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goldfish21
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09 Sep 2022, 2:35 pm

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roronoa79
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09 Sep 2022, 3:43 pm

If you think people need the threat of Hell to be good, you think they're all bad people who need a leash.
Hence the misanthropy and hatred of other religions of an alarming number of Christians.


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AngelRho
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09 Sep 2022, 10:22 pm

roronoa79 wrote:
If you think people need the threat of Hell to be good, you think they're all bad people who need a leash.
Hence the misanthropy and hatred of other religions of an alarming number of Christians.

Idk if I’d use the word “alarming.” But the central point of that is there’s no such thing as a good person. If someone wants to honestly claim to be a Christian, he has to acknowledge that there is no way he is a good person. I wouldn’t say the numbers are alarming, but I would say it’s sad that nominal Christians pride themselves in believing they are somehow better than everyone else. That is not what Jesus taught.

I tend to lean more the other direction in my belief. While I do believe that no one is good, I see no point in dwelling on it. God gave each and every human being the greatest value—human life, a reasoning mind, and freedom of will and opportunity to achieve.

As such, the kingdom of heaven is within the grasp of anyone who wants it.

I think what makes Christianity difficult is that there are those who don’t want it or have the mistaken idea that it’s not simply there for the taking. Some believe they could never be worthy of it, as though God would never make them worthy. There are all kinds of reasons, including the idea that God nor Heaven even exist. For whatever reason, people make the decision to reject God and Heaven.

In simplest terms, Hell is the void that remains when a person rejects everything good by rejecting salvation. It’s not something reserved for “bad people” because there are no “good people.” Bad people occupy heaven and hell. Lost people don’t fear hell because it’s not real to them—why would you expect them to be afraid of it? No Christian should ever be personally afraid of it because no Christian believer will ever go there. Christians only fear hell for lost people who are going there, and I believe there is a certain urgency among Christians to reach the lost to prevent that as much as reasonably possible.

I did grow up in the kind of church that made fire and brimstone sermons and revivals a regular thing. Even to this day I’m not a fan of touchy-feely church, either. I think either extreme uses a lot of emotional manipulation, and it’s just not for me. I’m struggling to find a church home after recently making a move, but perhaps it’s best to explore a number of things before deciding what to do. In the meantime, it’s a worthwhile journey getting to know people and share the love I feel I’ve been given. I think that’s really what matters most, just loving people. Anyone too preoccupied with all the hell talk I think are really missing the point.



kraftiekortie
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09 Sep 2022, 11:07 pm

I believe most people are good, actually…..



DeathFlowerKing
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09 Sep 2022, 11:40 pm

I became disillusioned with Christians when they embraced Trumpism and claimed he was "chosen by god", clinging to the guy like the antichrist only because of the power he gave them in taking back the US government and making any excuse they could think of to justify his cruel selfish behavior.

But i also became disillusioned with wicca and the neopagan community lately after the woke movement took over and started changing the rules to suit their annoying agenda. Things like "You can't worship anyone else's pagan gods or goddesses unless you can trace them directly to your own ancestry!! !" or "You're not allowed to burn sage or use jar spells or draw this and that symbol because it's all cultural appropriation blah blah blah!! !"

And don't even get me started on the so-called feminist witches who transformed a literal Jewish Demon like Lilith who murders babies and pregant women in childbirth while sexually assaulting men in their sleep into a whitewashed benevolent 'Goddess' of feminism who fights the evil patriarchy ruling our world. These people conveniently ignore all the terrible things about who Lilith really was and are practically destroying her story. But what else would one expect other than lies from a malevolent demon trying to ensnare the minds of people foolish enough to worship her without doing real research into what she was and what she did? :roll:

I believe Lilith has played a part in destroying the trust between men and women lately. Now women don't trust men because they think they're all rapists and abusers and likewise men don't trust women because they think many women are only after their money or that they will falsely accuse them of abuse if the relationship goes south.

And for all I know she could be fueling the flames of hate between white people and People of Color and maybe even the LGBTQ community against heterosexual and cisgender people.

She is a very divisive and hateful entity and worshipping her is a terrible idea. Trust me. :evil:

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Trachea
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09 Sep 2022, 11:58 pm

There is no "good" or "bad" that judgment is indeed entirely subjective. I think all you can do is focus to attempt to hit to "least harm" in difficult moral questions. Nevertheless, there's a saying in my language that loosely translates to something like "When you bow in one direction, you moon to the other".



