[Herra Tohtori]

It's nice to know that the conversation is, at least, awoking questions. But doing a thought experiment again; if you created an universe or initiated a computer simulation of one, would you hold it against the inhabitants if they had their individual opinions? Would you see it unreasonable that they might not believe in you?

No, and neither does God. You keep mentioning that if one doesn't belive in Christ he is sent to Hell. That is not correct. Christ took EVERYONES sins. You are just as likely to reach Heaven as I am, as long as you are a good person.

Which sect of Christianity says that? I thought the whole point of Christianity was that if you don't believe in Christ, you don't get the benefits of his sacrifice...

Fair enough. It does appear that religious tendencies are at least partially genetically defined, though, so that in itself might be making our views of world different. It would also explain why religions are inherited so effectively.

To say that I'm skeptical of such research would be a understatement. Our knowledge of genetics is still in it's infacy as well as our understanding of the human thought process.
Not to mention that given the ammount of crap being passed around as science, I'm more inclined to a belive a 9/11 conspiracy than that.

It's twin research. Separated identical twins raised in different conditions tend to have similar personalities, and religious tendencies are included - which suggests that religiousness is at least partially genetic trait. Along with a great many other basic personality traits.

Given that I don't know what kindof a person I would be, it's hard to tell. Speaking from my current POV, I'd disagree with anything that doesn't sound morally right. I consider myself, or at least try to be, a moral and kind person.

 

Same, although I find the world "moral" less fitting than "ethically thinking". Moral is too easy to connect to moralism, and it could be argued that a person who tries to be a moral person could be perceived as moralist, as opposed to one that tries to act according to their moral compass.

So, essentially we have the same basic idea, but you believe that God is responsible of giving humans perception of right and wrong?


By the way, I thought that was the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and man eating from that that gives us ability to separate good from evil, according to Judao-Christian mythology. So it could be considered an aquired trait since God originally made man in his image without this knowledge (does that mean God doesn't know the difference...?), neh?

[Flipside]

I think the purpose of the Adam and Eve fable is a theme that runs throughout history, the Tower or Babel, the Flight of Icarus, The Odyssey etc..

In truth, it's a classic 'let those above you do your thinking for you, otherwise you will be "punished" in some way.', it's a good way of cementing priestly hierarchy over the masses, kind of like pyramid sales with a Meme.

[Colonol Dekker]

Religion blows...........

Aeithiest-ism. That's top.

[TrashMan]

Which sect of Christianity says that? I thought the whole point of Christianity was that if you don't believe in Christ, you don't get the benefits of his sacrifice...

Last time I chekced I was Roman Catholic.

It's twin research. Separated identical twins raised in different conditions tend to have similar personalities, and religious tendencies are included - which suggests that religiousness is at least partially genetic trait. Along with a great many other basic personality traits.

It's research that has a huge human element (you're interviewing humans, and they can lie) and a s****load of factors the researches don't know about or have no control over. It's not a controled enviroment. Question is wether the test group is representative as well.

[Mongoose]

I think the purpose of the Adam and Eve fable is a theme that runs throughout history, the Tower or Babel, the Flight of Icarus, The Odyssey etc..

In truth, it's a classic 'let those above you do your thinking for you, otherwise you will be "punished" in some way.', it's a good way of cementing priestly hierarchy over the masses, kind of like pyramid sales with a Meme.

I've always took it as emphasizing the importance of following God's commands and not letting earthly desires come before them.  The story presents this situation where mankind was given everything that one could possibly want: all the best food, freedom from personal hardship or pain, perfect weather, lion laying down with lamb, et cetera.  Literally, paradise on Earth.  And the only cost is staying away from one silly little tree.  And yet, those first humans decide that breaking this command for the sake of gaining some unspecified, godlike wisdom is worth it...and look where they wind up.  Ah, free will, the blessing and the curse...

The whole thing's really a metaphor for the idea that, by virtue of our imperfection, mankind has a built-in proclivity to sin, despite the consequences of doing so. We know what is expected of us, yet we choose to act against it, thinking foolishly that we're clever for having done so.  (And that's certainly not limited to a religious perspective; I'm sure we've all pulled stunts that we realized were just going to come back to bite us in the ass.)  That's where the idea of Christ's sacrifice comes in; Christ took the burden of that natural sinfulness upon himself, and, by doing so, he gave a mankind a way to overcome that sinful nature and reach full union with God once again.  I believe it was Paul who referred to Christ as the "successor of Adam;" just as Adam and Eve's decision sentenced humanity to sinfulness, so Christ's decision gave them a means to salvation.

