All my random musings are going straight to video. I bet I have started the naffest threads ever series!
Here is the core of my dilemma -
If we stop arsing about (christians I mean) and are really honest about it - in many ways we totally suck. Lets see why I think so:) I'm going to generalise a bit here so please turn of your 'yea but not all people are like that' filter just to hear my fluff.
1/ NT describes various miracles folowing those that believe. Christians talk big but really don't see much of that sort of behaviour. Walking from wheelchairs isn't what I mean - when was the last downs child totally transformed back to normal? Missing limbs replaced? Dead raised? There is a collective grasping for any story that can be enshrined as folklore - hearsay is good enough. Very catholic (the desire for a recorded miracle to satiate the masses.) If we 'believers' give a blessing / healing and it works - Hallelujah - if it fails ah well faith lacking / not their time to be healed which means that we have our cake and eat it.
2/ We love our old written down prophets but would happily nail anyone up on a cross who claimed such things today. We hide behind our bible tails of red seas parting , burning bushes, walking on water and scorn anyone who today claimed such preposterous nonsense. Its eay to believe when nothing is provable - its safe.
3/ We have no desire to join up and be unified - we have a deep rooted desire to 'win' and enshrine our selves and our dogma as top dogs in heaven.
4/ We believe our reading of the bible to be correct yet few would even claim that they understood the scriptures with teh Holy Spirit - we can't even agree what the Holy Spirit would do / feel like / is. We then use the bible as the authority to believe what we think we read. Bonkers. We then have our favourite prophets and writers depending on whose words most closely approximate to our squint on it - I get alittle smile when I hear people malign Paul - he has caused so many issues for modern day christianity its funny.
5/ If Jesus came again today as He did 2000 years ago we probably wouldn't recognise or accept Him, we'd expect Him to come to our church, preach from our pulpit and condone our leaders - we'd reject apreacher in the field. The Pharissees and the Sadduces come full circle - we are become what we mock.
Posts by Qcmbr
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Random Musings Part 3 What is good
by Qcmbr inall my random musings are going straight to video.
i bet i have started the naffest threads ever series!
here is the core of my dilemma - .
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Qcmbr
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Real Christians.....
by Honesty in1. were among the first to respond to the tsunami of 2004 and hurricane katrina with food, water, shelter, clothing, comfort, etc.
and provided relief efforts to every person they came in contact with regardless of religious beliefs.. 2. point to jesus as the only source of true happiness in today's world of uncertainty.
3. utilise 'worldly' holidays to focus attention on god's love for mankind.. 4. welcome you in no matter how many tattoos or body piercings you adorn your body with.. 5. pray for everything and at a moment's notice.
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Qcmbr
But LT what parts of the commandments I identified are sacrificed for ultimate spontaneity - do you accept a sabbath, baptism, need for prayer etc..? Just interested. When do we cease to be Christian and move to free love floating - is there a bare minimum required to be Christian.
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Real Christians.....
by Honesty in1. were among the first to respond to the tsunami of 2004 and hurricane katrina with food, water, shelter, clothing, comfort, etc.
and provided relief efforts to every person they came in contact with regardless of religious beliefs.. 2. point to jesus as the only source of true happiness in today's world of uncertainty.
3. utilise 'worldly' holidays to focus attention on god's love for mankind.. 4. welcome you in no matter how many tattoos or body piercings you adorn your body with.. 5. pray for everything and at a moment's notice.
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Qcmbr
I love them mormons too:)
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Real Christians.....
by Honesty in1. were among the first to respond to the tsunami of 2004 and hurricane katrina with food, water, shelter, clothing, comfort, etc.
and provided relief efforts to every person they came in contact with regardless of religious beliefs.. 2. point to jesus as the only source of true happiness in today's world of uncertainty.
3. utilise 'worldly' holidays to focus attention on god's love for mankind.. 4. welcome you in no matter how many tattoos or body piercings you adorn your body with.. 5. pray for everything and at a moment's notice.
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Qcmbr
is there a risk in such unfettered interpretaion of Love thy neighbour? Jesus himself gave teachers and priests etc.., contrary to the desire for hippy free love religion my reading of the scriptures points to a highly ordered church structure and rule set.
Sacrament - do this in remembrance of me.
Baptism - except a man be born of the water and of the spirit he can in nowise inherit the kingdom of God.
Priesthood - No man taketh this honour unto himself.
Revelation - Flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee but my Father who is in heaven.
