@shinyblurry

Sigh, I was trying to avoid being drawn into a theological conversation about love and judgement, but I guess I asked for it.

There are some major theological and philosophical problems with your resolution of justice and love. Let me go into a couple of them. But before that, let me say that I am not hatting on your faith right now. These are just my personal waxing on Christianity. I am no some master of theology, but I am also not naive of the bible and basic logical constructs. Understand, that I am not trying to drag you down or give you excess flack, you have had your fair share of that lately. BUUUUT since you did take the time to write something else, I thought I would return that favor.

First and foremost, you can't resolve what is unresolvable. Love and Justice are pitted against one another in certain instances. There comes a point where you can't be loving and just...you must make a choice. For instance, if your wife cheats on you, you have a choice. You can either forgive her or your can choose not to ignore it and break off the relationship. This has a few oversimplifications like, you could still be with them but also hold it against them, but that goes against the other idea of love, which is forgiveness (so they wouldn't be in a loving relationship anymore). At the end of the world, God makes an arbitrary choice, he decides to not love people who didn't accept Christ, and decides to continue to love those whom did. For the damned, the statement of Corinthians "Love never fails" surely has lost all meaning to them...love wasn't enough.

Second of all, if God is ok with transferring blame from those who are damned to those who are not, then he is forbidden to be the referee in any gaming event I control. It is a mockery to the ideals of justices to let the innocent suffer for the deeds of the wicked. I can't think of a MORE unjust act. The entire "idea" of salvation is a rosy picture. But if you actually care about justice, the idea of salvation flies right in the face of it. Either God isn't as loving as he would say he is, or he doesn't care about justice as much as he says he does. One must be true. God must either not be all loving, or not care about perfect justice. There is no need for judgement if both those things are not true (fucken double negatives!). Would you punish your neighbors dog for peeing on your rug when it was your own dog? Punishment is non-transferable if you really care about justice, period.

Also, it is a mockery to justice that Jesus still gets to go to heaven, even after being made sinful in our stead. Let us take another example. Let us say I am a murderer. I start racking up the kills, become the number one murderer of all times. Then, I get caught. On my behalf, the richest, most affluent political figure in the world decides to accept all the punishment for my crimes. For some crazy ass reason, everyone goes along with this idea. Being so rich and powerful, he is able to get all the charges dismissed. So he and I get away with the most hideous crime of all time, and no punishment is dealt out, to anyone. Is this justice? If it is, God once again can't be the ref any any sporting events I control. Jesus was made imperfect for our sake. Imperfect things do not go to heaven. Jesus should not be in heaven, period. If he is, then the God never really cared about the charges anyway, or doesn't really take justice very seriously.

I also don't understand how the Bible is able to claim the punishment for sin is death, when everyone dies anyway...even the saved. O ok, so I guess their spirit gets to live on or something, but who's spirit died in their steads? I can tell you it wasn't Jesus's, because he is supposedly chilling in heaven. The fact is, SOME will suffer death from sin, others will not. The saved are a special case where the rules needed for their salvation aren't needed because no one is going to die from their sins anyway. I mean Jesus might of literally died, but we all do that, so Jesus didn't save anything there. What you mean is a figurative death, and Jesus is surely not figuratively dead either. So no one died for Christian's sins, and no one died for the damned sins...sucks to be the damned. Once again, God can't see over any sporting events I frequent.

Also, I don't think the Bible supports the claim of "It's not that God wants to punish you...". For instance, in Romans it talks about how God specifically makes vessels of wrath.

"What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath--prepared for destruction?"

They have a name for that in Chess, they are called pawns. And while Chess is only a game, it does seem to me that God is more playing a game with us than loves us or cares about us, from the bibles perspective that is. Romans gives way to this even more with:

"“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”"

Reasons? I want to, I'm God, shut up. Misunderstanding, I don't think so.

"One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?” But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?"

This is the kind of flack an adult gives out when a child catches him doing something wrong. And while in many cases, it is the child's very naive understandings of the world that lead to this situations, many times, they are justified in the question and more importantly, and answer.

I should point out, that I used to be a 5 point Calvinist. Formerly, I used to look at Romans as the great justifier of predestination. It was a power verse of immeasurable theological insight. When I read it now, I have only sadness. It isn't like this is a trivial question to ask God, but in Romans, he brushes off our very important question like he doesn't give a flying fuck. Sadness. Granted it is Paul, not Jesus, but it is still "His word". Deepening sadness.

