And we ALL know what happens to Wily Coyote!!!!!!!
Beep! Beep!
Posted on 01/03/2002 11:19:13 AM PST by ArGee
A very rich man decided that he wanted to show kindness to the people of the fair city where he lived. Since he was very rich indeed, he decided to throw a banquet for the entire city. He rented the largest sports arena in the city and began his plans. He planned for huge amounts of the best food possible, making allowances for every religious and medical diet. He advertised the banquet in every possible manner - television, radio, billboard, door-to-door canvassing. Considering that there might be some who could not travel, he arranged for free bus transportation to and from the event, and some special-needs vehicles for all who could not ride busses. He even scheduled the banquet to run for 24 hours a day for several days so that everyone could be sure of being served.
He planned long and hard and finally the big day came. The rich man ate quickly and then went about wishing all his guests well and personally making sure that all had every need met. After a while he went outside to tour the grounds and talk with those who had not yet gone in, and those who had already left. Everyone was happy. Many were profusely thankful. It was a glorious occasion.
At one point the rich man noticed a group of people sitting outside a locked door with most unpleasant looks on their faces. Sensing they were not happy, he went over to them. He did not introduce himself but simply asked them if he could be of service.
"We want to go in through this door," one of them replied.
The rich man explained to them that the hall was arranged to feed a large number of people as quickly and effortlessly as possible. This required order inside, and the entrances and exits had been carefully planned to be as efficient as possible. He then offered to go call one of the golf carts that were avaialbe to help people who could not walk far to take them to the entrance. But the man replied, "We do not want to go in the entrance. We want to go in this door. We don't understand why we can't go in any door we wish. We think the man who set this banquet up is mean and hateful for insisting we go in through the entrance. He has tried to bill himself as a very kind man by offering this banquet, but he is not kind at all if he will not indulge us and let us go through this door.
The rich man was distressed at these words, but still attempted to please these people. He tried once more to explain to them what was behind this particular door, and how if they went in this door they would disrupt the meal service being offered inside. He offered to drive them himself, not only to the door, but inside the hall to their tables if they would only go through the entrance to enjoy the meal. Again the man said, "No, but only a hateful man would keep us from going through the door of our choosing. And we will sit here and tell anyone who will listen to us what an awful man he is until he lets us in."
At that the rich man was enraged and he shouted, "Enough." Then he called a police officer to have them thrown off of the property and ordered that they not be allowed to return until the banquet was over and all the scraps had been hauled away. Then, mourning for their loss, he turned to visit with other guests.
I'm not sure societal sophistication has much of anything to do with. Remember the first 5 books of the Bible are the core for Judaism, Christianity and Islam (IMHO that's why these religions are always beating on each other, they're too close together philosophically and historically, nobody wants the competition to be that similar); so in there you've got something being worshiped all over the world covering pretty much the entire gamut of sophistication. Now shamanistic societies don't tend to be as technological because they are more interested in harmonizing with nature and technology is the art of subjugating and overcoming nature, so the two don't mix that well.
That being said I have seen some very nice discourses showing how polytheism hold back technology and science. In a monotheistic world view there is one truth, much as there is one God. In polytheism, especially in Chinese polytheism, how the world works depends on which god is in charge that day, there is no longer one truth. Basically the idea is that if I mix these two things and they do something, if I'm a monotheist I am confident that those two things will do that same thing when mixed everytime, because God decided that's how it works. If I'm a polytheist I can't be sure, evetually, if they have that same reaction many times I can guess that it will probably work everytime because apparently every god that can be in charge wants it that way, but I can never really be sure.
Really in the end I think it's a combination of things that leads to a societies development. Resources and standard of living are huge in that, Greece during Biblical times was much more sophisticated than Israel because they had better resources and more time to sit around, philosophize and invent math. War is also a large contributing factor, most of the inventions of western history were first put to practicle application during war, some of the most innocuous stuff you can think of nobody knew what to do with it until somebody figured out how to use it in battle (this still goes on today though now our wars are different, the computers you and I are using and the whole internet infrastructure owe their entire existence to the culture war between the US and USSR). Certainly a dominant religion that allows the people to believe in absolutes, and one that allows the conquest of nature help; I'm not sure reward and punishment way into that nearly as much as the general world view: does your religion say the same rules apply everywhere everyday and is it OK to dam that river and ignore what that means for the fish in it?
