The problem of evil

Have you never felt guilty about something and then realized, perhaps after conversations with friends that might not have occurred, or with the perspective of the passage of many years, that you did not do anything wrong? Do you know that battered women often stay in relationships partly because of guilt? They judge their rejection of and anger at their partners as not being loving enough? It seems to me people are quite capable of feeling guilty on poor grounds and feeling fine about stuff that is really quite terrible. Even by their own later estimations. Ah, but then they worked it out in the end. Nah, life is short, who knows what we do not catch up on regarding.

Though perhaps if I explained that fiat banking necessarily deflates the value of the money the Amish got through labor, they would realize that their money is being stolen and interest is a fair replacement for this. Banks loan money they do not have. This puts more money out there without increasing labor as much as it does the money. This creates inflation and reduces the value of our money. What the heal is stealing, I still ask. The Amish have used guilt to prevent them getting fair compensation for their labor.

Ah, good so you see that conscience may not be a good guide. If you had died back then, you never would have realized that you had been stealing, by your own sense of what stealing can be. But the good thing about this is that you have just judged the norm as stealing. If the norm is stealing, this puts what gets called stealing in a context where being robbed is nearly impossible to avoid. If I am being robbed all the time, then my stealing to feed myself or my family is very different. It becomes more like a slave on a plantation taking from the master’s vegetable garden: risky but not immoral. I am not arguing that all stealing is OK, but rather pointing out that if we take your own definition of stealing on, we end up in a society where what stealing is is very hard to track and judge. That it might be OK, morally, to steal in terms of what the law considers stealing might be just fine.

Not that I can recall. It’s more likely to be the other way around.

If you can’t trust your conscience, what can you trust? If your conscience fails to be a moral guide, then perhaps there is a deeper problem.

16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Inflation of prices is not directly caused by inflation of the money supply; that is a myth. Price is determined by supply and demand. If jobs are plentiful and wages are rising, then consumers are willing to pay more and prices rise. In some cases competition comes to partake in the increased demand which lowers prices with increased supply.

The way the Amish would probably see it is if prices are rising to deflate the value of their money, they simply charge more for products and it evens out.

Well, I knew it wasn’t quite right, but I was young and under the impression that I was being a good entrepreneur. Still, I couldn’t let the cat out of the bag about how much I was making or my employees would have left, so the fact that I had to hide says a lot about how I felt even then. Many times we justify our actions to be rid of guilt.

That’s why I see redistributive taxes as righting the wrong of the theft by employment.

It’s still wrong.

38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.

I would say most decent people confuse guilt with conscience and a guilt that includes self-hate, and a lot tof unloving ideas about the self. One can develop out of this, but I don’t think anyone should trust their conscience, unless they have worked for quite a while, and been very surprised in the process, to separate out judgments handed down to us from parents that are not about us, cultural habits that are not good rules for interactions and a lot of of other dreck.

Sure, that’s an example of communication that either 1) does not know what humans will do with this kind of comment: hurt themselves or 2) it wants good people to feel guilty about things they should not. I mean who has not brought forth evil fruit. I know good people who beat themselves up for necessarily being corrupt trees, when they are at worst imperfect humans.

It’s not the only way devaluation of money happens, fiat banking that is, it’s one way. Not the fact that the money has no, for example, gold standard. But the ability to loan what one does not have. To invent money on a computer. It is absolutely amazing that we give some people the right to make money of thin air.

They will always be behind. And the banks are making money off having their money in their banks, and making money off it not through labor.

Sure, and sometimes we think we do not deserve to feel good, have a wonderful romantic partner, not starve like someone is somewhere, be paid a fair wage and we feel guilty.

So would you say a slave stealing from his master’s garden - in the old South - was wrong? If not, where do you draw the line?

Letting someone smite you on the other cheek is doing both of you a disservice. It’s a double sin.

Well if you cannot trust your conscience, what can you trust? If you can’t trust yourself, can you trust your mistrust of yourself? Is that well-founded? If you can’t trust yourself, you can’t trust anything. So there is no choice; you have to trust yourself knowing that you will let yourself down on occasion because there is no alternative.

How much bad fruit do they bear?

Fiat money is the best way, the only problem is the fed skimming off the top rather than having the treasury issue its own money. How else are the rich to get richer while also not allowing the poor to go broke? Either the money supply expands or taxes redistribute the money back down to the poor so that it may flow up again.

Yes the bankster are serpents.