I have about 6 more points but I have already gone on for far to long. I hope this doesn't get stolen by atheists as ammunition to fire against Christians. Nothing would make more sad than my own personal insights being used to hurt someone. These are but a few of the troubles that lead me away from Christianity being the answer for my life. I actually hope I am wrong. I hope that other people will get to enjoy heaven, even without me. I would hope that there is an actual just God out there, looking out for us, protecting us, making sure the wrongness in the world is "taken care of". But as for wrongness, I only start to see more and more of it in the bible. What used to be a shining beacon of hope, is now a book of how not to care about justice and love.

To this day, though, 1 Corinthians 13 is still what I use to define love. It is also the root of my deconversion. The love I see in 1 Corinthians 13 does not exist in the God I read about in the rest of the bible. That is all, sorry if I cause you any pain or strife with my words. Or, indeed, anyone other person of faith that reads this. If that be the case, than I have failed in great way.

I am amazed that anyone can view this nonsense as a beacon of light for freedom

and @MaxWilder since you've brought up something I've said in a separate thread despite my not having said anything in this one (and quite angrily for some reason), while law doesn't specifically say anything about not being hassled, in does work that way in some respects. For example, there are laws that prevent me from standing in front of your house blowing an airhorn all night. There are laws preventing me from defecating in the middle of the floor in the library, then disposing of it. neither of these things hurt anybody or their property, they just bother them. If you think people don't have the right to not be bothered, you should take a stance against noise ordinances and public defecation. Join me next thursday where I take a stance and attach a trumpet to my asshole and parade through the tomb of the fallen soldier shitting through my trumpet for freedom

aka crying because someone told me I was bothering people and making a big egotistical scene disguised as political activism

I'm enjoying this thoroughly. However, the human rights argument is horribly flawed.

First, human rights is not something that existed persistently throughout the history of religion. Religion can lay no claim to human rights, as it makes no arguments towards it and has never shown any inclination towards it until recent history.

And why might that be? Nobody can deny that the rebellion of the weak against the strong which occurred during the enlightenment era were greatly responsible for our new forms of representative government. I think it's extremely disingenuous and shortsighted to discount this. Was it a perfect rebellion? No. But it set the stage for a morality which has evolved into what we now consider human rights. Our experiences, over time, has shaped our morality and crafted human rights. The situations were setup to make it occur and they are entirely in response to the environments in which humans existed.

That, to me at least, seems far more plausible than god being responsible for human rights. If god were responsible, then why was he absent for so long... I'm not sure anyone would argue that human rights were of any significant concern in the dark ages, or before the age of Christianity. Except for the few beacons of human reasoning who have grown the capacity for empathy - it is by no means a running theme of human existence.

you all need to stop condescending to shinyblurry,
and please stop with all that "attitude" with the snide comments.
it just comes across as arrogant.
ya'all are being self serving AND self righteous in your "questions" and 'theories" pertaining to the bible.
you have no understanding..have you guys ever even READ the bible?
come on..give shinyblurry a chance to speak.

go on shinyblurry.
you were speaking of "original sin" and how everybody else seems to have gotten that particular question wrong.
heathens...yeesh.pay no attention to them.
your humility concerning your faith shines like a beacon on an antarctic winter day.
/listens closely

The last decade for id was definitely lacking. I'm looking forward to them releasing something that is somewhat good. RAGE looks pretty awesome and teaming up with Zenimax seems like a pretty good idea. I bought DOOM 3 right when it came out and it creeped me out initially; in the end I thought it was a pretty shallow game. I bet it'd be more fun to play now that not many people are releasing 3D shooters that aren't tactical - or completely brain-dead Call of Duty ripoffs.

Doom had a great thing going back in the day - you'd have to kill waves and waves of monsters but you'd be working your way towards an arch-vile or some other powerful nasty ; there actually was an objective to the mindless slaughter. Serious Sam had it down in a goofy way.

It's strange to think that out of all the great developers of my time (late eighties, early nineties) that the only developer still around that I play games from is Blizzard. How the hell have they pulled it off?! Back then my money would have been on Origin, Black Isle and id for future success. Black Isle released some of my favorite games ever but I really do miss Origin.

Never saw Blizzard being the company that would become a beacon of creativity & polish that would make oodles upon oodles of money.