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10 Sep 2022, 12:09 am

Trachea wrote:
There is no "good" or "bad" that judgment is indeed entirely subjective. I think all you can do is focus to attempt to hit to "least harm" in difficult moral questions. Nevertheless, there's a saying in my language that loosely translates to something like "When you bow in one direction, you moon to the other".


I don't really believe that. While I do think morals are complex and differ from culture to culture, I believe
that there are certain lines humans were not meant to cross.

Like inbreeding, raping children, inventing and using the atomic bomb that could destroy our world someday, draining every natural resource on our planet, etc.

It reminds me of something a Native American shaman was saying in a Youtube video about how "Nature has no mercy, only laws."

We're now starting to see what happens when we break nature's laws.



Trachea
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10 Sep 2022, 1:03 am

DeathFlowerKing wrote:
Trachea wrote:
There is no "good" or "bad" that judgment is indeed entirely subjective. I think all you can do is focus to attempt to hit to "least harm" in difficult moral questions. Nevertheless, there's a saying in my language that loosely translates to something like "When you bow in one direction, you moon to the other".


I don't really believe that. While I do think morals are complex and differ from culture to culture, I believe
that there are certain lines humans were not meant to cross.

Like inbreeding, raping children, inventing and using the atomic bomb that could destroy our world someday, draining every natural resource on our planet, etc.

It reminds me of something a Native American shaman was saying in a Youtube video about how "Nature has no mercy, only laws."

We're now starting to see what happens when we break nature's laws.



"Meant" would imply there's a meaning beyond existence which I don't personally believe or see any evidence of. And if the lines are subjectively drawn by cultures then there is no universal line to agree on, so you contradict yourself in this thought to begin with, and if we truly did all agree, there would be no discussion.

I think there is a false concept where people mystify and separate natives from other human beings, where people see native people of and a part of nature and other people somehow removed and not a part. It is a false colonialistic viewpoint, we are a part always. Natives of any country aren't above and better and wiser, more connected to nature, it is a choice and cultivated skill to be connected but we can never not be a part of it. It's always been a war of brothers, not a mystical connection to earth against a religion of steel.

Nature indeed inbreeds and rapes, kills children, it has indeed invented and used the atomic bomb, and has always and does continue to feed on itself in gruesome painful ways. It can maybe evolve past some of those tactics, but if you say there's meaning in growing into a human race that does least harm, you have to also be saying it's been meaningful to do harm.

I believe so, but I don't think people want to accept that, it defies a lot of our societal rules and divulges blame to each and every one of us instead of to an individual. "Individuals" can be cut like a bad cell, removing our own responsibility in letting it get infected, distancing ourselves from how we keep getting the same wounds instead of perceiving the harmful acts as consequences of harmful acts and changing what were doing as a whole humanity. If we keep getting burns at the same place it's not wise to bandage and campaign for the sun to move, the least resistance is to move yourself to the shade, at the least to make a hat.

Like it or not is a personal preference; an alligator is not evil when it eats, that is a natural law of consequence. Nobody likes when an alligator attacks you but that is the quite natural risk of living next to alligators. To exist is to eat and an alligator eats meat to live. Now, a human can decide to not kill to live, but it doesn't. It has in fact begun to kill more than it ever had to to eat. Is that then evil? That's really where the moral qualms live, the individual cell as opposed to the entirety of society and how we as a society have created pockets of space around cells we deem outside of us, that become black holes that eat away at us all.

People forget that time is timeless. If we consume ourselves to extinction the other species are left to thrive, nature keeps thriving. Maybe in the future there will be another race of humans or similar sentient beings who don't repeat the mistakes we have, or maybe they do. Nature, timeless time will continue regardless. We are not THE center, we are each centers, all cells live a life of similar value despite our narrow perceptions. A word, "human", and human culture might die. Maybe sentience with it, probably not. We would not be the first species to go extinct. We are also not the only species evolving. If humans become more harm to life itself then it is indeed time for least harm. Life goes on regardless.



AngelRho
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10 Sep 2022, 8:07 am

It is possible to perceive good in objective terms, though. If LIFE is your objective standard, then you can classify all things that protect, preserve, and promote it as objectively good; all things that threaten it are objectively evil.

Human survival is only possible because of rational thought as opposed to animal instinct. Animals cannot ordinarily choose to die; human beings can, however. Animals do not seek out new, inventive ways to kill each other. Human beings build machines and plumb the depths of material existence itself to efficiently exterminate other human beings in war. Animals will defend themselves to the death only when there is no other choice, otherwise fighting to protect territory and mates is hardwired into instinct and more often does NOT result in death. Animals cannot choose death. Only humans can choose to kill each other and themselves. Humans can even decide that death has a higher purpose and achieves a goal of life, to trade one’s life for another. Or one can decide life isn’t worth living.