Of course all of that is largely off the cuff IMHO philosophising, but there it is, do with it as you will.
The choice of heaven and hell is one between immediate gratification, followed by punishment, or delayed gratification. As such, the analogy that fits better for me would be the robber, who made the choice of taking the money now, but illegally -- immediate gratification, followed by punishment (if caught) -- vs. working for the money legally -- delaying gratification.
If we redefine hell to be simply "the inavailability of the presence of God", my comments would likely have been different.
And that's not eternal torment?
I only trust authorities that prove themselves to be trustworthy. The bible proves itself to be an untrustworthy authority in the first few pages. If I am to believe an extraordinary story like the killing of all the first born of Egypt I am going to need extraordinary proof.
If God could provide dozens of miracles during Bronze Age he should be able to provide at least one or two during the Communications Age. A lot is to be said for the fact such miraculous events have decreased in direct proportion to man's increase in knowledge of the Laws of Nature.
If God is anything like the egomaniacal tyrant description provided by the majority of his worshipping throngs, I would consider it eternal torment to remain in his presence.
Really it's Christianity that has really gotten addicted to the hell thing, and as Argee points out that only part of Christianity; just so happens to be the most profitable part though (go figure) so you see them a lot on TV. Not really sure where Islam sits on that. I know they believe in paradise but no Muslim I've talked to about the religion has ever mentioned post death punishment. It's important to note that even in Christianity most of the punishment stuff is at best alluded to in the Bible. This is why it's kind of a sect by sect thing, some sects took those allusions and really focused on them, others didn't think they were that important. Punishment is definitely mentioned but who goes, what happens there and how bad is it really aren't delved into. This is why Dante wrote the Inferno, he thought it was really important to have a good understanding of the possible destinations of your soul so he dug right in and layed it all out. In many ways the Inferno is pretty much a Fodors guide to hell, purgatory and paradise; only better written and with fewer pictures.
Beep! Beep!
The interesting thing when you study lack of belief in Christianity is that it's all been done. Because it's a proseletizing religion Christianity has been confronted with disbelief much more strongly in it's 2000 years than any other religion. If you decide not to believe other religions the believers write you off move on, most of the time they won't even find out since they aren't running around trying to get you to join up. But because Christians are always sharing the faith they're bound to hear negative answers and a lot of those have been recorded; some have even spun off into variants like deism. Actually almost all of the sects started because people said "no" to on brand of Christianity or another.
So if someone put a gun to your child's head and threatened to kill her if you didn't rob a liquor store for them... so you did it... you'd expect to be charged with theft and jailed? The fact that they held a gun to your head, or your child's, or whatever, should play no part in the juror's considerations? It was your free choice?
What if folks lie to you and tell you that your soon to be born child is a mere lump of parasitic flesh, and kill it.
Is that still free choice?
Our election machines in Marion County (Indy) have little levers for each candidate. The separate partie's people are all in a row, so that anyone wishing to vote a straight ticket merely pulls a BIG lever to set ALL the individual levers.
There IS one kicker though. For some reason, lost in the past probably, the JUDGE candidates are off on a row all by themselves, ONLY controllable by the little levers.
Now the Democrats are complaining about this because their guys cannot be selected automatically with all the other offices.
Well, DUH, neither can any OTHER political party! The field IS level.
This is definitely an improvement. It is more realistic.
Of course it is. There are many debates on FR alone that involve bigotry of one group of Christians against another group with differing doctrine.
As to the "name calling," i.e. Demorat, tacky. Very tacky. And totally out of line -- not to mention out of context. You're not doing yourself much credit here.
At the risk of sounding more religious than I am, maybe the problem is paying too much attention to the throngs and not enough to God. 8>)
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