He is performing for Americans , I don't think it's odd that they know who Natalie hallaway is. We might notice an American high school girl who disappears on spring break, while in a foreign country, and we might not care as much about a prostitute in Peru, who is killed in her local hotel. It is kinda weak to make fun of Americans for this, even the murderer is not from here, it's not odd to be concerned about your own tribe above the others.
I do like the "white baby beacon " joke, that would work.

@messenger, @Sketch

I don't disagree with your sentiment at all; I find it quite frustrating at times as well, but I stand by my assertion that it won't help to be confrontational. I expect this shift will literally take generations to come about. Arguing with individuals in an effort to "convert" (perhaps de-convert) them rarely works, regardless of how sound your reasoning is.(as you have both noted) Everyone wants to win. Everyone wants to make up their own mind. For a lot of adults, it's quite simply too late to make such a radical change in their concept of existence. The young aren't as rigid, however, and this belief structure can diluted from one generation to the next. I assert the most effective way to change minds over time is to change our culture, and we're well on our way. The beacon of truth shines brightly on its own, while lies take significant maintenance. The more (effectively) open our society becomes the more difficult it will be to spread the influence of obvious lies. This will require work on our part, however, to call out specific, organized and systemic deception efforts over the course of our lives. We've got a long road ahead of us, but it should be interesting if nothing else.

That ad campaign is interesting; that's the sort of effort that we can aspire to in our daily lives. Not confrontational, but when the situation arises, let others know they're not alone with their doubts. Movements need leaders, and we're all capable of that role if we can be disciplined and patient enough.

I don't normally do quotes because it's easy to take someone out of context for your own purposes, but I especially like this one as I interpret it to pertain to this situation:

"It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle." -Sun Tzu

Edit: Example of more constructive, (in terms of construction and delivery) yet just as scathing (in terms of content) criticism. Starts @ 8:07... man I envy the Hitchslap ability...

I think this is the direct result of some very specific, intentional rhetoric. I think it is also mostly, specifically american.

I'm listening to an audio book right now about John Winthrop and the puritan dream of america. The book focuses a lot on his speech on the model of Christian charity. History has been more concerned with his excerpts from the sermon on the mount, focusing entirely on "the city upon a hill". America is a beacon to the rest of the world, Christian values and American exceptionalism and boundless opportunity ... except to Winthrop these things had a more egalitarian backbone. We would be exceptional because of our belief in Christ's charity.... among other things mixed in with calvinist self-hatred and a sense of impending apocalyptic doom.

Here's an excerpt from the speech:

that He might have the more occasion to manifest the work of his Spirit: first upon the wicked in moderating and restraining them, so that the rich and mighty should not eat up the poor.

Reagan of all people invoked this speech. Leaving out the part about the rich eating up the poor of course and focusing only on "that shining city upon a hill" .... I think you've touched on something with your cold war reference. Reagan made greed and enduring pride a national value during the cold war. Contextually, this seems sort of appropriate... if you're ronald reagan, it's the 80s and capitalism proving a more lasting and successful social/economic value than communism is of the utmost importance.
And somewhere between then and now, we've skipped the part where we redefine our national values and even 9/11 and the decade of war proceeding did not put our moral folly in check.

It seems ever so unlikely that economic, social, political and cultural devastation is going to put it in check now. Right around 15% of the country is now receiving food stamps. I think if we knew that, instead of "poor" being taboo, you'd be more likely to see some kind of authentic populist uprisings. I think the decades since the cold war have seen such a demonization (and femalization for that matter) of economic hardship, you're unlikely to meet enough people ready to come out of their homes and yell about it. Not only does the media and marketing make women feel bad about their bodies, I think it's making people feel bad about their inability to consume the desired quantity of shit.
>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

I've noticed that even broaching the topic of poorness is taboo. You either get complete disinterest, eye rolling, jokes or people who try to explain to you that poor are really living it up on tax payer dollars. Even the democrats seem to avoid using the word 'poor', but they have no problem defending the 'middle class'. I'd love to see democrats combine the middle and poor classes into one 'underclass', since international free trade seems to be destroying the line between the middle and lower classes anyway.

... and NATO officials stated, they were unable to identify anyone in Afghanistan in need of protection because of information published by these three newspapers or WikiLeaks themselves.

Not to mention other officials, commentators and media nutbags keep insisting that WikiLeaks just dumped a quarter of a million cables out into the public, without any respect for sensitive material. It is not ignorance of facts, it is intentional misinformation.

So a *promote for the Guardian, one of the few remaining beacons of quality journalism.