And that is the root of objective good. Hedonism is objectively evil because it involves denying the rational mind. A hedonist only lives for instinctive pleasure at the cost of reason, thus isn’t alive in the sense that living requires reason. Therefore hedonism is evil. Taking pleasure in the fruits of one’s own labor IS rational, however, and thus objectively good. Suicide is objectively evil. Taking a bullet for your wife out of a sense of obligation and duty to her is evil (irrational). Taking a bullet because you want to avoid the emptiness of life without her is good (rational, because this isn’t sacrifice. You die not because your life is worth less than hers, but because you have a personal stake in the value of her life).

I’m not saying good and evil can’t be understood in subjective terms. I’m just saying it’s not necessary to see good/evil as strictly subjective. The weakness of subjective good/evil is that it isn’t rational, whereas objective good/evil is. Rational, objective morality’s strength is that it’s consistent and reliable.



DeathFlowerKing
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10 Sep 2022, 8:12 am

AngelRho wrote:
It is possible to perceive good in objective terms, though. If LIFE is your objective standard, then you can classify all things that protect, preserve, and promote it as objectively good; all things that threaten it are objectively evil.


I agree on this much at least. Also like i said morals may be unique to each individual, but that does not give any of us the right to pretend like there is no such thing as right and wrong. Nihilism is a very dangerous way of thinking.



The_Walrus
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10 Sep 2022, 11:22 am

AngelRho wrote:
It is possible to perceive good in objective terms, though. If LIFE is your objective standard, then you can classify all things that protect, preserve, and promote it as objectively good; all things that threaten it are objectively evil.

Human survival is only possible because of rational thought as opposed to animal instinct. Animals cannot ordinarily choose to die; human beings can, however. Animals do not seek out new, inventive ways to kill each other. Human beings build machines and plumb the depths of material existence itself to efficiently exterminate other human beings in war. Animals will defend themselves to the death only when there is no other choice, otherwise fighting to protect territory and mates is hardwired into instinct and more often does NOT result in death. Animals cannot choose death. Only humans can choose to kill each other and themselves. Humans can even decide that death has a higher purpose and achieves a goal of life, to trade one’s life for another. Or one can decide life isn’t worth living.

And that is the root of objective good. Hedonism is objectively evil because it involves denying the rational mind. A hedonist only lives for instinctive pleasure at the cost of reason, thus isn’t alive in the sense that living requires reason. Therefore hedonism is evil. Taking pleasure in the fruits of one’s own labor IS rational, however, and thus objectively good. Suicide is objectively evil. Taking a bullet for your wife out of a sense of obligation and duty to her is evil (irrational). Taking a bullet because you want to avoid the emptiness of life without her is good (rational, because this isn’t sacrifice. You die not because your life is worth less than hers, but because you have a personal stake in the value of her life).

I’m not saying good and evil can’t be understood in subjective terms. I’m just saying it’s not necessary to see good/evil as strictly subjective. The weakness of subjective good/evil is that it isn’t rational, whereas objective good/evil is. Rational, objective morality’s strength is that it’s consistent and reliable.

This is nonsense. All you are doing is stating your personal views. You cannot objectively prove that committing suicide is evil, or that sacrificing yourself to save someone you love is irrational. You can't even prove that preserving life is objectively good. Obviously almost everyone will agree that murder is wrong, but people disagree about whether terminally ill people should be forced to continue living, which animals deserve protection, whether killing in self-defence is moral (and if so, what constitutes self-defence), whether capital punishment should be legal, whether abortion should be legal, how to weigh current people's lives against future people's lives, whether taxing people to fund life-saving programmes is moral, etc.

When you say "if life is your objective standard", you're giving the game away. It is your standard, so it isn't objective. Someone could just as easily say "my standard is freedom", or "my standard is virtue", or "my standard is goodness", or "my standard is Allah's will"... and all of them would be saying "my" standard, i.e. expressing a subjective viewpoint rather than an objective measurement. Sure, you can say "this course of action would objectively be better for growing the economy, and I consider growing the economy to be good", or "this course of action would objectively make the world more equal, and I consider equality to be good", but that doesn't mean that growing the economy or making the world more equal is objectively good, it just means that those goals are being achieved - you can't prove that those are the right goals.

Personally I don't really think moral cognitivism holds much weight. Right and wrong are ultimately pretty much the same as preferences in the arts. I'm a quasi-realist; ethical claims appear to be factual but aren't really. The belief that one's views are rational and objective is inherently irrational and subjective.