(Now, as for those who try to claim that the whole serpent thing happened just as written some 6,000 years ago...you can draw your own conclusions. )

[Flipside]

The way I always interpreted it was that the 'Apple' represented self-awareness. We became aware of ourselves and each other, of our humanity, by 'eating from the tree of knowledge', we sought to learn something that had been forbidden to us by a higher power, and therefore received punishment.

In that respect, ancient Judaism was pretty clever, 'This is God, and he's really pissed, so you better spend every day of your life doing God's work (as interpreted by a duly designated representative) in order to say sorry.'

For me, the New Testament was merely the Stick/Carrot, Bad Cop/Good Cop situation.

Not that there isn't useful guidelines, and some excellent parables in both books, but, like many holy books of that time and since, they had no idea what future generations would attempt to use them for.

[castor]

"Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" - its a nice metaphor really.
I don't see it as a theme circulating around God/humanity power issues though, but rather as a story of inception of dualism within human mind:

Like a child not knowing what it was, we reached for knowledge, and acquired it. In the process the constituents of wholeness -- of "being" -- were revealed, and wholeness was broken into myriad of separate entities that could be "known", told apart, judged.

This created the necessity of knowing, the burden of knowing: dualism and divide, controversies of free will/determinism, cause/effect, material/spirit, good/worse, etc.. where we are now.

No wonder it was forbidden

[Mongoose]

As I've heard people say, "If only that dumb broad hadn't shown her husband the damn apple."

[redsniper]

[nitpick]It's never actually called an apple in any scripture; it's just referred to as a "fruit." The apple was used to symbolize it by so many artists that it's now always thought of as an apple. [/nitpick]

Carry on. I usually try to stay out of these threads, but... w/e.

[Mika]

Sorry about the delay, have been programming ray-tracer a bit too intensively.

This post is response to G0atmaster's one (on page 5), which is a response to my basic three questions: Isn't Christianity about making up your chances to get to heaven, what happens to the people who never heard (and never had a chance to hear) about Christianity, and isn't helping people a lot easier when you have resources to do so, and have the social support network yourself?

G0atmaster's reply to first question was:

What do you mean?  We are taught not to seek out suffering for the sake of suffering.  Paul the apostle talks about how he'd prefer to die for the Gospel now and stop suffering, go and be with Christ, but he remains on Earth for the sake of those who still need to hear from him.

I'm not sure if I can put this eloguently enough, but I'll try to keep the question as simple as possible to factor out the mistakes in translations. My question would then be what is the reason why do you want to get to heaven?

Not necessarily.  Many people knew of Christ before Christ was alive.  The people of Israel are promised salvation, and the Bible tells us that if we don't proclaim the name of the Lord, Creation itself will.  We are all without excuse.  Read what I read above about people who have never heard the Gospel having beliefs that are Christianity in everything except name.

At this point I confess my eyes and brain refused to comply with that request. The post was simply too long to read through. But from the sound of it, I would guess you are talking about conscience. I think it is true that there seems to be a build-in moral code in human. However, I don't necessarily see this as a manifestation of God, but simply a thing which might have given man a competitive edge of the animal world, when the communities were still small. And, there are some documented cases where animals are also (seemingly) feeling the same (and I would go so far and say it's not only seemingly, they are really feeling so).

This is the reply to the third question, which was about how does giving everything that you own help other people more than keeping your job and using it to support surroundings?

Because, "If I have a desire which nothing in this world can satisfy, I can only draw one logical conclusion:  I was not made for this world." -CS Lewis.

People who "have their bases covered" really don't.  Look at the lives of those who "have it all."  Madonna.  Freddie Mercury.  Fill-in-the-blank.  They all acknowledge they're missing substance to give their life meaning.  They're searching for something to fill some sort of void.

