42 anyone?
Narkissos
JoinedPosts by Narkissos
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32
Is Life a Blind and Pitiless Existance?
by passwordprotected inif we're merely animals, controlled by greedy, selfish genes, if life is just a blind and pitiless existence which perfectly reflects the universe in which we live, what is the purpose of it all?.
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Matt. 18:15-17 - all about property?
by sd-7 inwas reading borganized to do the borg's will, and i noticed they applied matthew 18:15-17 only to property and financial issues, saying that the illustration that followed those words--regarding the slave who owed the king 60 million denarii and who had his fellow slave thrown in jail for owing a much smaller amount--justifies such an application.
since the borg is making me as angry as captain picard after he got assimilated, i'll be blunt: this is stupid.
if i were a cursing man, i'd say it even more bluntly.
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Narkissos
They actually apply these verses to interpersonal offences (financial or other, e.g. gossip, slander, etc.) -- following in interpretation the variant reading the NWT rejects, i.e. "if your brother sins against you" (by assimilation to v. 21 maybe).
Note the circular reasoning (short circle) in Watchtower 10:15 1999:
Under the Law, some sins called for more than forgiveness from an offended person. Blasphemy, apostasy, idolatry, and the sexual sins of fornication, adultery, and homosexuality were to be reported to and handled by elders (or priests). That is true also in the Christian congregation. (Leviticus 5:1; 20:10-13; Numbers 5:30; 35:12; Deuteronomy 17:9; 19:16-19; Proverbs 29:24 Not even one NT quotation?) Note, though, that the class of sins Jesus here spoke of could be settled between two persons. As examples: Moved by anger or jealousy, a person slanders his fellowman. A Christian contracts to do a job with particular materials and to finish by a certain date. Someone agrees that he will repay money on a schedule or by a final date. A person gives his word that if his employer trains him, he will not (even if changing jobs) compete or try to take his employer’s clients for a set time or in a designated area. If a brother would not keep his word and is unrepentant over such wrongs, it would certainly be serious. (Revelation 21:8) But such wrongs could be settled between the two involved.
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Is Atheism a Form of Blind Faith?
by passwordprotected inif god is outside of nature and therefore cannot be proved or disproved by science, is atheism a form of blind faith?
after all, it cannot be defended on the basis of pure reason.. steven jay gould said;.
"science simply cannot by its legitimate methods adjudicate the issue of god's possible superintendence of nature.
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Narkissos
Fideism would actually rule out religious apologetics as 'the Judas kiss of stupidity,' as Kierkegaard nicely put it.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/82598/1/Should-the-Christian-faith-be-rationally-defended
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Human Animals?
by passwordprotected ininspired by this comment (post 16581 from satanus), i dug out a quote from richard dawkins;.
i wonder whether, some 60 years after hitler's death, we might at least venture to ask what the moral difference is between breeding for musical ability and forcing a child to take music lessons.
or why it is acceptable to train fast runners and high jumpers but not to breed them.
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Narkissos
To me, taking the "superiority" of humans over (other) animals for granted (by human standards, of course!) indicates a widespread, yet abysmal lack of ethical reflection. And for this reason I wouldn't blame it on religion or monotheism, even though they have been used in justifying it (with the Biblical theme of "God's image" in man, for instance). Speciocentrism is as congenital to human culture as symbolism and language. The beginning of thinking (that which Heidegger said we have not yet started doing) might consist in trying to question it -- and measure the extreme difficulty, if not outright impossibility, of doing so.
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Why Do people think they need A GOD to be good people?
by LucyA ini decided after much study and soul searching that i dont believe in god.
ive noticed recently (not on the forum but others) some people seem to think that if i dont believe in a god that im obviously morally bankrupt.
i dont feel this way as i give a portion of my income to charity and i have never set out to harm anyone else.
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Narkissos
Again, one of my favourite Nietzsche quotes -- self-contradiction included :)
Let us finally consider how naive it is altogether to say: "Man ought to be such and such!" Reality shows us an enchanting wealth of types, the abundance of a lavish play and change of forms — and some wretched loafer of a moralist comments: "No! Man ought to be different." He even knows what man should be like, this wretched bigot and prig: he paints himself on the wall and comments, "Ecce homo!" But even when the moralist addresses himself only to the single human being and says to him, "You ought to be such and such!" he does not cease to make himself ridiculous. The single human being is a piece of fatum from the front and from the rear, one law more, one necessity more for all that is yet to come and to be. To say to him, "Change yourself!" is to demand that everything be changed, even retroactively. And indeed there have been consistent moralists who wanted man to be different, that is, virtuous — they wanted him remade in their own image, as a prig: to that end, they negated the world! No small madness! No modest kind of immodesty!