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10 Sep 2022, 12:37 pm

It does look very suspicious to me, this threat of an afterlife full of eternal suffering for anybody who doesn't stick to the rules that the spiritual leaders hand out. And although not all religious writings and sermons categorically say that's the way it'll be, some certainly do. Even the head teacher of my first school gave us a dash of it - she told us that if we were "good" then we'd go to heaven but if we weren't, "we aren't so sure." I suppose it might have motivated some of us to be a bit more obedient. Parents for centuries have been telling kids that some made-up monster will get them if they don't behave, and religion seems to me a way of keeping us in that childlike state instead of encouraging us to grow up and form our own opinions on morality. With religion, it's all about absolute obedience to some supposed invincible deity. Apparently if you're altruistic for any other reason, that's not good enough. I can't see any reason why it shouldn't be, but I can see a reason why religious leaders would tell us it isn't. It would help them to prop up their authority. I don't think anybody ever hears directly from deities what the rules are, so a believer has to use secondary sources - i.e. priests and their scriptures. And the problem with that is that we can never be sure they're telling us the truth.

As for what morality is, I think the utilitarian explanation (maximum happiness for the maximum number of people) has a lot of merit (and it's a curiously humanist and worldly explanation considering it was touted by the Evangelicals, though that's a credit to them), though it breaks down in extreme cases and it's sometimes hard to know exactly what effect a particular bit of behaviour is going to have in terms of total human happiness. I also like the idea that an action can't be wrong if it does no harm, though again there are sometimes problems such as the question of defining harm in all cases. But I see morality as more of an emotional, instinctive thing, which can't always be easily translated into rigid, objective rules.



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10 Sep 2022, 3:45 pm

I found it interesting that many ancient and some current civilizations didnt think of the Underworld as a neccesarily "bad" place the way Christians view their version of "Hell".

It was simply the place where all souls were destined to go when they died. The ancients didn't spend so much time thinking about what the Underworld was like because they pretty much believed that life was for the alive and that we should all concentrate on living in the moment.

And I agree that Christians have long used the threat of Hell as a scare tactic to force 'pagans' into converting.



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10 Sep 2022, 5:50 pm

DeathFlowerKing wrote:
AngelRho wrote:
It is possible to perceive good in objective terms, though. If LIFE is your objective standard, then you can classify all things that protect, preserve, and promote it as objectively good; all things that threaten it are objectively evil.


I agree on this much at least. Also like i said morals may be unique to each individual, but that does not give any of us the right to pretend like there is no such thing as right and wrong. Nihilism is a very dangerous way of thinking.

Exactly.

I would say that objective morals are PREFERRED by rational individuals and, by nature, are universal morals. Murder, initiation of force/aggression, slavery, corporate greed, etc. are examples of objectively immoral behavior because they violate objective standards of life, reason, and freedom. Objective morals are not unique to individuals.

Values, however, ARE unique to individuals. The greatest sin is never some affront to God, but rather the failure to live according to one’s own values. Two men work at the same job, both making the same salary, both doing identical tasks. One wakes up early every day excited about what he gets to achieve, enjoys doing the work. The other is resigned to his work obligations, does superior work in fear of getting fired, and is counting the days until retirement. One man is happy, the other is miserable.

The miserable man is immoral because he doesn’t value his work—it is simply a means to an end. He achieves much but lacks pride in it.

Both men are doing the same work, causing no harm to anyone else. There’s nothing technically good nor evil about the work done in any objective sense. It simply exists. But the miserable man isn’t immoral because of his personal moral standard or another’s moral standard. It’s his lack of values. Even if he does great work, his boss would be morally correct by firing him.

In subjective terms, you can say that what’s good for one person isn’t good for another. You can certainly look at it that way, but I think a view of morality based on personal values is more consistent.



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11 Sep 2022, 5:55 am

^
That's the first time I've heard the idea that it's immoral to be miserable. In my experience, misery comes to my mind unbidden. I have very little choice about it. And if a person is unhappy, I wouldn't judge them for that. I'd want to help ease their sorrow. It's not my duty to be happy, it's just an aspiration I have. The man who enjoys his work is simply lucky.



DeathFlowerKing
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11 Sep 2022, 6:02 am

ToughDiamond wrote:
^
That's the first time I've heard the idea that it's immoral to be miserable. In my experience, misery comes to my mind unbidden. I have very little choice about it. And if a person is unhappy, I wouldn't judge them for that. I'd want to help ease their sorrow. It's not my duty to be happy, it's just an aspiration I have. The man who enjoys his work is simply lucky.


I agree, it sounds a bit like victim blaming.