sin, and chimps cannot sin because 'sin' literally means, "to miss a mark." Free will makes humans the only animals who are held by God to a higher standard. quote:Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? (Matthew 6:26 ESV)
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Apr 30, 2015 19:25
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Miltank posted:Chimps cannot be evil. What is evil is a sin, and chimps cannot sin because 'sin' literally means, "to miss a mark." Free will makes humans the only animals who are held by God to a higher standard. This assumes chimps don't have free will or that animals don't have free will, which is a pretty poor assumptions. I'm also willing to bet that when Matthew was written, they had little to no comprehension of animal behavior studies.
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Apr 30, 2015 19:28
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Miltank posted:Chimps cannot be evil. What is evil is a sin, and chimps cannot sin because 'sin' literally means, "to miss a mark." Free will makes humans the only animals who are held by God to a higher standard. Humans have more free will than apes?
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Apr 30, 2015 19:46
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Chimps do not have free will in a way that matters. They cannot distinguish between good and evil.
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Apr 30, 2015 20:16
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It is amazing how, as I get older, and expose myself more to history, and to people's neuroses, and to the madness of men's art, the more I become resilient. I can commit all sorts of atrocities against my heart, because of my great strength of will. While others were broken, many long ago, and have spent their lives trying to rationalize their erring, and to justify their weakness, I somehow have managed to only dabble in failure without ever succumbing to it fully. How can I say to my inner self, "No, you shall not have that happiness?" Because I know it is wrong. My inner self sits rightly condemned, knowing he has abandoned what is true in favor of a momentary pleasure. From this vantage point, I do not regret usurping the hungers of the body. What more carnage shall I unleash upon my happiness? Hopefully I will one day have the strength to even say, "I regret ever sinning," and mean it in earnest. Rather than my thought which is, "I will sin while young, but I will change later... a person must sow his oats." No, I must betray my younger self completely, and say he was wrong to sin even once, no matter what unique life experiences came out of it. If purging my life of all sin meant purging it of all happiness, I should embrace it, I should retroactively alter it.
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Apr 30, 2015 20:18
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Kyrie eleison posted:It is amazing how, as I get older, and expose myself more to history, and to people's neuroses, and to the madness of men's art, the more I become resilient. I can commit all sorts of atrocities against my heart, because of my great strength of will. While others were broken, many long ago, and have spent their lives trying to rationalize their erring, and to justify their weakness, I somehow have managed to only dabble in failure without ever succumbing to it fully. You should show a priest your somethingawful account.
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Apr 30, 2015 20:19
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Miltank posted:Chimps do not have free will in a way that matters. They cannot distinguish between good and evil. You know what I don't get? Okay...original sin. Adam's big folly. Was eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Learning what is and is not good and evil was the first big bad thing we as a species ever did. Yet we were designed to be the only species to know good and evil, right? So why were we designed to be that way, but actualizing that knowledge was such a horrific sin that the whole species forever must pay for it? Did God want us to have morality or not? Which is it?
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Apr 30, 2015 20:25
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:You know what I don't get? Okay...original sin. Adam's big folly. Was eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Learning what is and is not good and evil was the first big bad thing we as a species ever did. Yet we were designed to be the only species to know good and evil, right? So why were we designed to be that way, but actualizing that knowledge was such a horrific sin that the whole species forever must pay for it? Cut him some slack he'd only been on the job for a week. 
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Apr 30, 2015 20:28
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Miltank posted:Chimps do not have free will in a way that matters. They cannot distinguish between good and evil.
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Apr 30, 2015 20:30
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Actually, we were created knowing only good, and in perfect union with God.
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Apr 30, 2015 20:30
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God's actions are a comedic cavalcade of incompetence from start to finish.
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Apr 30, 2015 20:31
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Knowledge of good and evil separates humanity from God and the other animals in the garden, and makes us aware of our nakedness. It is a metaphor for our sentience.
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Apr 30, 2015 20:38
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Miltank posted:Knowledge of good and evil separates humanity from God and the other animals in the garden, and makes us aware of our nakedness. It is a metaphor for our sentience.
