Ephesians 6:5

[samhain]

(06-23-2020, 12:55 PM)Arturo Bandini Wrote: And hopefully after that, we also stop killing animals and every breathing thing ...

There is not a single specie we didn't slaughter for fun or for convenience.

It's funny, my partner at work is about the most right-wing person I know.  Loves his guns, Trump and talking crap about libs.  Another guy we work with is a big time hunter.  I don't mean like a guy that shoots a few deer on his farm.  I mean guy that pays tens of thousands of dollars to go to places like Africa and Alaska to shoot whatever he can find.  He's super nice and well-liked by everyone.

I was shocked one day when my partner told me that the hunter guy creeped him out in a major way.  He said that anyone who spends that much time and money on killing is basically a step away from being a serial killer.  The guy just isn't happy if he's not shooting something, and that's a bit strange, I suppose.  Never looked at things that way, but it surprised to hear someone say that they were as creeped out by it as he was.

[Arturo Bandini]

(06-24-2020, 04:43 AM)oncemoreuntothejimbreech Wrote: Which makes it difficult to reconcile the alleged inventor of every field of science known to man with the co-dependent, bipolar, schizophrenic, homicidal sociopath With borderline personality disorder who constantly contradicts himself and makes illogical decisions portrayed in the Bible.

God to Moses: Free my people from slavery.
Moses to Pharaoh: Let my people go.
Pharaoh to Moses: Okay.
God to Pharaoh: No. Don’t let my people go. I must smite you to prove how powerful I am to the world.
Moses to Pharaoh: Let my people go.
Pharaoh to Moses: Okay already. GTFO.
God to Pharaoh:  NO! I HAVEN’T FINISHED KILLING, YET!
God to Moses: Imma need you guys to mark your homes with lamb’s blood so I don’t accidentally kill your first born because even though I know everything, I don’t know your addresses. The street signs in ancient Egypt are just mashugana. Oy vey.

It reads like a Mel Brooks’ comedy.

I told you. Religion's God is a complete psychopath.

[*michaelsean*]

(06-24-2020, 05:17 AM)samhain Wrote: I feel like we are becoming even more brutal, just in less straightforward fashion.  Physical combat of the face-to-face nature is rarer even in war.  We have planes, ICBMs and drones to do the work for us.  Not to say that infantry-style warfare isn't a thing, it's just not the only thing or even the main option.  

To my point, I'm really not even getting at physical violence when I make the assertion.  People flat-out don't give a rip about each other anymore.  They don't care what happens to a person half a world away in a Chinese concentration camp and they don't care about the dude three blocks away who's overdosing on fentanyl.  They don't have time to.  They are ground down to a pulp chasing stuff they don't need.  There is zero sense of desire for a common good anymore as I see it.  I feel like most people would be just fine with whatever fate befell any given stranger, so long as they didn't have to see it and it didn't effect them directly.  

Modern economics are a meat grinder with us as the meat.  We care little for the rest of the world getting turned to chum, so long as we're still getting by in the end.  

I hope like hell that if there's a god, he's nothing like any of us.  If he is, we're in deep shit.  

That's not new by any means.  The vast majority of our history is mere survival.  The value of life outside of ones own group 1000 years ago was pretty close to zero.

[Lucidus]

(06-23-2020, 08:48 PM)bfine32 Wrote: I'll talk about religion all day and night with anyone, but here's the main thing:

We of a finite mind try to understand the rationality of someone with infinite wisdom.

How did you come to the conclusion that God was infinite, other than what ancient humans transcribed on scrolls?

What wisdom has this God demonstrated that intellectually or morally superior to what a "finite mind" could imagine?

His level of "wisdom" seems to be exactly, and rather conveniently, on par with that of the finite humans. 

[samhain]

(06-24-2020, 09:33 AM)michaelsean Wrote: That's not new by any means.  The vast majority of our history is mere survival.  The value of life outside of ones own group 1000 years ago was pretty close to zero.

I agree, but now we're a lot more cognizant of how others live both around the world and around our own neighborhood.  You can go just about anywhere in a day or two if you have the means, and most human cultures have been observed and documented.  

I guess what I'm trying to say is that ignorance and lack of understanding was never really the issue for us as a species.  We really just don't give a shit.  

[Arturo Bandini]

(06-25-2020, 01:45 AM)Lucidus Wrote: How did you come to the conclusion that God was infinite, other than what ancient humans transcribed on scrolls?

What wisdom has this God demonstrated that intellectually or morally superior to what a "finite mind" could imagine?

His level of "wisdom" seems to be exactly, and rather conveniently, on par with that of the finite humans. 

Nature. Nature is amazing.

[fredtoast]

(06-25-2020, 04:24 PM)Arturo Bandini Wrote: Nature. Nature is amazing.

