Are you afraid of death?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Obligatory Rossetti

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

No, I'm a Christian and know that I will be with my Savior. My only hope is to share as much love and bring as many people to Christ as I can while on Earth and to help make it a better place while I'm here.

So you think that bringing people to a Jesus who promotes immoral tenets, like his no divorce and substitutionary atonement policies will make earth a better place.

Satan would agree as he is all in for stopping people from finding loving life partners and Satan also thinks it good to punish the innocent instead of the guilty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKNup9gEBdg&feature=em-subs_digest-vrecs

Regards
DL

Do you think taking the fall for people one loves in other contexts is also immoral because it 'punishes the innocent instead of the guilty'?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

St Bernard tells us that God the Father did not demand the Son's sacrifice but accepted it when it was offered. The other argument that you seem to be making--that the Atonement was immoral because it prevented sinners from getting what we deserve good and hard--is so repulsive as to not be worth considering.

Generally the rap on the prohibition on divorce is that it's naive, romantic, and unrealistic about what relationships are really like, not that it's (in intent) 'anti-love'.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Your responses are almost unreadably poorly formatted and you're assuming even worse things of me than I am of you, which I don't appreciate, but I'd also like to say that it's rich that a self-proclaimed Gnostic is lecturing orthodox Christians (many denominations of whom, incidentally, interpret 'immorality' broadly enough as to be more or less okay with divorce as long as it's not jumped into as frivolously as a lot of secular (and even religious) high-status types do; hell, even the notoriously hidebound Catholic Church recognizes that a marriage sometimes has to end, it just doesn't allow consummated remarriage or remarriage in the Church afterwards under normal circumstances) on being 'anti-love' and accusing me of holding other people in contempt, when it was Gnosticism, during the centuries in which it was relevant, that was noted for its blistering contempt for the body, sex, children, human relationships, and anybody who wasn't mentally or spiritually 'advanced' enough for the teacher's liking (check out the Gospel of Thomas's version of the Parable of the Lost Sheep! It makes the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins look soft-focus and iyashikei). A lot of the problems in the orthodox understanding of those things--and yes, I happily admit there are problems--can be traced back to appropriation of the sort of Neoplatonism that a lot of the Gnostics also loved. However, there's a lot about your posting style and arguments that leads me to believe that you don't mean by 'Gnostic' what any reputable theologian or scholar of Christian origins means by it.

Your understanding of which people are 'the innocent' and which are 'the guilty' in the orthodox economy of salvation also seems to leave a lot to be desired, as does your (quote-mined, proof-texted) understanding of the timeline (or lack of timeline) of events from the Divine perspective.

afleitch's formulation of your other accusation is, as is so often the case from him, much better-put and more challenging than yours. To him I'd simply say that I don't mind having a faintly or more-than-faintly 'barbaric' understanding of the world in this respect. Chalk it up to a combination of hard knocks in childhood and Freudo-Marxism later on.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

As you can see, we believe that god resides within our bodies

I don't see that from that passage, no, since 'you', in many/most schools of Hellenistic thought, does not generally mean 'your body'. I'm going to trust my Church history and Christian origins professors--at my liberal Protestant divinity school, for what that's worth--over some rando on uselectionatlas dot org slash FORUM.

ETA: Or Dan Brown.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

As you can see, we believe that god resides within our bodies

I don't see that from that passage,

I am not surprised at your lack of comprehension.

You trust your church yet will never hear them quote these.

Matthew 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

Luke 17:21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

Romans 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Regards
DL

Matthew 6:22: Can't find this in the Revised Common Lectionary. Apparently not in the current Catholic lectionary either, but that's harder to search for some reason.
John 14:23: Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year C in both the Revised Common Lectionary and the current Catholic lectionary. Pre-Vatican II, was read on Pentecost, one of the three most important holidays of the liturgical year.
Luke 17:21: Can't find this either lectionary.
Romans 8:29: Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A in the Revised Common Lectionary. Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A in the current Catholic lectionary. Not used pre-Vatican II.