Unfortunately, I don't really count Madonna and other pop artists as people with bases covered. I was talking about your average family who had enough income, good social network around them and a couple of kids. Now, if they lived according to what Christianity says, they would throw away their money to anyone asking, alienate themselves from their friends (yes, this tends to be the result) and seriously change the world of their kids. Instead of that they could have been giving their work for community (yes, I tend to believe quite a lot of jobs support the community), keep their friends and give a solid base for their kids during the childhood.

Take me for example. My work gives local companies comptetitive edges, and those companies can hire then local people. This creates stability and wealth for the surrounding area, no need to steal if you have a chance to a decent job. For this, I earn the upkeep of my personal life and house. Instead of that, I'm asked to throw away all that I own, help anyone that asks help (how could I help them is a little bit of an open question). And then go around spending most of my time preaching the actions of J.C. and making all the child his apostles. For me, at least, there is more sense in my current job.

Then about the motivation why do I want to do this: simply because I want to live in a decent place. So instead of trying to achieve a better life in heaven, I personally would like to experience a nice life while I'm still alive.

Mika

[WMCoolmon]

At this point I confess my eyes and brain refused to comply with that request. The post was simply too long to read through. But from the sound of it, I would guess you are talking about conscience. I think it is true that there seems to be a build-in moral code in human. However, I don't necessarily see this as a manifestation of God, but simply a thing which might have given man a competitive edge of the animal world, when the communities were still small. And, there are some documented cases where animals are also (seemingly) feeling the same (and I would go so far and say it's not only seemingly, they are really feeling so).

I think it's important to note that not everybody's "built-in" moral code is the same, either.

[Mars]

That is endlessly arguable.

Down that path lies only bs and sadness.

[WMCoolmon]

I think that's a cop-out because it raises a lot of inconvenient questions. For example, if one person has trouble behaving in a 'moral' fashion, how is it fair or just for God to expect them to live like someone who was created to be straight-edge and moral without thinking about it?

I think it's "endlessly arguable" because people are more willing to accept claims like people are lying about their motivations. So if a soldier jumps on a grenade to save his fellow soldiers, it's rewritten as a self-interested act because he wanted to be remembered as a hero, or it's morally ambiguous because he was instructed by the culture that jumping on a grenade is the right thing to do, because you don't believe that humans are inherently selfless. Or you believe that he really was just trying to save the other soldiers because humans are inherently selfless. Or anywhere in between.

So - yeah, it's endlessly arguable, but at the point that you have one person torturing children for "scientific" experiments vs people who would risk their lives for some totally unknown kid who's drowning, it's a bit of a stretch to say that they're operating from the same fundamental moral principles. You really have to read into their actions to get to a point where they could conceivably be acting out of the same motivation, rather than their values being different on some fundamental moral level.

I think there are some fundamental things, like empathy, that are built-in to humans which foster morals, but how you channel things like empathy into morals is dictated by your culture. IMHO, the thing that makes so many cultures' morals alike is that they're coming into contact with other cultures, and there are also certain requirements (Such as survival and cooperation) that lead to certain morals becoming commonplace and deeply ingrained, because any culture that wasn't receptive to those morals would quickly find itself outcompeted by cultures who did possess those morals.

I suppose that's something of a derail, but I remember that certain psychological conditions are defined by a lack of remorse and lack of empathy, effectively resulting in immoral behavior because the individual has no flag that goes off when they do something 'wrong'. I'm pretty sure it was sociopaths that it was the case for, but a quick check on Wikipedia makes it sound more complex than that. (This was from a Justice class)

[Mars]

Consider that in every example of really heinous mass torture, such as the holocaust and colonial African slavery, the victims were dehumanized in society and in the minds of the perpetrators. Although that obviously doesn't make it right, it does show that virtually all normal human beings would ordinarily balk at treating others in such a manor.

My ethics professor said this "Those that believe in a global, natural, moral code usually believe that people deviate from it" It's the idea that no one ever lives up to their own moral standards, and no society ever lives up to its moral standards.

This isn't really a case for the existence of God though, since such a global "moral compass" could be natural as well.

[Mika]

 

I'm not that willing to let this thread go away to the pages of history.

Mika

[Colonol Dekker]

I forgot what it was about and am going to sleep while watching Kagemusha. I'll re-read it later.

[G0atmaster]

I WILL post again here.

[Scuddie]

And I probably will not.