Jesus Loves You

[razeontherock]

the idea that human beings are fully responsible for all good and bad deeds is a fairly common atheistic perspective, although theists may share this view as well.

I'd never want to meet the theist who thought otherwise. Oh wait, I have met some of those. Goes double!! (forgiveness is not the same thing)

Evil is self-limiting and self-punishing.

Wise words!

 

[razeontherock]

No. It did not. It separated those characteristics that we are conscious of from those we have projected onto an imaginary deity.

This puzzles me why my first response was wrong, or that you objected to it, as this is the vain I was responding to.

BTW, my Sister's not only a PhD, but a TOP shrink in her field for 20+ years and we've talked this stuff through

 

[Glass*Soul]

This puzzles me why my first response was wrong, or that you objected to it, as this is the vain I was responding to.

BTW, my Sister's not only a PhD, but a TOP shrink in her field for 20+ years and we've talked this stuff through

You mean "vein" I hope.

Oh well. I don't know why we were talking past one another there.

It must be interesting to have a sister who represents such an interesting resource (along side all the other things that a sister is to one).

 

[ephraimanesti]

It is a possible atheistic viewpoint, it's just not restricted to atheists. If you remove the deity then all your characteristics are yours; there is no God to project them on to. As a result, good deeds become our deeds, not God's, and evil deeds become ours instead of Satan's. Everything that we do is a result of us, good or bad. And that is very atheistic.

MY BROTHER,

The catch being, of course, that atheists--through their own devices and on their own authority--can never arrive at the requisite knowledge of what is "good" and what is "evil" without referring to theist-based beliefs on the topic. In the case of the vast majority of atheists posting here, of course, the information is received through osmosis given that they are a part of a Judeo-Christian culture (whether they like it or not or "agree" with it or not.)

i do not think even Darwin would hold that moral codes evolve, so perhaps just occasionally, you might thank God for His gift to you in this regard, given that when atheists try to go it alone and re-invent the moral wheel, all they end up with are gulags, killing fields, and murdered children in trash cans.

ABBA'S FOOL,
ephraim

 

[Ayersy]

MY BROTHER,

The catch being, of course, that atheists--through their own devices and on their own authority--can never arrive at the requisite knowledge of what is "good" and what is "evil" without referring to theist-based beliefs on the topic. In the case of the vast majority of atheists posting here, of course, the information is received through osmosis given that they are a part of a Judeo-Christian culture (whether they like it or not or "agree" with it or not.)

i do not think even Darwin would hold that moral codes evolve, so perhaps just occasionally, you might thank God for His gift to you in this regard, given that when atheists try to go it alone and re-invent the moral wheel, all they end up with are gulags, killing fields, and murdered children in trash cans.

ABBA'S FOOL,
ephraim

Sorry to burst your bubble here, but morals do evolve and change with the times, just as societies evolve and change. Morals are just another system of control, and have been around long before modern religions were around.

Without this system of control, the human race wouldn't have survived long enough to even come up with the idea of God, let alone give him all the credit for coming up with them.

 

[Greg1234]

Sorry to burst your bubble here, but morals do evolve and change with the times, just as societies evolve and change. Morals are just another system of control, and have been around long before modern religions were around.

Without this system of control, the human race wouldn't have survived long enough to even come up with the idea of God, let alone give him all the credit for coming up with them.

Darwinist doctrine. Tell us, at what point in your literature, did humans "come up with the idea of God"

 

[Jane_the_Bane]

Darwinist doctrine. Tell us, at what point in your literature, did humans "come up with the idea of God"

Approximately at the point when humans started to project their own mental properties upon their surroundings, figuring that a lightning striking your house was the divine equivalent of an angry enemy hurling a torch at it.

We are a supremely egocentrical race, and we tend to see ourselves everywhere. I type two dots and a line, and you see a smiling face:

 

[Jane_the_Bane]

Attributing ethics to a supernatural source makes very little sense. The ins and outs of ethics are concerned with social coexistence and productive living - all of that is about as supernatural as the origin of shoes, or the natural impulse to seek food when you get hungry.