I'm going to stick to "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" and "Reader Rabbit"

Whether the change is voluntary or not doesn't affect the argument of whether religion can be a useful tool in helping us find happiness in our lives, so I fail to see the relevance.
Nor did I draw that conclusion from that argument. My point was that religion has been on a constant retreat in the battle against science and reason over truth claims about the world. Every battle has been fought with the intention of winning ground, and every battle has been lost by religion. "God" has been relegated back to more and more diffuse gaps in our knowledge. Later in my post I argue that the same is true for the moral wisdom contained in religion, it ought to be subject to the same beating as religions claims about the natural world has been, because I cant see religion excel in any area of moral wisdom.

Next, dismissing entire religions because of the actions of a few individuals is just illogical

Oh not this shit again. Nowhere in my post did I say so, and you know it. If you are referring to the comment about the Catholic child-rape, you fail to see my point completely. YOU claimed, and keep claiming, that religion is, or can be, a useful guide to leading a moral life, finding happiness and so on. Well, if what you say is true, institutions like the Catholic church ought to be beacons of light for the rest of us. Countries ruled by the likes of Taliban and the top clerics in Iran ought to be countries with the best possible human rights records, because after all, the laws they govern by are taken directly from the sources of wisdom themselves, our cherished holy books. Show me a society that has positively benefitted from adopting a more, not less, religious stance, and your claim might have some merit.

My point about bringing up the disgusting actions of the current leadership of the catholic church, is that obviously, religion hasn't helped at all. Perhaps it didn't make things worse either in this case, but we have to remember that its not ME who claims the catholic church is to be seen as a source of profound wisdom and morality, nor do I think adhering to catholic doctrine will help you make better moral decisions. it is the church itself who make these claims, and you, by saying things like "religion can be a useful tool in helping us find happiness in our lives"

Finally, you dismiss religious work because they were written by our ancestors.

Wrong again. I didn't dismiss it because it was written by our ancestors, I dismissed it because it quite obviously doesn't live up to the reputation you are trying to give it. But if it was truly, say, inspired by an eternal , real god, it really ought to live up to at least some degree. So when it doesn't... Why? Because it was manmade. made by people with flaws like you and me, and even worse, it was made thousands of years ago, by people who knew so little about the world they lived in. In a time where the world map was probably the size of maybe Israel and Egypt combined. And considering the circumstances they lived in, I dont blame them for being less then perfect, and much of what they wrote is certainly interesting, and stories like Genesis are fascinating insights into their minds and how they thought about the world. But as far as shedding light on the actual origin of our universe, it is as useless as Deuteronomy is in moral guidance.

And no, you shouldn't dismiss the constitution because it was written in the past, you should judge it like anything else on its actual contents and its track record.

In reply to this comment by joedirt:
explain to me why anyone would ever promote this?


/me waits in the bushes to pounce on Ants Down vote.



This reminds me of when we would make Mavis beacon woman say whatever we wanted, when text to voice was first coming out. hahahhahahahah

I don't want to step on toes or flat out prove why you are wrong. I would rather link this and let your own Smart Mind absorbe why I would promote this ( if I wanted to spend the "game tokens" )

I enjoy your avatar, although it doesnt represent your "point of view "
you seem more of a country woodsman from "deliverance" making fat city boys squeel.

/me waits in the bushes to pounce on Ants Down vote.



This reminds me of when we would make Mavis beacon woman say whatever we wanted, when text to voice was first coming out. hahahhahahahah

Why would either party allow another competitor? The US is completely and utterly stuck in its two-party system, a system it hails as the beacon of democracy for the rest of the world. Constitution + two parties = perfect democracy. PERFECT! Suggesting that anything about the US is less than perfect seems to be political suicide. You have to first admit that the US way of doing it is after all the best, but that it still could be improved.

"This is something that keeps on popping up in my mind for over a year now everytime I look at internal US politics: It's time for a 3 party system, ..."

In reply to this comment by Trancecoach:
I literally learned how to type playing Kings Quest, Police Quest, and, of course, Leisure Suit Larry.

how did you feel about police quest 4 ?

that was one of my first computer games i got for christmas, it was all so new to me.

I had to go backwards because It was not until the high speed internet in 2000 that came to town that I actually could play the older sierra games. I learned to type quite literally because of mavis beacon. grade 9 I couldn't do 30 wpm and thought I would fal the course, at the end of grade twelve I attained vast heights, I have it on a print out, 120 wpm no errors. Obviously I am still proud of that. hahhaha.