I don’t beat myself up about it, but just saying that we need redistributive taxes to stop the nonsense. I don’t understand why poor or middleclass people defend the rich to spite some snot-nosed punk getting minimum wage who may be being paid more than he’s worth. People actually will cut off their noses to spite their face.

If you’re defining it as stealing, then it’s stealing and therefore wrong. Otherwise I don’t know the master/slave relationship back then. Maybe slaves were permitted to eat from the garden. I’m just arguing the bible point of view, not what I actually would do. I wouldn’t have made a good slave anyway, so I wouldn’t have lived long enough to have discovered what I would have done in that situation. I have too much pride :frowning:

How is that?

How is that?
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If that slap, or any other evil is rewarded, that is a disservice to all.

Correction to poor thinking or actions is logically and biblically deemed to be the loving thing to do.

Logic and reason seem to agree.

Proverbs 3:12 For whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.

You likely correct your own children for poor thinking or actions. No?

Regards
DL

In a sense you are not quite responding to what I wrote. I am saying the conscience is fallible. We cannot count on it. You presented it as the way to determine the goodness of acts. One can develop trust and we could go into that. Here you say it lets you down on occasion. It has let millions of people down their entire lives. Think of the things people have felt guilty about due to religion, for example, like sexual urges, and their consciences told them they were bad for these normal, natural facets of being social mammals. Or in the other direction, people who were racist, haters of women, whatever, based on cultural norms. This is not an issue of exception, even today, amongst secular people. They are taught that having strong emotional reactions are bad, for example. In fact most of us are trained to be ashamed of our emotional reactions and the way we want to move our bodies, as a rule. Yes, you are fucked if you cannot trust yourself. But on the other hand, you have to recognize the enormity of the problem and develop the tools you have to where you can distinguish between the various voices in the mind to find the ones worthy of being a conscience.

Notice the grammatical tense you use, one that implies that their bad fruit bearing is ongoing. The scripture actually says that good trees cannot bear evil fruit. Period. So one, basing one’s conscience, as many do, on such really quite evil texts, can feel guilty for acts in the past that one regrets and would not do again. The writer should know this, since the writer is taking such an authoritative stance. If the writer does know this about humans, and how easy it is for good ones to find a way to hate themselves, then the write was being evil in that time of creating. If the writer does not know this, they erred in self-knowledge around their expertise.

It was considered stealing by law. I don’t think it is stealing.

Pride and the urge to survive being a struggle i would have had, sure. I am just saying that if one is saying stealing is always wrong, one should make it clear that one probably should make it clear that we are not talking about what the law considers stealing (and what it considers ownership, etc.)

You are encouraging them to sin, or to be an asshole in the way I would more naturally describe. The striking a cheek is a metaphor for any wrongdoing, up to physical violence. If my wife treats me like shit, say, and I just let her do this and do not protest, do not try to stop the repetition of this, I am denying her my full intelligence and selfhood. In addition to allowing myself to be treated poorly. It is no service to other people not to call them on their shit, it is a disservice. Of course it is often practical to call them on their shit, given power dynamics, etc. But if you can manage not to give them access again to your cheek, that is the minimum implicit criticism you should strive for.

Is it not possible that Jesus was fallible?

The Lord is in a better position to know right from wrong, but we are not. If the blind lead the blind, they both fall in the ditch.

I disagree that consequences for actions should be seen from the perspective of the child as coming from the parent instead of the world because that is precisely the dictatorship that made me as rebellious as I am. I suppose it depends upon the situation, but that’s my general rule.

If a woman slaps you, are you going to slap her back? How about a child? Why not? Why withhold disservice from men but apply it to women and children? If loving is to hit back and reward evil with evil, then isn’t it loving to clobber women, children, very old men, the handicapped?

That is a faith based assumption and wrong according to your own bible.

1 Thessalonians 5:21 Test all things; hold fast what is good.

It seems that we are being directed to use our own judgement. No?

You are part of the world and the world is not around to correct if your child thinks or does something inappropriate.

If your general rule is to not correct your child and let the rest of the world do it, then IMO, you are abdicating your own parental responsibility.

But hey, if you trust the judgements of other over your own, what can I say.

Yes. If correction is required, the gender should not matter. Do you think a female rapist should not get the same punishment as a male rapist? Do you have a double standard of justice? Is justice not supposed to see us all as equals?

Sure. At his level of strength, not at the adult level. Have you net heard a mother tell her bitten child to bite back? I have. Is reciprocity not fair play where you come from?

