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The Gospel

delphi_ote said:
So, like everyone else here, you used reason to get your morals.
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yes. but don't forget the Miracles like walking out from under a ton or so of falling steel just as it crashed behind me while I negotiated the piping and other obstacles that go with walking out from underneath a drilling rig. If the pencil in my back pocket had been pointing back wards by another inch and a half it would have been snapped in two.
 
lostnick3 said:
yes. but don't forget the Miracles like walking out from under a ton or so of falling steel just as it crashed behind me while I negotiated the piping and other obstacles that go with walking out from underneath a drilling rig. If the pencil in my back pocket had been pointing back wards by another inch and a half it would have been snapped in two.
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Right. Your reasoning is not very good. We've established that.

But like all of us, you attempted to use some kind of logic or reason to come to your system of ethics.
 
UrsulaV said:
For the second time now, the yardstick is "how would I wish to be treated myself." It's empathy, if you must have a single word for it. I am intimately aware of my own experience, I know very well how I would wish to be treated in most circumstances, and I try to extrapolate logically from there.

No mystical guru or god required. Just personal experience.

You're right that there's a lot of wiggle room in not murdering people. There NEEDS to be a lot of wiggle room in complex moral issues. By judging for myself based on reason and personal experience, I HAVE that wiggle room. If all I've got is a book saying "Thou Shalt Not Kill" or a God that isn't around to take questions, I lose valuable flexibility in dealing with a complicated world.
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I've been thick headed with you on that. isn't it called the Golden rule ?

Luke 6:31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.

Mathew 7:12 Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.

Then your basically quoting scripture in your own thoughts and words or am I just being silly again.
 
delphi_ote said:
Right. Your reasoning is not very good. We've established that.

But like all of us, you attempted to use some kind of logic or reason to come to your system of ethics.
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Your to kind. But is my reasoning improving by your estimation?

B. Yes, Yes and what else do I have to use>
 
lostnick3 said:
and if I through in the oral Jewish tradition in, how far back in history would that get me?
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Looks like it's dated back to ~1280 BCE in the Tanakh according to Wikipedia. IIRC, the Tanakh is both written and oral history.
 
Nex said:
Looks like it's dated back to ~1280 BCE in the Tanakh according to Wikipedia. IIRC, the Tanakh is both written and oral history.
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OK I concede to your point. i know its a universal saying. but how did that concept filter down to a eutocentric semifreethinking social group?
 
lostnick3 said:
OK I concede to your point. i know its a universal saying. but how did that concept filter down to a eutocentric semifreethinking social group?
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The same way ANYTHING filters down. People repeated it. Occasionally, people reinvented it seperately. It was useful and reasonable, so it got re-used, and it was logical, so people came up with it on multiple seperate occasions.

That a basic concept like this got carried along and re-invented on multiple occasions should not be surprising to anybody. Why does it surprise you?
 
lostnick3 said:
OK I concede to your point. i know its a universal saying. but how did that concept filter down to a eutocentric semifreethinking social group?
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Freethought is about thinking for yourself. That includes accepting those ideas that are reasonable, no matter where they come from. Treating others as I wish to be treated is, in my judgment, reasonable. Doesn't matter if it originated in the Tanakh or in ancient Egyptian poetry. I also agree with Rumi on a number of points, but that doesn't make me a Sufi. I agree with Ghandi on many things, but that doesn't make me Hindu.

As the Buddha said, even a fool has a lesson to teach.

Ursula also brought a very good point -- it is such a reasonable idea that many people may very well have come up with it on their own, unaware of it being in the Judaic and Christian texts.
 
UrsulaV said:
The same way ANYTHING filters down. People repeated it. Occasionally, people reinvented it seperately. It was useful and reasonable, so it got re-used, and it was logical, so people came up with it on multiple seperate occasions.

That a basic concept like this got carried along and re-invented on multiple occasions should not be surprising to anybody. Why does it surprise you?
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yes i understand that. we've beat to death. I'm trying to say that the Christian church in Europe had tremendous influence on the populations philosophical way of thinking. that it was the major mindset that settled and crossed this country that ended less than maybe a hundred years ago.
therefor it is in a Christian frame work that most of us start with and the public schools maintain. it is not until you start thinking beyond yourself your able to differentiate the differences
 
lostnick3 said:
yes i understand that. we've beat to death. I'm trying to say that the Christian church in Europe had tremendous influence on the populations philosophical way of thinking. that it was the major mindset that settled and crossed this country that ended less than maybe a hundred years ago.
therefor it is in a Christian frame work that most of us start with and the public schools maintain. it is not until you start thinking beyond yourself your able to differentiate the differences
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I'm not sure what your point is. Please rephrase?
 
lostnick3 said:
therefor it is in a Christian frame work that most of us start with and the public schools maintain. it is not until you start thinking beyond yourself your able to differentiate the differences
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So you now renounce your earlier statement that "without a god the sociaty has no where to point to and say no thats not right." then? Since you're seeming to indicate that you can "think beyond yourself" and escape the Christian mindset. Or are you just not communicating well again?

Which one is it? Either I can be a moral being without God, having managed to think for myself, through application/reinvention of the Golden Rule, or there's no morality without God.

You have contradicted your own position. So, let's try again! Do you still think a belief in God is required in order to have morality?
 
UrsulaV said:
So you now renounce your earlier statement that "without a god the sociaty has no where to point to and say no thats not right." then? Since you're seeming to indicate that you can "think beyond yourself" and escape the Christian mindset. Or are you just not communicating well again?

Which one is it? Either I can be a moral being without God, having managed to think for myself, through application/reinvention of the Golden Rule, or there's no morality without God.

You have contradicted your own position. So, let's try again! Do you still think a belief in God is required in order to have morality?
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Yes. I"ll go with Pascals Wager. My meaning was as we grow up, as a baby or two year old thinks compared to the way an adult thinks, maybe starting with teen angst, when were able to ponder the mysteries of the universe
 
lostnick3 said:
Yes. I"ll go with Pascals Wager. My meaning was as we grow up, as a baby or two year old thinks compared to the way an adult thinks, maybe starting with teen angst, when were able to ponder the mysteries of the universe
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Your meaning was as we grow up...what? You started a sentence here, and then you didn't finish it. Your clause is dangling. Can you finish your sentence? Otherwise it looks like you're saying that you need god to be moral because teen angst allows you to ponder the mysteries of the universe.

Which makes about as much sense as "fish need to swim, because tacos are crunchy." Even a Zen master might get a little stumped on that one.
 
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