 

[Greg1234]

Approximately at the point when humans started to project their own mental properties upon their surroundings, figuring that a lightning striking your house was the divine equivalent of an angry enemy hurling a torch at it.

We are a supremely egocentrical race, and we tend to see ourselves everywhere. I type two dots and a line, and you see a smiling face:

You begin at Darwinism, therefore Darwin's story is the beginning point. The origin and understanding of spirituality is attempted to be confined to the materialist's belief. We already have our understanding of our origin of our text. The attempt to replace this aspect with Darwin but keep the rest then actually try to use the insertion to explain the rest. tsk.

 

[Jane_the_Bane]

You begin at Darwinism, therefore Darwin's story is the beginning point. The origin and understanding of spirituality is attempted to be confined to the materialist's belief. We already have our understanding of our origin of our text. The attempt to replace this aspect with Darwin but keep the rest then actually try to use the insertion to explain the rest. tsk.

Cultural history has very little (if anything) to do with Darwin, and very much to do with anthropology/ethnology and psychology.

As I said: attributing specific moral codes to a deity makes about as much sense as interpreting a Cholera epidemic as an expression of divine wrath rather than the result of microbes in contaminated water.

 

[Greg1234]

Cultural history has very little (if anything) to do with Darwin, and very much to do with anthropology/ethnology and psychology.

As I said: attributing specific moral codes to a deity makes about as much sense as interpreting a Cholera epidemic as an expression of divine wrath rather than the result of microbes in contaminated water.

[Cultural] History starts at the beginning.

 

[Jane_the_Bane]

[Cultural] History starts at the beginning.

Cultural history starts with the earliest cultural artifacts, and as such overlaps at least partially with both archaeology (dealing with pre-history, prior to written records) and history (everything after that).

So, at what point in pre-history do we place the beginning of culture? Usually, we tie it to specific findings that bear witness to a level of abstraction that transcends mere functionality. Figurines, wall paintings, burial sites.

 

[Colin]

Jesus Loves You

The above was the OP .

We are now approaching page 60 of this thread .

How we so easily drift from the basic essentials .

 

[b&wpac4]

The above was the OP .

We are now approaching page 60 of this thread .

How we so easily drift from the basic essentials .

What is there to say about the OP itself? It doesn't ask a question or raise an issue.

In order to have a conversation, it almost has to drift.

 

[Greg1234]

Cultural history starts with the earliest cultural artifacts, and as such overlaps at least partially with both archaeology (dealing with pre-history, prior to written records) and history (everything after that).

So, at what point in pre-history do we place the beginning of culture? Usually, we tie it to specific findings that bear witness to a level of abstraction that transcends mere functionality. Figurines, wall paintings, burial sites.

Cultural history is tied with history. The passages of time which led up to this point is traced back all the way to the beginning of man. From the beginning, the events lead up to the present. You cannot separate the two. Just as with your lightning belief, you dub this concept as the projection of humans mentality into nature. This is directly related to the man's stupidity in the beginning, which is tied to your belief in man's days as bacteria, which then justifies the labeling of Christians as ignorant hominids.

This is your story, while the origin of man is depicted in text much differently and reverence for the ones who had the ability to manipulate the elements, with text passed down as such, has nothing to with ignorance but a sense of cognition which in fact far surpasses that of modern man. This has been clarified by various masters who have entered this plane of thought. You replace the beginning with Darwinism then attempt to use that to explain a scenario which never accommodated this belief.

 

[ephraimanesti]

Cultural history has very little (if anything) to do with Darwin, and very much to do with anthropology/ethnology and psychology.

MY SISTER,

Are you telling us with a straight face that you have never heard of Social Darwinism? Atheists used it to great advantage in Soviet Russia, et al.

Advancement of the "fittest" works quite well--at least for those at the top. Unfortunately, those at the bottom usually just become statistics, but once a person gets the idea that we are all just evolved animals, i suppose a few million deaths here and there is no big deal.