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I will ignore this rant and just ask.

Is reciprocity fair play where you are. Do unto others etc. is a reciprocity rule.

If you are to reward evil, why stop with a slap. Why not reward the rapist or murderer?

Your policy has some value at low level insult type things but cannot apply for anything significant and is thus a poor policy.

That may be why modern social scientist use a different set of rules that are used by about 75% of us world wide.

Harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, in-group/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity.

Care in our initial case, is provided by correction, not by rewarding evil.

You might also want to look at the Jewish meaning of turn the other cheek. It does not mean what you think it means.

chabad.org/library/article_ … -Value.htm

Regards
DL

Well what does determine goodness of acts? It can’t be cognition because we can’t process all the variables nor take an objective view in order to proclaim what is good to begin with even if we could process all the variables.

Oh I know all about that. I grew up in it. Alan Watts said the church institutionalized guilt and the audience erupted in sudden applause.

He who doubteth is damned.

13 Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way.
14 I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean.
15 But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died.
16 Let not then your good be evil spoken of:
17 For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.
18 For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God, and approved of men.
19 Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another.
20 For meat destroy not the work of God. All things indeed are pure; but it is evil for that man who eateth with offence.
21 It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak.
22 Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God. Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.
23 And he that doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin.

You said “who has not brought forth evil fruit” to which I replied “how much bad fruit do they bear?” Is the tree overall good or overall bad? That’s about all we have to go on because there is no tree that only bears good fruit.

Obviously it cannot be as literal as that because no one can bear only good fruit, but figs do not grow on thistles, not that some figs aren’t better than others on a fig tree. An apple tree can have a rotten apple, but it’s still an apple.

The writer in that case was supposed to be Jesus and he says “He who has an ear to hear, let him hear.” Then goes on about thanking God for confounding the wise and revealing unto babes. If you try to make it too literal or read too much into it, you’re going to miss the point.

Like Bruce Lee said, “It is like a finger pointing at the moon. Do not pay attention to the finger or you’ll miss all that heavenly glory.”

But you said the slave would be stealing from the garden, so it was defined into the problem. Did the slave have rights to the property or not? If not, then it’s stealing. If so, then it’s not. It just depends how the problem is stated.

That’s why I say the conscience should be the guide because the law cannot be that clear. This hearkens back to the forum-rules debate we had before: we can’t make rules to account for every crime and as soon as we detail exactly what is a crime, then people will mold their insults to skirt the rule.

I don’t have all the answers, but there are some cases where not striking back is better because one can always sue later :wink:

In the case of mom, I put it to her that either she admit I’m right about some things or don’t talk to me because we’re going to go round n round forever simply because I have too much pride to bendover all the time. And she has too much pride to admit that I’ve grown up and am capable of knowing more than an 8yr old. Who wins? Neither of us because I lost a mom and she lost a son because of stupid pride. But I’m not a robot nor a saint, so idk.

I don’t even know if he was real. Whoever wrote his words was very smart though.

It’s not my bible. I threatened to burn the damned thing on easter. Dangerous book!

The Lord is presumed to be the only righteous judge and that’s the underpinning of the religion otherwise how could any law have authority if no entity could be a judge?

Yes because what else can you do?

Parental responsibility is to raise adults, not children, not dependents, nor minions, bootlickers, nor rebels.

You could come up with an example.

I have been the egalitarian suggesting to turn the cheek across the board, you’re saying to hit back. So if a woman slaps you, you will slap her back, right? Well, just be sure a bunch of other guys aren’t watching or you may have a brawl on your hands.

That’s child upon child, not adult against child. Mothers don’t tell children to antagonize adults who hit them, but run to find help. And hitting someone weaker than yourself is immoral imo. You can restrain them and hold them down, but not clobber them.

Reciprocity only occurs on equal playing field. Handicapped against healthy is not a fair fight and not reciprocity.

17 Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men.
18 If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.
19 Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
20 Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.
21 Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

So it would seem that feeding the rapist and murderer is prescribed.

How is the punishment policy working? How many are rehabilitated? As far as I can tell, they come out of prison and return to their actions like a dog to vomit.

Proverbs 26:11 As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.

Eh, it’s not consistent with the rest of the literal, allegorical interpretation of the bible nor in the spirit of it.

Now we’ve come full-circle in illustrating how honoring God is at odds with honoring man: God says to do good to the murderers, man says to lock them up. God says to turn the other cheek, man says to come up swinging.