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Apr 30, 2015 20:40
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It would be very bad news if it wasn't for the fact that heaven and earth will be remade and every wrong will be righted.
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Apr 30, 2015 21:10
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Kyrie eleison posted:It is amazing how, as I get older, and expose myself more to history, and to people's neuroses, and to the madness of men's art, the more I become resilient. I can commit all sorts of atrocities against my heart, because of my great strength of will. While others were broken, many long ago, and have spent their lives trying to rationalize their erring, and to justify their weakness, I somehow have managed to only dabble in failure without ever succumbing to it fully. Possibly instead you are suffering with depression and are becoming increasingly less resilient to it. It isn't difficult to do any of that when depressed, it comes naturally. Much harder to break from that line of thinking.
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Apr 30, 2015 21:10
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Miltank posted:It would be very bad news if it wasn't for the fact that heaven and earth will be remade and every wrong will be righted.
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Apr 30, 2015 21:25
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Miltank posted:It would be very bad news if it wasn't for the fact that heaven and earth will be remade and every wrong will be righted. It would be impossible for me to put enough quotation marks around your use of the word "fact".
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Apr 30, 2015 21:30
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Seriouspost: Kyrie you sound depressed and/or hyperfocused on your perceived failings as a human being. Talk to someone about it, if not a psych then go to your priest and let them know what's going down, you don't seem to be in a good spot emotionally right now. Take care of yourself and then come back to evangelize some more!!
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Apr 30, 2015 21:40
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Miltank posted:It would be very bad news if it wasn't for the fact that heaven and earth will be remade and every wrong will be righted. Cold comfort when everything recognizable about us will be either obliterated entirely or suffering God's full wrath in Hell. Everything that makes us human is detestable to God.
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Apr 30, 2015 21:41
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:"Our own acceptance of it" implies that those outside of the faith are consciously rejecting eternal salvation. Often the thought is that we are doing this because humans enjoy being rebellious, or because we love sin so much, or because are angry at God and want to show Him what's for. But none of these are the case. My "rejection" of the God of Christianity is done in the same line of thought as your rejection of Allah, or Brahma, or Zeus, or anything else. I simply don't think it's real - I think this God, like all the others, is a product of human invention. I think that often the believer views the nonbeliever as not only wrong, but unreasonable: God's existence is so obvious, it must take some real bending-over-backwards to deny it! But I think it's perfectly reasonable, because it's something the both of us do for 95% of all Gods, deities, or supernatural beings of any stripe. As the saying goes, we are both atheists, I just go one God further. You may recall that I don't think God made "one true religion" and consider it impossible to reject salvation, consciously or unconsciously. So no, non-Catholics are not rejecting anything really important, they just call it by different names and deal with it by different means. Other paths may seem alien, but they lead to the same destination. I would ignore those claiming that their path is the only acceptable one for all people to have, sounds like insecurity squawking. I assume you are referring to the Gospel of John with Jesus saying he is the only way. The later gospel's exclusion may be reflecting the sour grapes of the socio-political atmosphere of the time, where Christians and Jews were becoming much more separated from each other, while also facing more sustained persecution from pagans. In any case, if Christ really said exactly that and meant that non-Christians go to hell full stop do not pass go and collect 200 dollars, then I'd chalk it up to his human nature having a grumpy day. How goes it jive with the Golden Rule? - is the question that needs to be applied to any given Bible passage (or any moral from any source, really).
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Apr 30, 2015 21:43
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Black Bones posted:How goes it jive with the Golden Rule? - is the question that needs to be applied to any given Bible passage (or any moral from any source, really).
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Apr 30, 2015 21:48
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There is no logical basis for free-will. It only happens to ring true among even nonbelievers because its something so strongly felt among pretty much everyone. But like the claim of having a soul, it has no logical follow-through.
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Apr 30, 2015 22:16
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TwoQuestions posted:Cold comfort when everything recognizable about us will be either obliterated entirely or suffering God's full wrath in Hell. I completely disagree with your second point.