On the other hand, seeing human beings as being created in "God's Image and Likeness" makes a great deal of difference in the value one places on a human life and the treatment one renders to those less fortunate--less "fit"--than oneself.

ABBA'S FOOL,
ephraim

 

[SithDoughnut]

MY SISTER,

Are you telling us with a straight face that you have never heard of Social Darwinism? Atheists used it to great advantage in Soviet Russia, et al.

Advancement of the "fittest" works quite well--at least for those at the top. Unfortunately, those at the bottom usually just become statistics, but once a person gets the idea that we are all just evolved animals, i suppose a few million deaths here and there is no big deal.

On the other hand, seeing human beings as being created in "God's Image and Likeness" makes a great deal of difference in the value one places on a human life and the treatment one renders to those less fortunate--less "fit"--than oneself.

ABBA'S FOOL,
ephraim

Nope. A few million deaths is a very big deal. Every death is a big deal, God or no God. Can people please stop lying about atheists?

 

[Jane_the_Bane]

Soviet Russia had nothing whatsoever to do with Social Darwinism, ideologically speaking.
Even Stalin's purges or engineered famines weren't tied to Social Darwinism, but were merely the result of a power-crazed, murderous tyrant trying to decimate and terrify his own populace.

As a matter of fact, the ideology behind free market capitalism and the GOP has MUCH more to do with those ideas than anything the Soviets ever did.

For that matter, Social Darwinism has very little to do with either Darwin or with evolution, despite the name.

As a matter of fact, Darwin felt that "social instincts" such as "sympathy" and "moral sentiments" also evolved through natural selection, and that these resulted in the strengthening of societies in which they occurred, so much so that he wrote about it in Descent of Man:

"The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable- namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man. For, firstly, the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them."


The "fitness" in "survival of the fittest" can take many forms: it can refer to lonely killer species like sharks, it can refer to selfless, self-sacrificial species like ants or bees, and it can refer to species like our own, vacillating somewhere between the two extremes.

 

[Glass*Soul]

The above was the OP .

We are now approaching page 60 of this thread .

How we so easily drift from the basic essentials .

It is a hollow claim, neither basic nor essential.

It is interesting to examine whom Jesus might have loved in life. It may be essential for me to know whom I love and who loves me. For someone to claim that their easily manipulated imaginary Jesus tool loves me is but the flip side of the many claims that he does not. I don't listen to either side. I'm just as fed up with one claim as I am the other. Neither strikes me as being to my good.

 

[ephraimanesti]

Nope. A few million deaths is a very big deal. Every death is a big deal, God or no God. Can people please stop lying about atheists?

MY BROTHER,

So if "a few million deaths is a very big deal" to atheists, why are these crimes against humanity repeated--time after time--whenever and wherever atheists come into control of a country. The results are carbon copies--exact duplicates. i can accept a "fluke" or "anomaly" or two--especially twisted and sociopathic leaders perhaps. But the contempt for the value of human life seems part and parcel of a disbelief in God or in a lack of God-given sense of Love and concern for the welfare of others.

One of the attachments to the great TRUTH that "Jesus Loves You" is that, because of that Love, we are enjoined to Love our brothers and sisters--the rest of the population of planet Earth--as He Love us. (John 15:12)

Atheists, of course, have no such motivation and the idea of "the survival of the fittest" precludes it. How many hospitals, food/clothing banks, homeless shelters, orphanages, mental health asylums, rescue of unwanted children left exposed to die programs, etc. can you think of which have been started and manned by atheists? None that i am aware of. Lack of God = lack of sacrificial Love for others--with very very few exceptions. Alturistic actions on behalf of others is not an animal virtue--even for evolved animals such as atheists see themselves to be.

These are not "lies about atheists"--they are mere observations on the effects of cutting oneself off from the source of Love has on peoples' views and interactions with each other.

Do all Christians follow our God's commandments regarding "Love of neighbors"--unfortunately, no. However, the commandments remain and those who disregard them cut themselves off from Jesus' Love by denying that Love to others.

ABBA'S FOOL,
ephraim