Why does God get the credit for nature?

It took humans millions of years to evolve beyond basic immoral animals.

[Dill]

(06-25-2020, 07:57 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Why does God get the credit for nature?

It took humans millions of years to evolve beyond basic immoral animals.

With the rise of monotheism, and the continuing concentration of power in one deity, that makes sense. The deity is separate from creation, since He made it.

One strand of credit for rigorous separation of god from nature goes back to Aristotle. Before him, Greeks generally considered the universe/nature as something which pre-existed gods. The father of logic posed the problem of cause and effect, and of "first causes"--in the case of the universe, a posited "unmoved first mover." That first mover can't be dependent on anything else. Nature is not "unmoved" and so is an effect of creation, dependent upon god.

Greeks were still pretty agnostic about the origin thing, until Christians synthesized Greek philosophy with Christian theology. For them, nature is not "unmoved" and so is an effect of creation, dependent upon god. And "fallen."

Anyway, the process of investing a monotheistic god with authority has produced the separation of god from nature (and probably the concept of "nature") and the rank order which puts god above nature.  Could be that is one condition for separating religion from government and the economy too.

[Arturo Bandini]

(06-25-2020, 07:57 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Why does God get the credit for nature?

It took humans millions of years to evolve beyond basic immoral animals.

Animals don't beat their kids, animals don't slave their own specie ...

Animals don't sell their soul. Animals don't destroy their planet.

The fact that humans consider themselves as "evolved" is laughable.

[*michaelsean*]

(06-24-2020, 05:26 AM)samhain Wrote: It's funny, my partner at work is about the most right-wing person I know.  Loves his guns, Trump and talking crap about libs.  Another guy we work with is a big time hunter.  I don't mean like a guy that shoots a few deer on his farm.  I mean guy that pays tens of thousands of dollars to go to places like Africa and Alaska to shoot whatever he can find.  He's super nice and well-liked by everyone.

I was shocked one day when my partner told me that the hunter guy creeped him out in a major way.  He said that anyone who spends that much time and money on killing is basically a step away from being a serial killer.  The guy just isn't happy if he's not shooting something, and that's a bit strange, I suppose.  Never looked at things that way, but it surprised to hear someone say that they were as creeped out by it as he was.

I don't hunt at all, but I think big game hunters have a serious problem.  Deer hunters are also doing it for the thrill of the hunt.  I mean I know they eat the meat  or give it away, but they are hunting because they want to hunt, and yet I draw a distinction between hunting deer or fowl to big game hunting.  Even if they aren't killing endangered species, there's just something not right about them in my book.  How do you pose next to a giraffe or an elephant you just killed with a big smile on your face?  

[*michaelsean*]

(06-26-2020, 03:03 AM)Arturo Bandini Wrote: Animals don't beat their kids, animals don't slave their own specie ...

Animals don't sell their soul. Animals don't destroy their planet.

The fact that humans consider themselves as "evolved" is laughable.

Animals don't have the capacity.  Although I do think some eat their offspring on occasion.  The emerald ash bore destroyed millions of ash trees in the US without a bit of concern.   You are giving animals credit for not doing something they cannot do.  

[Truck_1_0_1_]

(06-25-2020, 01:45 AM)Lucidus Wrote: How did you come to the conclusion that God was infinite, other than what ancient humans transcribed on scrolls?

What wisdom has this God demonstrated that intellectually or morally superior to what a "finite mind" could imagine?

His level of "wisdom" seems to be exactly, and rather conveniently, on par with that of the finite humans.

Excellent point.

I will say though, everything I've learned in school and reading the book itself, it is implied (and actually, explicitly said in the NT, though I cannot recall where) that humans (of a finite mind) cannot comprehend or even begin to comprehend, the wisdom of God (an infinite being).

Hence, all that is written in the Bible, is nothing more than a mere human's understanding of God's reach and wisdom.

That's what I get out of it.

[fredtoast]

(06-26-2020, 03:03 AM)Arturo Bandini Wrote: Animals don't beat their kids,

No, but some times they eat them.  And they eat as many of their neighbors babies as they can catch.

In fact if I were to steal a human baby and chop it to pieces then stomp some baby kittens to death my dog would think that was awesome as long as I fed him some of the meat.

Animals have no morals.  They just do whatever they can to survive.  They have no problem killing other members of their own species over a mate or territorial control.  If they were capable of enslaving each other they certainly would.

[Dill]

(06-26-2020, 11:26 AM)fredtoast Wrote: Animals have no morals.  They just do whatever they can to survive.  They have no problem killing other members of their own species over a mate or territorial control.  If they were capable of enslaving each other they certainly would.