One way to do things - He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold ..is a thief.
No division and all roads lead to heaven ideology - One Lord, One faith, one baptism.
Preaching - go ye into the world and preach my gospel.
A body of faith - in the latter days some shall depart from the faith.
Law - ..the doers of the law shall be justified.
Commandments - if ye love me keep my commandments
Actual required action - faith without works is dead.
Sabbath day worship - sabbath was made for man not man for the sabbath
List of Jesus' commandments Matt 5:20-48,22:21, 22:23-47, john 3:3-7, john5:39
Real christians are those who try to do God's word. Anyone else is by definition an imposter. -
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World is flat syndrome
by truthseek inprov.
26:12. have you seen a man wise in his own eyes?
there is more hope for the stupid one than for him.. .
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Qcmbr
..or that the hebrew people believed in an afterlife when the dead are raised..
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Random Musings - Part 2 What is good
by Qcmbr instunned by the awesome response to random musings post 1 - .
there seems to be several views on what makes something good that presumably colors our judgment on everything: .
1/ benthamism - utility theory - the greatest good for the greatest number.
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Qcmbr
I just love my banner ad
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Random Musings - Part 2 What is good
by Qcmbr instunned by the awesome response to random musings post 1 - .
there seems to be several views on what makes something good that presumably colors our judgment on everything: .
1/ benthamism - utility theory - the greatest good for the greatest number.
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Qcmbr
Stunned by the awesome response to random musings post 1 -
There seems to be several views on what makes something good that presumably colors our judgment on everything:
1/ Benthamism - Utility theory - the greatest good for the greatest number.
Using only this it is perfectly acceptable to kill 1 to save 2.
2/ Equality and rights - everyone is equal and has as much right as the next person to 'anything' - this leads to the debate over law and rules - if I decide to shoot people then I deprive them of the right to life or at the very least an unholy body:) If I break the rules I destroy the construct that gives me a measure of freedom so I lose a right by breaking a rule which already curtails a right...e.g. if I drive at any speed I like on the road and on any side then I exercise a right but destroy others rights. As a society we agree that its better to sacrifice perceived full freedom on the road for partial freedom. The twist of course is that you'd never be totally free on the road anyway as you'd hit somebody pretty quick. Rights are a moral minefield - should we pay toilet cleaners as much as computer hotshots, should women be paid the same as men, should old be paid same as young, should disabled be paid the same as able bodied and so on.. The difficulty with rights is to whom do the rights apply and when (abortion for example - the mother, the father , the state or the unborn child.)
Under rights and equality it would not be acceptable to kill 1 to save 2.
3/ Justice - a deeper version of rights - everyone has the same 'right' to the consequences of their actions. Nature is totally and utterly just. Evolutionary theory is totally just. Quantum theory is not yet proven to be just. The issue then is that justice has a human dimension - in the wild there is no moral concept of rape, murder or theft - we however have constructed 'rights' around these and apportioned a 'false' consequence (ie there is no actual cause-effect - there is cause followed by a seperate cause and finally a hopeful effect - criminals get away despite commiting a crime and police searching for them.) This is a more difficult concept than rights simply because human justice is an artificial construct and reflects the society that made it rather than anything real.
Using Justice it would only be right to kill 1 to save 2 if 1 was guilty of the future deaths of the 2.
4/ Love / mercy / compassion / altruism / sacrifice / duty / honour - I'll lump these together since these are the furthest concepts from black and white definitions of 'good'. I argued (unsuccessfully) with my degree colleague that there is such a thing as altruism - the doing of something for no personal benefit. He pointed out that you must be motivated by something to be altruistic (see list above) which derives you benefit. Doing 'good' for any of the above reasons is normally accepted by people very easily even if the 'good' is bad by other definitions:
Crimes of passion, Helen of Troy, Charge of the Light Brigade, letting the burglar off with community service rather than jail to rehabilitate them, giving your hard earned cash to help hurricane victims, not reporting your violent spouse becasue you love them etc..
Under these rules it would be right to kill 1 to save 2 if the 1 chose that action themselves.
5/ Pragmatism - despite all the above we almost all to a man and women override the philosophy of above from time to time and go for the immediate selfish, benefit approach, we criticise politicians but when we get a little bit of authority we often turn into them and make the same sort of decisions, we take the moral highground on fidelity and then sleep with our neighbour, we tut tut over world poverty and then spend our money on sweat shop produced items, we hate waste and fill our trash cans with mountains of the stuff, we talk about compassion but would walk away from the mugged person in case we 'get involved' and we get hurt and so on.