Morality, insofar as it condemns for its own sake, and not out of regard for the concerns, considerations, and contrivances of life, is a specific error with which one ought to have no pity — an idiosyncrasy of degenerates which has caused immeasurable harm.
We others, we immoralists, have, conversely, made room in our hearts for every kind of understanding, comprehending, and approving. We do not easily negate; we make it a point of honor to be affirmers. More and more, our eyes have opened to that economy which needs and knows how to utilize everything that the holy witlessness of the priest, the diseased reason in the priest, rejects — that economy in the law of life which finds an advantage even in the disgusting species of the prigs, the priests, the virtuous. What advantage? But we ourselves, we immoralists, are the answer.Twilight of the Idols, "Morality as anti-nature," § 6.
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Why Do people think they need A GOD to be good people?
by LucyA ini decided after much study and soul searching that i dont believe in god.
ive noticed recently (not on the forum but others) some people seem to think that if i dont believe in a god that im obviously morally bankrupt.
i dont feel this way as i give a portion of my income to charity and i have never set out to harm anyone else.
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Narkissos
Does anyone have a problem with this definition:
Treating others the way you would like to be treated
Sado-masochists would readily agree...
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Is Atheism a Form of Blind Faith?
by passwordprotected inif god is outside of nature and therefore cannot be proved or disproved by science, is atheism a form of blind faith?
after all, it cannot be defended on the basis of pure reason.. steven jay gould said;.
"science simply cannot by its legitimate methods adjudicate the issue of god's possible superintendence of nature.
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Narkissos
DD: check the link in my previous post. :)
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232
Is Atheism a Form of Blind Faith?
by passwordprotected inif god is outside of nature and therefore cannot be proved or disproved by science, is atheism a form of blind faith?
after all, it cannot be defended on the basis of pure reason.. steven jay gould said;.
"science simply cannot by its legitimate methods adjudicate the issue of god's possible superintendence of nature.
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Narkissos
Formally, those who believe God does not exist... believe; those who do not believe God exists, don't. Gotta love Jewish humour.
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232
Is Atheism a Form of Blind Faith?
by passwordprotected inif god is outside of nature and therefore cannot be proved or disproved by science, is atheism a form of blind faith?
after all, it cannot be defended on the basis of pure reason.. steven jay gould said;.
"science simply cannot by its legitimate methods adjudicate the issue of god's possible superintendence of nature.
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Who really is the faithful and discreet slave? (A perspective)
by StoneWall inwho really is the faithful and discreet slave whom his master appointed over his domestics,.
to give them their food at the proper time?
happy is that slave if his master on arriving finds him doing so.. truly i say to you, he will appoint him over all his belongings" -matt.
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Narkissos
Rightly or wrongly, I feel the real issue behind this "exegetical" discussion is that many Christian ex-JWs have a hard time admitting that there were authority structures in NT Christianity. Nothing centralised and uniform like the WT worldwide "organisation," of course, but still a more or less flexible "system" where some people held power and responsibility over others. (I noticed the same trend in Ray Franz's books, especially ISoCF, long ago.) To an extent an exception is made for the "apostles" because they were supposedly appointed directly by Jesus. But after the apostles are gone, it is tempting to imagine individual Christians directly subject to the invisible authority of Jesus, without any human mediation in the form of church leaders. Matthew 23:8ff ("you are all brothers") becomes the key prooftext for Christian individualism, and all passages referring to human authority (even to question how it may be used, like the "fds" parable) are to be explained away.
However early Christianity always involved an authority structure. And while there was a development (and standardisation) from the kind of structures reflected in the NT (presbuteroi, diakonoi, episkopoi, etc.) to the later catholic hierarchy, there is more continuity in this process than Christian "individualists," especially those who have suffered from a particularly oppressive organisational structure, might understandably wish to see.