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Vertical Morality vs. Horizontal Morality

Vertical Morality vs. Horizontal Morality

Spirituality


@KellyJay said
So you believe someone who was into the demonic should be allowed with God’s people?
It is no skin off my nose if people who believe in one sort of magic want to dissociate from people who believe in a different sort of magic.

However, I do not approve of burning people at the stake for not believing in your God.


@moonbus said
It is no skin off my nose if people who believe in one sort of magic want to dissociate from people who believe in a different sort of magic.

However, I do not approve of burning people at the stake for not believing in your God.
Well many who believed in Him were burned at stakes, never heard to many complaints about them from you ever in my memory.

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@KellyJay said
Well many who believed in Him were burned at stakes, never heard to many complaints about them from you ever in my memory.
The Inquisition was an abomination. It was no mere aberration by a few outlier priests. It was the concerted policy of the Church hierarchy for centuries. They would still be burning people at the stake if secular revolutions, chiefly in France and America, had not taken away their power to do so. The last person to be executed by the Inquisition was hanged in the 19th c.! The Church authorities wanted to burn him, but civil authorities hanged him instead--the Church later buried his body in a barrel with flames painted on the outside in unconsecrated ground.

Know why he was condemned? For having been influenced by Quakers. There's your religion in a nutshell: murdering each other for believing in the same God.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cayetano_Ripoll



"Lord, save me from those who claim you as their special God."

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@moonbus said
The Inquisition was an abomination. It was no mere aberration by a few outlier priests. It was the concerted policy of the Church hierarchy for centuries. They would still be burning people at the stake if secular revolutions, chiefly in France and America, had not taken away their power to do so. The last person to be executed by the Inquisition was hanged in the [i]19th c.! ...[text shortened]... rg/wiki/Cayetano_Ripoll



"Lord, save me from those who claim you as their special God."
Evil is done by man and almost without fail it is almost always in the name of what they call good. Those who do them they do them because it is what people do

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@KellyJay said
Evil is done by man and almost without fail it is almost always in the name of what they call good. Those who do them they do them because it is what people do
Christianity sanctifies them in it and then tells them they are forgiven. That is one of the chief reasons I do not subscribe to your religion.


@moonbus said
Christianity sanctifies them in it and then tells them they are forgiven. That is one of the chief reasons I do not subscribe to your religion.
Christianity condemns everyone so everyone can be saved.

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@moonbus said
Christianity sanctifies them in it and then tells them they are forgiven. That is one of the chief reasons I do not subscribe to your religion.
In my somewhat jaded opinion, religion's perfect place is application to someone after psychological assessment has declared them sane or cured of most imperfection thrust upon them by an imperfect upbringing. Religion is best applied to a brain that is ready for it. Not one that has been damaged by unstable interaction with a world that doesn't care if it lives or dies.

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@KellyJay said
Christianity condemns everyone so everyone can be saved.
It creates an itch only it can scratch. I'd rather not be bitten by that peculiar moskito in the first place.

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@Suzianne said
In my somewhat jaded opinion, religion's perfect place is application to someone after psychological assessment has declared them sane or cured of most imperfection thrust upon them by an imperfect upbringing. Religion is best applied to a brain that is ready for it. Not one that has been damaged by unstable interaction with a world that doesn't care if it lives or dies.
When religion is doing what it ought to be doing, it provides people with a vocabulary for describing what Jung called archetypal experiences, and a lexicon for interpreting them and integrating them into a functional communal life. This is invariably historically and culturally specific.

Where it goes wrong is supposing there is only one correct vocabulary and only one correct interpretation, because whenever people think they have absolute truth, they sooner or later think they have an absolute duty to impose it on everyone else, regardless of time, place, or culture. Or, as you say, regardless whether any particular individual is ripe for it and ready to comprehend it. A person must evolve far enough to have archetypal experiences before religion, any religion, will do him any good.

Perhaps you've heard about the chess prodigy, Danny Rensch. He's just published a memoir about the damage done to him growing up in a cult.

https://www.chess.com/article/view/danny-rensch-talks-dark-squares


@moonbus said
When religion is doing what it ought to be doing, it provides people with a vocabulary for describing what Jung called archetypal experiences, and a lexicon for interpreting them and integrating them into a functional communal life. This is invariably historically and culturally specific.

Where it goes wrong is supposing there is only one correct vocabulary and only one co ...[text shortened]... e to him growing up in a cult.

https://www.chess.com/article/view/danny-rensch-talks-dark-squares
When people do what they ought, is the ought of our own making? When they don’t, it is also of our own making, so both are from us alone?

You can look at us and know we are all quite capable of being a bystander, a victim, or a perpetrator of evil. You want to make a distinction due to religion, but that only covers the religious; the non-religious are no different. We are all quite capable of acting against all goodness and righteousness, not out of love for the one who made us, or each other, the work of His hands.

People commit evil acts because it is a common occurrence in every aspect of our lives, and it is done in the name of all that is good or simply because they want to do it. You’re trying to pigeonhole those activities into only a select few, but that doesn’t make others righteous; you ignore their works, because none of us are righteous, not one.

We want to be the great "I AM" in our lives, making us the sole proprietors of good and evil as we define it, we are not.

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@moonbus said
When religion is doing what it ought to be doing, it provides people with a vocabulary for describing what Jung called archetypal experiences, and a lexicon for interpreting them and integrating them into a functional communal life. This is invariably historically and culturally specific.

Where it goes wrong is supposing there is only one correct vocabulary and only one co ...[text shortened]... e to him growing up in a cult.

https://www.chess.com/article/view/danny-rensch-talks-dark-squares
Exactly.

I do agree to a point.

I believe that we each have an absolute truth, but if we're honest, that absolute truth only applies to us. We have no 'duty' to impose it on anyone else. It's up to that person to find their absolute truth.

I hear what some may be saying. "Well, hold on there, absolute truth is just that, absolute. It applies to everyone."

I say, no, it absolutely does not. My absolute truth is Christianity, but not a Christianity where your morality is my morality. A morality where perhaps God tells you to murder your neighbor is not my morality. I don't believe a morality comes only from above. (Yes, I have a problem with artificial authority, in case you haven't figured that out.) We don't have to be told what is right and what is wrong. We are humans, made in the image of God to know what is right and what is wrong. It's up to each of us to listen to that small, still voice inside of us and discern the difference between right and wrong. This is why I say religion is only for the sane, because the antisocial among us will never in a million years ever fully understand it.

There's more than this to my personal philosophy about religion, but I'm about to leave work, so I'll let it go with that for now.

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@Suzianne said
Exactly.

I do agree to a point.

I believe that we each have an absolute truth, but if we're honest, that absolute truth only applies to us. We have no 'duty' to impose it on anyone else. It's up to that person to find their absolute truth.

I hear what some may be saying. "Well, hold on there, absolute truth is just that, absolute. It applies to everyone."

I ...[text shortened]... ersonal philosophy about religion, but I'm about to leave work, so I'll let it go with that for now.
Work?? Wazzat?? I'm retired. Well, we'll continue the discussion later.

Thought for the day: even supposing there is any such thing as absolute truth, and that we can know this, it still does not follow that an absolute truth is a complete truth. An absolute truth, even supposing we have one, is always only a selection from a larger picture.

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@KellyJay said
Christianity condemns everyone so everyone can be saved.
You should put that on a t-shirt.

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@Ghost-of-a-Duke said
You should put that on a t-shirt.
Romans 5:18
Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.

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In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. C.S. Lewis, from The Abolition of Man

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