Proverbs 14:12 There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.

I don’t know what determines the goodness of acts. I see theories and they seem weak. This doesn’t mean I am rooting for my theory, whatever it might be.

Now don’t be bringing Watts in again, LOL.

He who don’t doubteth is probalby an asshole.

I am not sure what to do with that.

I am not arguing it is literal, he’s talking about people and acts. The problem is that it is a rule, with no gradations or exceptions. The metaphor could have been used in a way that would have created less guilt and panic - especially given the potential problem with Hell, you better be damn clear what you are saying to people.

Again, I could not possibly have been reading it literally or it would have been a quote about agriculture, or permaculture, and while problematic on that level, I wouldn’t care and it wouldn’t lead to guilt but possibly to the throwing away of good fruit. Reading too much in it. Well, that’s the thing. I know humans and I know how many of them will take such quotes, and history is littered with people, good people, who tried to live up to scriptures, panicked regularly about the coming of hell based on scriptures, and had a hateful voice in their heads empowered by scripture. Telling me not to read too much into it - which I think is an ironic suggestion about a religious text that requires reading a lot into it - is missing the point. People read stuff in these things and if you don’t want people to plague themselves with ideas, there are simply ways to modify texts to make them more nuanced.

Bruce Lee sure as shit did not, as a rule, turn the other cheek. He fought people all the time for all sorts of things. Heck, he did it in the streets just to learn. And again, I have seen what the language of the Bible does to basically good people. Also the language of secular moralities that have similar naive presentations. The point is precisely that humans will try to navigate using these things and terrible things will result from navigating following the advice of people who are cut off from their emotions to various degrees. Jesus, if he said this, had stuff to learn. Which is fine, who doesn’t? He did his best.

Well, I didn’t know how you were defining stealing. It seems like your definitions is stealing is when you think you are stealing. I thought you meant when it is breaking the law. Property and things move around in all societies. My only point was that what is considered stealing in that society by the people in power, even by the majority may not be stealing and hence not immoral. I don’t think there would have been anything wrong about a slave going into the house and taking a piano or all the horses in the barn or whatever. Perhaps he should share with other slaves, but no possible property crime could be committed against a master by a slave in my view. He could burn down the master’s house for all I care.

Conscience and practical fear of consequences is the the guide for all of us, though many might not word it that way. The potential committers of what some might consider crime. I just wanted to make it clear that just because you follow your conscience you have not even the slightest guarantee this is meaningful, even to you in the long term, unless you have really gone deep into yourself.

OH, sure, there are practical issues I always take into consideration. That’s what I meant by at least TRYING to not offer the other cheek.

If you don’t know what determines good, then how do you know it’s not the conscience?

Oh you like him! I got him on my pedestal still :wink:

:laughing:

You can eat meat if you think eating meat is ok, but if you doubt, then it’s not ok.

I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean.

If you think it’s bad, it’s bad; because nothing is bad of itself.

The bible is all screwed up. For instance Jesus never said he was THE son of God, but A son of God (meaning you are too). The church wanted the guilt, not Jesus.

3 And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,
4 They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
5 Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?
6 This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.
7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
8 And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.
9 And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
10 When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?
11 She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

Where is the guilt?

Exactly why Watts said “The bible should be ceremoniously and reverently burned every easter; we need it no more since the spirit is with us”. It’s a dangerous book. Idols of stone or wood are easy to spot, but those made of ideas are dangerous.

Bruce didn’t have to hit back because no one could hit him first :stuck_out_tongue: :laughing:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH1GFaw09hk[/youtube]

Wouldn’t bother me either.

Well, stealing is wrong, but what constitutes stealing is up to your conscience to decide. It’s like that I think. I mean, absent laws n stuff.

Yes even doing good to those who try to hurt you is still retaliatory since the idea is heaping hot coals upon their head by doing them good instead of evil.

I remember I got into a bar fight and the next day my friend say “You should have just bought him a beer.” The problem with fighting is having to watch your back for the revenge, unless you kill the guy then his brother or somebody comes.

That is a faith based assumption and wrong according to your own bible.
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It’s not my bible. I threatened to burn the damned thing on easter. Dangerous book!

The Lord is presumed to be the only righteous judge and that’s the underpinning of the religion otherwise how could any law have authority if no entity could be a judge?

Yes because what else can you do?

Parental responsibility is to raise adults, not children, not dependents, nor minions, bootlickers, nor rebels.

You could come up with an example.

