Kinda, my working philosophy is a bit more pragmatic, and less existential. I am not a reasonable man, because I like to think I can change to world to better fit my ideal, instead of changing my ideal to fit the world.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 9 2007, 5:44 am by AntiSleep.

cheeze, I applaud you. That was probably the most excellent post that has been made in this whole topic yet. While I disagree with a few of the statements, overall the delivery was excellent, and the logic was superb.

And now I will answer this:


There are definitely an inequality of sins, for instance, if you murder someone, or disobey the law of chastity, that is considered to be much worse than let's say, coveting. While you can still repent from sins of that sort, most people will not, so I guess you can say that the sins are equal, but the ability for people to honestly repent of a sin changes depending on what sort of sin was made.

neither what is sin nor what is law changes what is ethical. When making ethical decisions, ask what the benefits and costs to other people are, not whether it is a sin or not.

I'll need some clarification regarding your religion: how is a person punished in your religion? How are they rewarded? Are there certain things that are better than others; for example, "better" sin or "better" deeds? How can you define what is good and what is bad?

They are punished by going into a lower kingdom (Telestial, Terrestial) when they go to heaven, and rewarded by going to the higher kingdom (Celestial), while you can repent and still go to higher kingdoms, you have to repent.

I already answered the last part. And devilisk, you didn't have to completely repeat what he said, all you needed to do was ask me to answer the last part.

Holy shit. Cheeze made a good post, if not the best one yet. +2 RespectAnd as i responded. Receiving immortality for good deeds is what judgment by God is, or at least what i meant. I think we've covered everything there is to discuss about christian religion's GJ

I have not met a christian here that can articulate why they believe it. sounds like a lot of superstitious mumbo jumbo to me, especially the old testament. The new testament seemed more political(still masked in mumbo jumbo and fear mongering). Most of the stories in both books are just taken from older texts.

The main reason none of us can give you a factual reason why we believe it is because we have faith in it, not an explanation that you would consider factual.

look at it from a third perspective, surely there were events or decisions that influenced you to believe it, or did you just wake up one day and say, I think I'll start believing Christianity today?

My money's on his parents raising him that way / born into it.

The old testament is crazy shiit. Especially the first book Genesis. God told Abraham that his first son would be the ruler of many nations and be the parent of many generations. To summerize it Abrahams wife was to old to have babies so he had a kid with the servant. They had a kid and then God came around and made his wife pregnant. So then there was Ishmael the servents son and Isaac his wifes son. Ishmael started islam and muslim, ruled iran, iraq, egypt, etc and Isaac rules israel and started the jews. The two religouns have been in a holy war for 6 thousand years. The "Koran" or how you spell it says "eliminate the infadels" (jews and christians) and they tax athiest I think. Being halfway from the largest muslim population in the world, I'm pretty affraid of muslims. (Deerbourne, Michigan) That is why I say SUPPORT OUR TROOPS! Because if we don't take the fight to them, they will take it to us.

Yeah, but the same Koran says....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_of_the_book

I disagree, our military action only strengthens the position of the radical fundamentalists. The correct answer is education. Science is caustic to fundamentalism.

Well. Martyr Logic FTW!

That isn't quite what I meant. War brings hardship and death(more specifically the fear of death). These are the 2 aspects of life most readily exploited by fundamentalist religion.

...What denomination are you?


War also brings peace, justice, and massive leaps in common technology.

Just not for people that happen to live where the war is taking place.

There is a time and place for military action, but there were 2 things we lacked when we invaded Iraq: We lacked just cause and sufficient military resources to quickly stabilize the power vacuum created by toppling Saddam. If we did it immediately following the gulf war, the fallout would have been drastically less severe, but even then(when we were not already fighting a war in Afghanistan) it was not a good move, and there were clearly articulated reasons that we did not push to Baghdad(all of which still applied in 2003).

On the other hand, computers have been progressing rapidly over the past 50 years without a military need propelling that type of research ahead. Same goes for the space program (Buzz Aldrin said it's ok that the space program is seemingly "struggling" right now because we're about to make the leap to colonization of the moon and Mars), medicine (human genome project, stem cell research, etc.), energy (hydrogen fuel cell development, solar cells), and many other technological sectors.

What is just about killing hundreds of thousands of purely innocent Iraqis? The terrorists have now killed more American soldiers than civilians. This isn't justice. This is retribution - primal, ugly retribution. And yes Syphon, creating deep resentment for breaking apart thousands of families in Iraq, deepening sectarian differences, and making no attempt at amends is a great way to bring about peace. We got peace after World War II because we completely destroyed Germany. We got peace in Vietnam only because we gave up. We are needlessly killing innocent people over there, and somehow that is supposed to bring about peace? I can't say that I particularly enjoyed your medieval logic there.

Forget about how war affects technology. We have less deaths than any other war. As far as I'm concerned we just made some mistakes, we disbanded the iraqi army and police force for example. War is similar to Pimpin' it aint easy, but its neccesary.

It isn't even that, I realize that the war was marketed as retribution for 9/11, but the fact remains that Iraq was not involved.