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Apr 30, 2015 22:51
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Miltank posted:Knowledge of good and evil separates humanity from God and the other animals in the garden, and makes us aware of our nakedness. It is a metaphor for our sentience. So our sentience....is a bad thing? God never wanted us to have it? And I think sentience and knowledge of good and evil are separate...was Adam not sentient before eating the fruit? Then how did he talk to God, how did he name every animal, etc etc? Miltank posted:It would be very bad news if it wasn't for the fact that heaven and earth will be remade and every wrong will be righted. I sure hope the wrongs to be righted include those committed by God against the human race. Black Bones posted:You may recall that I don't think God made "one true religion" and consider it impossible to reject salvation, consciously or unconsciously. So no, non-Catholics are not rejecting anything really important, they just call it by different names and deal with it by different means. Other paths may seem alien, but they lead to the same destination. I would ignore those claiming that their path is the only acceptable one for all people to have, sounds like insecurity squawking. I don't understand how you can acknowledge the exaggerations and outright fabrications that are all but proven to be within the Gospels as we have them today, but still take seriously the idea that Jesus was divine and/or anything other than a regular person exaggerated into the Messiah over time. But I REALLY don't understand how, if every road leads to salvation and nothing could ever make one not right with God, you subscribe to any religion at all. Why be a Christian? Why be anything? If literally everyone is saved, religious ideology is completely meaningless. Why not just be a "deist" and leave it at that? Yet all that fails to address the fact that yours is a minority view among Christians which, as far as I can see it, has almost no support within the Bible or the official doctrines of any branch. I honestly have to side with the more hard-line Christians here (never thought I'd say that). If Christianity is indeed true, then many of Jesus's direct quotes, many of the bits of speculation by the Gospel authors, many of the prescriptions of the New Testament letters, and much of the imagery in Revelation make it abundantly clear: you gotta be a believer in Christ to have a hope of attaining salvation. And no, it's not just the Gospel of John. There's Mark 16:15-16, Matthew 7:21, Romans 11:19-22, Revelation 7:2-4, and plenty more that imply if not outright say that there are many who will not be saved. I mean, you're standing against one of the major tenants of the faith: that conciously accepting Jesus's sacrifice is key to receiving its benefits. The burden is on you to disprove that.
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Apr 30, 2015 22:53
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Even if we don't have free will, it is impossible for us to internalize that knowledge as part of our subjective experience.
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Apr 30, 2015 22:54
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The great commission wasn't included in the original book of Mark.
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Apr 30, 2015 22:58
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Miltank posted:Even if we don't have free will, it is impossible for us to internalize that knowledge as part of our subjective experience.
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Apr 30, 2015 23:12
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Miltank posted:Even if we don't have free will, it is impossible for us to internalize that knowledge as part of our subjective experience. I disagree. I think we already internalize it on a superficial level through our many leftist policies that attempt to help criminals and the poor. We seem to sense its usefulness without actually making the statement. Example: enacting jobs and education programs inside the prison system. We recognize that creating an environment conducive to civil society decreases the chances of re-offending. We recognize it's a numbers game, that once offenders receive the right environmental inputs, behavior improves. Nothing about free-will, or personal responsibility, or pulling up by your bootstraps. We should learn from the successes of these policies and treat free-will for what it is - a fantasy, that only encourages fallacious thinking about what drives human behavior (and the consequentially cruel policies we still have in this country because of it). Admitting there's no free-will would ultimately help construct a society that actually took responsibility for the context that people lived in, rather than falling back on the excuse that bad behavior comes from somewhere else besides genes and the environment.
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Apr 30, 2015 23:30
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We can 'know' that free will doesn't exist and use this knowledge to improve our institutions. We can 'know' that our own sense of self is a reaction to environmental stimuli, but we cannot internalize this knowledge by functioning without the illusion of choice.
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Apr 30, 2015 23:56
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Miltank posted:We can 'know' that free will doesn't exist and use this knowledge to improve our institutions. We can 'know' that our own sense of self is a reaction to environmental stimuli, but we cannot internalize this knowledge by functioning without the illusion of choice.