So two of these verses are in fact in both the Catholic and mainline Protestant lectionaries. As for the other two, not being in the lectionary does not mean that somebody is trying to 'hide' a passage. In the Catholic lectionary, readers of Luke 15 are allowed to stop after the Parable of the Lost Coin, omitting the Parable of the Prodigal Son (the Prodigal Son, ffs!) entirely; one of the Masses I went to yesterday in fact did so. Does this mean that churches that do this are trying to downplay the Prodigal Son or consider it unimportant? Hardly.

Any more bullsh**t you want to put over on me?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

No, and honestly, I don't get the obsession people have with living as long as possible.  Why would I want to spend 100 years in a world filled with pain and suffering when I can spend an eternity in a perfect world with my God?

What makes you think there is more pain and suffering than good in the world?

I track the stats for evil. Murder and death by violence and war, poverty, longevity, crime and slavery.

All those are at the best levels that mankind has ever seen.

So why do you see more evil than good?

Could it be the way you are looking and not reality?

Regards
DL

Weird comment. He didn't say it is worse than before. He simply says there is a lot of pain and suffering in the world. Do you disagree?

Regards
David

When compared to the amount of good, yes.

When not compared to the good, and ignoring that per capita things used to be a lot worse for us, then of course there is suffering in the world but I would not say a lot per capita.

This link tries to put a realistic comedic spin to the overblown opinions to the contrary out there.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Oww4Ap3YZA

Further to why I see things as getting so much better, per capita.

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-billion-people-have-been-taken-out-extreme-poverty-20-years-world-should-aim

Regards
DL

Not all pain and suffering caused by being in this ephemeral world is quantifiable by the [Inks]ing Economist. One would think a Gnostic would understand that.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Attempting to speak of 'suffering per capita', in the sense that Oldiesfreak means 'suffering', isn't really indicative of understanding it, but okay.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

No, and honestly, I don't get the obsession people have with living as long as possible.  Why would I want to spend 100 years in a world filled with pain and suffering when I can spend an eternity in a perfect world with my God?

What makes you think there is more pain and suffering than good in the world?

I track the stats for evil. Murder and death by violence and war, poverty, longevity, crime and slavery.

All those are at the best levels that mankind has ever seen.

So why do you see more evil than good?

Could it be the way you are looking and not reality?

Regards
DL

I don't necessarily think that there's more bad than good in the world; I simply don't see why I would want to spend 100 or more years in a world where evil exists when I can spend eternity in a world where it doesn't.

What makes you think that heaven has no evil?
Have you forgotten that that heaven is where Satan is said to have come from?

Regards
DL

maek u think

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The best thinking that we have to date seems to say that if we do not have evil to compare to good then good cannot be defined.

Whose 'best thinking' is this? Give me names. Because heavy hitters from Augustine to G.E. Moore say the opposite or something close to the opposite.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

maek u think

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

afleitch, do you have any sympathy for Moore's ethics? I ask because you're (reasonably) preoccupied with the subjectivity involved in any divine Person defining morals, yet I don't think the steps towards an articulation of a sort of hedonism (in the technical sense of that word) that you've taken in the past (unless I'm confusing you with another poster, or simply misremembering your views? Sorry if I am) really solves this problem.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

That makes sense. Sorry to break out the H-word when it wasn't appropriate.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I really don't understand why subjectivism is so trendy these days in discussions of morality when it never comes up in other areas of philosophy. I'm not only referring to Afleitch here, I had a similar discussion with a fellow student a few days ago (which went terribly because I always sound like a moron when I have to talk instead of writing). Of course every notion we have of moral principles is determined by our subjective perceptions, but the same could be said of reality itself. The only way that I can know that there is a table in front of me is through by seeing or touching it. Do we conclude that there is no such thing as an objective reality, only 7 billion subjective realities (or more if you count animals)? I mean, some philosophers do, and it's a logically unassailable position, but I'm not sure Afleitch and the others want to go that route.

Is anyone going to take this up? I know there's at least a dozen of open moral relativists out there. Afleitch is the most articulate of them, but I'll settle for a Joe if that's all I can get.