Under these rules we would kill the 1 to save the 2 if we were one of the two and we'd fight like billy'o to kill the two if we were the 1.
Plenty of logical mistakes in my premises to pick over:) -
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Random Musings - What is Good
by Qcmbr inhaving taken part in a website test (posted here - where i remember not) that gave several moral situations - the consistent answering of which enables one to survive uninjured to the end of the questions - i have been left for a while deeply ruminating and cogitating over some dilemmas: .
most people would consider that hurting an individual for the good of many is morally wrong and therefore 'evil' (eg kill a child to save 2 people) however would be swayed by context (eg kill an old person to save 2 young) or extra info (kill hitler prior to ww2) but in all those scenarios there comes the ultimate 'mirror moment' if you had to make the decision you inevitably would have done something evil in someone else's book and very possibly in your own.
enter god.
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Qcmbr
Thanks, Joel - no idea on the quotes box thing - I use Firefox which locks me out of a lot of functionality on this site.
For the rest of you I either bored you rigid or ..I'm not certain their is an 'or':) -
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Random Musings - What is Good
by Qcmbr inhaving taken part in a website test (posted here - where i remember not) that gave several moral situations - the consistent answering of which enables one to survive uninjured to the end of the questions - i have been left for a while deeply ruminating and cogitating over some dilemmas: .
most people would consider that hurting an individual for the good of many is morally wrong and therefore 'evil' (eg kill a child to save 2 people) however would be swayed by context (eg kill an old person to save 2 young) or extra info (kill hitler prior to ww2) but in all those scenarios there comes the ultimate 'mirror moment' if you had to make the decision you inevitably would have done something evil in someone else's book and very possibly in your own.
enter god.
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Qcmbr
Having taken part in a website test (posted here - where I remember not) that gave several moral situations - the consistent answering of which enables one to survive uninjured to the end of the questions - I have been left for a while deeply ruminating and cogitating over some dilemmas:
Most people would consider that hurting an individual for the good of many is morally wrong and therefore 'evil' (eg kill a child to save 2 people) however would be swayed by context (eg kill an old person to save 2 young) or extra info (kill Hitler prior to WW2) but in all those scenarios there comes the ultimate 'mirror moment' if you had to make the decision you inevitably would have done something evil in someone else's book and very possibly in your own.
Enter God.
If we decide that it is evil to hurt someone for others, where does that leave God, who planned, delivered and allowed Jesus to suffer for and on behalf of us? Does the context (Jesus chose that path as well and could have backed out) make it more acceptable? Does it matter whether Jesus was God (trinity) or the Son (seperate being to the Father)?
Is self sacrifice - a regular tenet of religion - wrong? Do we change our view of the 'morality' if the 'victim'/sacrifice is a willing participant? If we do, would that change our view of God's 'nastiness' towards innocents (disaster victims for example) if we somehow acquiesed to our own suffering (a concept inherant in my LDS worldview by dint of a belief in existence before life on earth)?
Enter Religion.
Let's talk about my LDS faith here (so my introspective questions are not an attack on other faiths). Is it correct for the church to 'sacrifice' my time, money, freedoms for others (as a missionary 2 years, in community programs like today's litter pick :P, at church on a Sunday preaching and teaching)? If the LDS faith is a better way of living than someone currently has does it matter that the price is so high if the rewards (purely practical) are so good? Does it matter if I tell the whole truth as a missionary since I know that if they accept the faith they'll get happier as long as they don't dig too deep in the logic or history of the faith? Is it better to introduce someone to Jesus (even if that Jesus is 'false') than to leave them where they are?
So many questions. -
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List everything you hate here....
by under74 inthere seems to be some people here blaming this on that and that on this.
so, in the spirit of trying to clear the air and moving on i thought i'd start this post.
i'll start....... the amish--because they won't defend themselves.
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Qcmbr
raw egg drinking
needing the loo in a traffic jam
liver
when I was a kid I had bri-nylon superman underpants - I am forever scarred - physically and mentally
Mr.Messy, I get so stressed trying to work out where he begins
not being filthy rich
owing money
animal testing for non-essentials
the amount of rubbish I generate
fungal infections
fat
body fat
my body fat
burglary
chutney ferret behaviour
euro
the exocet missile
the fact I'm not a naturalised US citizen
PS U74 am I one of the git mormons you referred to:p