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May 1, 2015 00:07
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To be a man means to have a strong heart. It means being able to inflict tremendous agonies upon yourself. It means to die for the cause. If you love something too much, odds are good that it is a liability to you. It controls you, manipulates you, uses you. And sometimes, the most important thing you can do for yourself is to sever yourself from that thing you love. To cut off your right hand or pluck out your right eye. To give up that happy dream and that happy future, that dangerous illusion, in favor of the one you're called to. Men have responsibilities. We have duties. We cannot enter into whatever flight of fancy we want. We cannot disgrace ourselves and those who depend upon us. And if we do, we become debtors -- all of that happiness must be paid off with future pain. That is the bargain with the devil we make.
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May 1, 2015 00:33
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Miltank posted:We can 'know' that free will doesn't exist and use this knowledge to improve our institutions. We can 'know' that our own sense of self is a reaction to environmental stimuli, but we cannot internalize this knowledge by functioning without the illusion of choice. Why is it impossible for human beings to live without the illusion of choice? (I might be misreading your post)
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May 1, 2015 00:35
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Kyrie eleison posted:To be a man means to have a strong heart. It means being able to inflict tremendous agonies upon yourself. It means to die for the cause. You don't win points for tormenting yourself without reason. It is good to be able to endure pain but entirely unproductive to do it for the sake of it. The world is not just, in the sense that if you make yourself suffer you will be rewarded with greater happiness later, nor does happiness now have to be repaid in pain afterwards. There are plenty of people who live lives of happiness and will suffer no pain for it, however undeserving of it they may be. It serves nobody and nothing to live a life of pain in the belief that it will all somehow work out for the better in the end. Chances are you'll just end up in a lot of pain, then die. I don't think the belief in a just world is giving you any solace, and I don't think it's going to actually turn out to be true and give you any payout. Live happy and die, or live miserably and die. Up to you. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 00:48 on May 1, 2015 |
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May 1, 2015 00:45
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Miltank posted:We can 'know' that free will doesn't exist and use this knowledge to improve our institutions. We can 'know' that our own sense of self is a reaction to environmental stimuli, but we cannot internalize this knowledge by functioning without the illusion of choice. look just because my hand is forced doesn't mean I lost agency during the hand forcing
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May 1, 2015 00:48
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Miltank posted:Luckily, Jesus is the one who will judge us. He will be merciful to the weak and dreadful to the wicked. There is no one who deserves mercy, everyone who has ever lived deserves Hell. Our humanity and our not being parts of God already makes us wicked. Telling people that they can get forgiveness is like buying needles for a heroin addict; it may make people feel better in the meantime, but it's ultimately a harmful act, just like every other conceivable human act. We're all damned. Deal with it.
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May 1, 2015 01:43
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TwoQuestions posted:There is no one who deserves mercy, everyone who has ever lived deserves Hell. One wonders why God made us in the first place if that is the case.
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May 1, 2015 01:44
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Miltank posted:Luckily, Jesus is the one who will judge us. He will be merciful to the weak and dreadful to the wicked. Wrong. Zeus will. Or Allah. Because all their claims are JUST AS VALID AS YOURS. Seriously, its incredibly dense to say: "I know I have the one true religion, out of the thousands we've tried and left fall to myth or the thousands still around, I know I have the right one"
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May 1, 2015 01:52
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Kyrie eleison posted:To be a man means to have a strong heart. It means being able to inflict tremendous agonies upon yourself. It means to die for the cause. Accept yourself for what you are, then figure out what that means later. What person are you, right now, and what can you do to help yourself, right now? If you still have hang-ups about something (eg- sodomy), examine them and ask why you have them. Think critically while introspecting; Do you not like something itself, or is it some other part, something else that it implies? How can you resolve that tension? These are the question you should be asking yourself, not these turgid thought experiments on how much you should self-harm to entitle a future payout of happiness from the Bank Of Jesus or whatever. rudatron fucked around with this message at 02:02 on May 1, 2015 |
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May 1, 2015 01:59
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