I didn't interpret what afleitch was saying to be a positive articulation of moral relativism, but I could be wrong, as I've been wrong about his position on ethics once already on this very page.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The best thinking that we have to date seems to say that if we do not have evil to compare to good then good cannot be defined.

Whose 'best thinking' is this? Give me names. Because heavy hitters from Augustine to G.E. Moore say the opposite or something close to the opposite.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

maek u think

The last thing the church wants is to have their sheeple think.

Oh my God, you're not being ironic, are you??!

You must be logged in to read this quote.

They...they didn't create 'graphs'.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The best thinking that we have to date seems to say that if we do not have evil to compare to good then good cannot be defined.

Whose 'best thinking' is this? Give me names. Because heavy hitters from Augustine to G.E. Moore say the opposite or something close to the opposite.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

maek u think

The last thing the church wants is to have their sheeple think.

Oh my God, you're not being ironic, are you??!

You must be logged in to read this quote.

They...they didn't create 'graphs'.

They would have had to have a mental construct to go with their thinking and that would have been a graph.

The word you're thinking of is 'schema' or possibly 'framework'. Augustine's schema/framework specifies evil as the privation of good, yes. You're defining good as the privation of evil, which is absurd.

You should not use those words whose meaning you do not understand.

Regards
NT

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Outrageous to see Augustine - one of the greatest and most influential minds in history - mentioned in the same breath as noted idiot G.E. Moore who is known these days, to the extent that he is known at all, for being wrong about pretty much everything...

It's been a long time since I sat down and read Moore or his critics, and the work I have read is mostly from within Moore's lifetime. What's more wrong with him than with other philosophers of the period?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The best thinking that we have to date seems to say that if we do not have evil to compare to good then good cannot be defined.

Whose 'best thinking' is this? Give me names. Because heavy hitters from Augustine to G.E. Moore say the opposite or something close to the opposite.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

maek u think

The last thing the church wants is to have their sheeple think.

Oh my God, you're not being ironic, are you??!

You must be logged in to read this quote.

They...they didn't create 'graphs'.

They would have had to have a mental construct to go with their thinking and that would have been a graph.

The word you're thinking of is 'schema' or possibly 'framework'. Augustine's schema/framework specifies evil as the privation of good, yes. You're defining good as the privation of evil, which is absurd.

You should not use those words whose meaning you do not understand.

Regards
NT

Nowhere have I stated that good as the privation of evil.

All I have stated is that on a graph of good, there would have to be something at the other end of the graph and that that would be called evil.

I guess you do not think well enough to be able to visualize that but if you google any graph, you will note that they always have two descriptions that they are comparing.

IE.      Good-----------------------------------------------------Evil

Regards
DL

Don't patronize me.

Regards
NT

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Don't write like an idiot and I won't.

Regards
DL

You know, maybe you know more about Gnosticism than I give you credit for. You certainly have the self-congratulatory, snobbish, unwarranted self-importance and belief that you know better than everyone else and if they disagree with you or don't understand what you're trying to say then they must be drooling morons down pat.

Also, you absolutely implied that you think good is a privation of evil and you know it, edgelord.

Regards
NT

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Don't write like an idiot and I won't.

Regards
DL

You know, maybe you know more about Gnosticism than I give you credit for. You certainly have the self-congratulatory, snobbish, unwarranted self-importance and belief that you know better than everyone else and if they disagree with you or don't understand what you're trying to say then they must be drooling morons down pat.

Also, you absolutely implied that you think good is a privation of evil and you know it, edgelord.

Regards
NT

Get the quote or be seen for what you are.

Regards
DL

lol kay

Regards
NT

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Outrageous to see Augustine - one of the greatest and most influential minds in history - mentioned in the same breath as noted idiot G.E. Moore who is known these days, to the extent that he is known at all, for being wrong about pretty much everything...

It's been a long time since I sat down and read Moore or his critics, and the work I have read is mostly from within Moore's lifetime. What's more wrong with him than with other philosophers of the period?

I'd still like Al to elaborate here, if he has any interest in coming back to this.