Dawkins to arrest Pope

Originally posted by whodey
But how would you explain it? Christ did it. His disciples did it. The early Christian church was known for it. Would you not say that this is admirable behavoir or were they all crazy?

They might have been crazy. I don't know right now how to explain it, but that doesn't mean that it must be an innate feeling or that god must be the reason.

Originally posted by PsychoPawn
They might have been crazy. I don't know right now how to explain it, but that doesn't mean that it must be an innate feeling or that god must be the reason.

Lucky for you my pastor gave a sermon on something related to the topic of conversation. He started with the "Golden Rule" of doing unto others as you would have them do to you. Below this he listed the Ten Commandments, such as thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not lie etc, and showed that simply following the Golden Rule keeps all the commandments by default. It has been my observation that all cultures agree with this morality to varying degrees, so it must be innate. Of course, you would say that there is no God behind it, but the bottom line is that is just how we are.

He then talked about freedom. After all, freedom is an innate phenomenon as well. If you don't believe me, just try and force someone to do something, even if it is for their "good" and you will find that they innately will rise up and oppose you.

So what is freedom? Who is free? For most, I would say that freedom means doing what you want when you want for most people. However, can this be counterproductive to their baseline freedom? For example, if you choose to shoot herion, more than likely you will create a dependence on it, even though you have exercised "freedom" to use it. That is why Christ came. He came to give us freedom from sins that enslave us. Also, he came to give us freedom from the law because it condemns us. We need Christ to atone for our wrongdoing and free us of our guilt and spiritual bondage to sin. However, as Christians we must be careful. Exercising such freedom can be done in an environment in which we flourish or an environment in which we do not. The environment in which we flourish is dependent upon one thing, which is love. In fact, Paul calls us to be servants to one another in love while at the same time preaching freedom. Only in this environment of exercising freedom can we flourish. However, if we choose to exercise our freedom devoid of being servants to one another, we find that we develope side effects such as addictions, or we find that we pursue things that do not fulfill us or we sometimes pursue things that flat out destroy us in the end much to our surprise. Such bondage to our loved ones may seem counterintuitive to our notion of 'freedom", but it is true nontheless.

So this is all well and great, right? How can anyone refute this teaching? You may arugue that it does not come from God and you don't need God to live this way. However, can you live this way with an avowed enemy? What if they were hell bent on destroying you? It is my contention that ONLY through one Jesus Christ can we live this way with everyone. We are all wired to love those who love us, but no so much for those out to destroy us. After all, we were wired for paradise, not the fall of mankind. Therefore, we naturally wish to destroy those who are out to destroy us. It is ONLY through the supernatural power of one Christ Jesus that this can change.

So was Christ crazy as he forbade his disciple to defend him as they came to take him to the cross? Was he crazy to not defend himself at his trial so that they would kill him simply so he could die for our sins? Were his disciples crazy for giving their lives for a mere message of hope and love? You be the judge. All I can say is that we are still talking about them thousands of years later. 😉

Originally posted by whodey
Lucky for you my pastor gave a sermon on something related to the topic of conversation. He started with the "Golden Rule" of doing unto others as you would have them do to you. Below this he listed the Ten Commandments, such as thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not lie etc, and showed that simply following the Golden Rule keeps all the commandments by defaul ...[text shortened]... . All I can say is that we are still talking about them thousands of years later. 😉

It has been my observation that all cultures agree with this morality to varying degrees, so it must be innate.
Read 'may' for 'must' and this works, but the logic appears faulty as is. But consider children, who do not naturally follow this rule. That surely suggests that it is not innate but rather learned?

After all, freedom is an innate phenomenon as well.
Again consider children or almost any human society you can think of. In fact it would seem that the natural state of man is quite the opposite of free.

Therefore, we naturally wish to destroy those who are out to destroy us.
Or, to put it another way, we have an innate predisposition to destroy those who we perceive as a threat.

I totally dig Jesus though, even while believing him to be simply a man of great natural wisdom. Well, I say simply, but evidently natural wisdom is a rare beast indeed.

Originally posted by avalanchethecat
But consider children, who do not naturally follow this rule.
I think this is problematic. I think if you look into child development, you might find that certain stages of moral reasoning occur in sequence across cultures.

Originally posted by whodey
Lucky for you my pastor gave a sermon on something related to the topic of conversation. He started with the "Golden Rule" of doing unto others as you would have them do to you. Below this he listed the Ten Commandments, such as thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not lie etc, and showed that simply following the Golden Rule keeps all the commandments by defaul ...[text shortened]... . All I can say is that we are still talking about them thousands of years later. 😉

Lucky for you my pastor gave a sermon on something related to the topic of conversation.

HA!

Below this he listed the Ten Commandments, such as thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not lie etc, and showed that simply following the Golden Rule keeps all the commandments by default.

Really? You think that's true? How do the following apply to the golden rule:

- Do not have any other gods before me.

- You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth

- You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

-Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

None of those have anything to do with doing anything unto anyone other than god - and that's almost half the ten commandments!

It has been my observation that all cultures agree with this morality to varying degrees, so it must be innate.

HA! You have observed ALL cultures??? Bovine excrement!

Also, just because something is common among many cultures does not necessarily mean it's innate.

After all, freedom is an innate phenomenon as well.

You state this as if it makes sense. It doesn't. Do you mean the desire for freedom? The enjoyment of freedom? Freedom isn't an emotion or anything that can be innate. It's like saying that slavery is innate - it doesn't make sense.

If you don't believe me, just try and force someone to do something, even if it is for their "good" and you will find that they innately will rise up and oppose you.

I'm sure you think this is somehow an argument... but hey..no one ever accused you of making a coherent argument.

He came to give us freedom from sins that enslave us.

blah blah blah.. I don't care. I'm not enslaved by sins.


Also, he came to give us freedom from the law because it condemns us.

Freedom from the law?!?!? So jesus came to allow us to get away with murder?

We need Christ to atone for our wrongdoing and free us of our guilt and spiritual bondage to sin.

I don't need anyone to atone for my wrongdoing.

How can anyone refute this teaching?

I don't need to.

So was Christ crazy as he forbade his disciple to defend him as they came to take him to the cross?

He was crazy to believe he was the son of god so I guess he could have been crazy in other ways too.

All I can say is that we are still talking about them thousands of years later.

Yes, but that doesn't actually mean anything. We're still talking about a lot of things thousands of years later.

Originally posted by avalanchethecat
I totally dig Jesus though, even while believing him to be simply a man of great natural wisdom. Well, I say simply, but evidently natural wisdom is a rare beast indeed.[/b]

Of course, pretty much everyone agrees with you. In fact, Pschopawn I'm sure admires him as well. However, he claims to be the Son of God, so he must be mad don't you know. 😛

Originally posted by whodey
Of course, pretty much everyone agrees with you. In fact, Pschopawn I'm sure admires him as well. However, he claims to be the Son of God, so he must be mad don't you know. 😛

Psychopawn claims he is the Son of God? Interesting...