I have been the egalitarian suggesting to turn the cheek across the board, you’re saying to hit back. So if a woman slaps you, you will slap her back, right? Well, just be sure a bunch of other guys aren’t watching or you may have a brawl on your hands.

That’s child upon child, not adult against child. Mothers don’t tell children to antagonize adults who hit them, but run to find help. And hitting someone weaker than yourself is immoral imo. You can restrain them and hold them down, but not clobber them.

Reciprocity only occurs on equal playing field. Handicapped against healthy is not a fair fight and not reciprocity.

17 Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men.
18 If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.
19 Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
20 Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.
21 Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

So it would seem that feeding the rapist and murderer is prescribed.

How is the punishment policy working? How many are rehabilitated? As far as I can tell, they come out of prison and return to their actions like a dog to vomit.

Proverbs 26:11 As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.

Eh, it’s not consistent with the rest of the literal, allegorical interpretation of the bible nor in the spirit of it.

Now we’ve come full-circle in illustrating how honoring God is at odds with honoring man: God says to do good to the murderers, man says to lock them up. God says to turn the other cheek, man says to come up swinging.

Proverbs 14:12 There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.
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A judge can be faced and question and accepts testimony.

To have an invisible guy in the sky God as a judge means not having justice.

I have also seen mothers bite their children at their level of intensity.

I get the idea that you are not really listening to what reciprocity is all about and I am not about to lay the Golden Rule aside to follow your thinking that rewarding evil is somehow good.

I am afraid to ask what you would do if you got home and someone was raping your wife. I am afraid you would say you would serve him drinks between bouts.

I gave you the points I wanted and will leave you guys to argue along.

Regards
DL

Yeah I guess. I don’t even know what good justice does after we’re dead. During life, justice is served to be example to others, but after death it seems sadistic and certainly doesn’t right the wrong.

I suppose I misunderstood you the first time, did you say mothers bite their children? I’ve never heard of that. I’ll ask around.

Reciprocity - an eye for an eye, right?

Why not? That’s dogmatic ain’t it?

Yes but to fight evil, you have to know what it is. And that is where the crusades came from, lots of wars, and hell, Hitler thought he was fighting evil.

“Judge not, that you be not judged.” The sin in the garden wasn’t suddenly becoming aware of good and evil, but arrogantly presuming we could tell the difference. Thinking you know and could recognize evil such that you could reward or punish it is itself evil, if anything is evil, because it’s full of conceit.

Oh I’d beat the hell outta him, for starters. I’d be determined to.

I caught a guy in bed with my girlfriend before. I had him by the hair in one hand and my other hand drawn back, he was shaking like a leaf and looked terrified, but I couldn’t hit him. Everyone gave me shit about letting him go, so I’m more determined for the future and rape is quite a different thing, yeah, I’d beat him senseless. But I’m not a saint, so don’t follow my lead.

:laughing:

Tag-teaming eh? :smiley:

I think I said there are problems with using conscience to determine the good and when someone should feel bad. NOt that it wasn’t conscience. I also went on to say that one had to go deeply into oneself to be able to trust conscience. I may have contradicted myself as I explored, but I think as my argument developed I indicated that it could work, that one could find a voice in one’s head to trust, once one went through the process of separating out culture, parenting, self-hate posing as conscience, and so on. And once one challenged ideas, like those from scripture, that can lead to guilt where it is not necessary. I don’t think this is easy. I think we are taught now, by both secular and religious authorities, to feel guilty for things that are part and parcel of being social mammals, such as emotions - which I mentioned. To say that conscience determines the good and bad, to me makes it seem like that voice we call conscience is one we can take for granted is not utterly contaminated by sick cultural elements.

Oh, the poor guy probably wants a little nap, let him get down for a while.

Aren’t we then giving pyschopaths the right to rape out daughters and more?

So conscience is the source of evil and it would be best not to have one. Psychopaths become not just fine when they harm others, but role models. If we were all psychopaths, there would be no bad acts.

I have a hard time knowing what is Jesus, what is from the people who listened and told the stories and what is from translators and the church. But a number of the quotes of Jesus can lead to guilt. A quick search found…

To pressure people to love their enemies is too much - just imagine what child victims of violence will do with that kind of thing. Now, of course, he may have been misquoted. Translations may push certain words like ‘love’ here to far forward. But back in the days when I as an adult relooked at Jesus, the Biblical Jesus had a lot of ideas that put pressure on the emotional body in ways I consider unloving.