Enslaved Ants Regularly Stage Rebellions
https://wondergressive.com/enslaved-ants-regularly-stage-rebellions/

Protomognathus americanus, the American slave maker ant,  has evolved to stop foraging for food and instead steal the larvae of other ants and raise them as slaves to forage for food and raise their young.  Talk about lazy.

Just like in our society, the enslaved ants don’t just blindly accept their servitude.  The slave ants sabotage the colony by killing thousands of the colony’s children. When an ant is newborn, the enslave ant nanny is unable to tell the difference.  But once it begins to show signs that it is the same species as its captor, the enslaved ant is quick to brew the poison.

[Dill]

(06-26-2020, 10:36 AM)michaelsean Wrote: I don't hunt at all, but I think big game hunters have a serious problem.  Deer hunters are also doing it for the thrill of the hunt.  I mean I know they eat the meat  or give it away, but they are hunting because they want to hunt, and yet I draw a distinction between hunting deer or fowl to big game hunting.  Even if they aren't killing endangered species, there's just something not right about them in my book.  How do you pose next to a giraffe or an elephant you just killed with a big smile on your face?  

Here's how.

[Belsnickel]

(06-26-2020, 10:36 AM)michaelsean Wrote: I don't hunt at all, but I think big game hunters have a serious problem.  Deer hunters are also doing it for the thrill of the hunt.  I mean I know they eat the meat  or give it away, but they are hunting because they want to hunt, and yet I draw a distinction between hunting deer or fowl to big game hunting.  Even if they aren't killing endangered species, there's just something not right about them in my book.  How do you pose next to a giraffe or an elephant you just killed with a big smile on your face?  

This could derail the thread, so forgive me if that happens. While I've never hunted outside of Pennsylvania and Virginia, I know some folks that have done the exotics hunts. Hunting is an adrenaline rush, that is for sure. Not everyone has the same motives; I am a meat hunter. You won't find a set of antlers in my house. But some people do it for the story, for the experience. Some of the hunts (more like tahr in New Zealand than safari stuff in Africa) is physically taxing and it is a matter of pushing yourself.

[*bfine32*]

(06-26-2020, 09:15 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: This could derail the thread, so forgive me if that happens. While I've never hunted outside of Pennsylvania and Virginia, I know some folks that have done the exotics hunts. Hunting is an adrenaline rush, that is for sure. Not everyone has the same motives; I am a meat hunter. You won't find a set of antlers in my house. But some people do it for the story, for the experience. Some of the hunts (more like tahr in New Zealand than safari stuff in Africa) is physically taxing and it is a matter of pushing yourself.

[Belsnickel]

(06-26-2020, 10:07 PM)bfine32 Wrote:

I wish I understood this one.

[Lucidus]

(06-26-2020, 11:13 AM)Truck_1_0_1_ Wrote: Excellent point.

I will say though, everything I've learned in school and reading the book itself, it is implied (and actually, explicitly said in the NT, though I cannot recall where) that humans (of a finite mind) cannot comprehend or even begin to comprehend, the wisdom of God (an infinite being).

Hence, all that is written in the Bible, is nothing more than a mere human's understanding of God's reach and wisdom.

That's what I get out of it.

So, if finite minds can't understand or even begin to comprehend God's wisdom, then what was the purpose of his multiple instructions and teachings? In other words, we are expected to comprehend that which cannot be comprehended? 

Is it the case that this God can't make his "wisdom" comprehensible? After all, he created the finite minds, correct? One would imagine that an all-powerful being would be able to figure out a method for making his message more understandable, more comprehensible and less prone to interpretation or conjecture. 

If he can't, or choose not to, then of what use is a teacher who refuses to teach in terms that the student can draw decipherable knowledge. What good is a teacher who speaks in riddles, ambiguities and contradictions. Of what use is a teacher who instructs what can't be learned?

[Dill]

(06-28-2020, 02:51 PM)Lucidus Wrote: So, if finite minds can't understand or even begin to comprehend God's wisdom, then what was the purpose of his multiple instructions and teachings? In other words, we are expected to comprehend that which cannot be comprehended? 

Is it the case that this God can't make his "wisdom" comprehensible? After all, he created the finite minds, correct? One would imagine that an all-powerful being would be able to figure out a method for making his message more understandable, more comprehensible and less prone to interpretation or conjecture. 

If he can't, or choose not to, then of what use is a teacher who refuses to teach in terms that the student can draw decipherable knowledge. What good is a teacher who speaks in riddles, ambiguities and contradictions. Of what use is a teacher who instructs what can't be learned?

Well, in some cases, the point is not really to "comprehend" is it?

The point is to obey, not "figure it out."

And that might ultimately be God's "message" as heard by millions of Christians.