I like what he did there, but there is still guilt. Go and sin no more. Just because she slept with someone outside her marriage does not mean it was a sin. And you should agree if conscience is the judge. Perhaps her husband was a violent unloving man, and once in her life she wanted to make love where there was love present. Jesus just assumed it was wrong what she did, but that no one else could be violent towards here SINCE THEY WERE NOT PERFECT.

But it seems like your argument is: here he went against guilt, so he does not produce guilt. He said and did a lot of stuff. They add up to a lot of room for guilt.

You think that is not going to create a lot of guilt in people. Imagine poor teenagers listening to that, they are all having premarital sex, but Jesus’ estimation. Look, I love the guy for interfering with the violence of the old shitty Jewish laws. Kudos to him. He did some wonderful stuff, given the time and the culture, as far as I can tell. But he also set the seeds for a lot of guilt and shame. Now it is not merely acts, but internal reactions - and quite human ones - that are sins. I think the Jesus shift to expecting harmony between the internal and the external has a positive side. I also want a harmony there and of course what is inside is important. But his way of doing this included making everyone a mortal sinners for natural attractions to the opposite sex.

I think the spirit of the Bible - or spirits of the Bible - are a mixed bag. Some good stuff, some improvements on what went before, but also some really terrible stuff, including some of what jesus said (according to the Bible).

mentalfloss.com/article/67108/ti … real-fight
Bruce Lee and Jesus are very hard to follow both at the same time.

OK

Oh, I love the nasty kind gesture to an asshole. I think that can be a great response. But that’s only for real assholes. And they have to be the right kind who will feel bad after you do that. Otherwise it is a want of some fine acting.

Sure, I am not suggesting it is practical to slap back all the time. Nor am I saying that the opposite of turn the other cheek should be a rule. If some say X is true. If I disagree, it may because I think it is only sometimes true or rarely true. I may think it is never true. But there is no reason to assume I mean -X is true. Or one should always -X.

That’s odd. One would expect that deciding if stealing is right or wrong is also “up to your conscience”. Surely all questions of right or wrong are up to your conscience once you take the approach of centering ethics in yourself.

Not really.

You guys are way too long winded for me and my two little typing fingers.


“Reciprocity - an eye for an eye, right?”

Basically, yes. The penalty for a crime should be at about the same level as the crime.
I think a just judge will consider that the perpetrator, and his guilt, should be given some mercy from that due to the fact that the criminal was not born that way. He was made that way by all who interacted with him.

As a Universalist, I see that as the most just way to go.


“Why not? That’s dogmatic ain’t it?”

I think it could be said that my adherence to the Golden Rule is dogmatic, but a Gnostic Christian is always ready to evolve his God to a higher form if something better, in terms of rules and laws to live by, comes along.

Our God evolves while most are stagnant thinking and not really the best thinking for these times of enlightenment.


“Yes but to fight evil, you have to know what it is.”

Sure. Those issues are subjective. Most of us know what is good and evil. You do as you have judged Hitler evil. So why would you allow yourself to judge evil and want me not to do so?


“Judge not, that you be not judged.”

Why do you fear judgement and tell us not to do it when you yourself judge others?

If you are not living the best way, would you not like to be judged and corrected so that you might live a better way?

Regards
DL

If morals and ethics are subjective, which I think they are, while you seem to think them objective, tell us where you get your objective moral tenets from.

I see nothing wrong with a general idea that steeling is wrong, but I do see a problem when it is thought to be a rule cast in stone.

Let’s say you happened to be where you heard two guys with a bomb plotting to kill someone.
They leave the bomb in their room to go to lunch.

Would you, if there was no other authority available before the possible detonation, break into their room and steal their bomb?

I sure would as stealing it would be the right thing to do. No?

Regards
DL

I think the idea is that ‘stealing’ as a word means that it is not OK. By definitions if you are calling it stealing it is bad to the person labelling it that way. If I say I murdered someone I am judging it negatively. If I say I killed someone, then we don’t know yet.

If I ‘fairly redistribute devices’ when I take what you think of as your lawnmower, then I would never refer to it as stealing. Like ‘eminent domain’ or ‘repossessing your car’ or ‘manifest destiny’ may or may not be what some people would think of as stealing, but the one doing the taking probably does not.

I would not, however, say to a police officer that I stole it. Not because I’d be afraid of being charged, but because I would not think of that as stealing. Just as if I were a surgeon who cut out some cancerous tissue from a leg, I would not say I maimed that guy.