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To: Mad Dawg

I believe that in most people, there is a default position of justice, but in some, it appears to be lacking.

It is hackneyed, and of course I would have a beef. As we well know, there are those that are prone to murder, just as there are those that find it abhorrent. There is societal justice, and we must obey the laws that are in place, or pay the consequence...I just happen to believe that what we do here on earth, is of no consequence to God. I believe He made us as we are, good, bad, and in between.


403 posted on 01/06/2005 10:46:28 AM PST by stuartcr
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To: stuartcr
of course I would have a beef. As we well know, there are those that are prone to murder, just as there are those that find it abhorrent. There is societal justice, and we must obey the laws that are in place, or pay the consequence...
and
.it is the interpretation/acceptance that gives it it's value.

I am not trying to play games with your words. I've been a theist most of my life. I've been interested in what you might call Philosophical Theology most of my adult life. I'm VERY interested in what people who disagree with me (and the RC Church, of which I am a member) think.

Your assertion that the subject matter of the Natural Sciences is the only area where we may find absolutes is not brand new, but it has always intrigued me, precisely because Baconian empiricism seems to me to be very practical but based on a lot of assumptions -- many of which, I think, Bacon understood, but which the present devotees of empiricism think so obvious that they get all irritable when the assumptions are not questioned but merely brought to the surface. Then they start saying people are twisting their words. It reminds me of the way people got irritated with Socrates.

Anyway, to proceed:

The value of your complaint (or your heirs' complaint) if I have you murdered is that a lot of people accept the notion that murder is a bad thing? So back before people had opinions about murder it would have been okay? Or back when tribal warfare was considered noble, it WAS noble? But now it's not?

So the only thing wrong with my murdering you for your opinion is my timing?

... we must obey the laws that are in place, or pay the consequence. The police ARE better armed than we are, so we MUST (probably) pay the consequence, but it sounds like you think the question whether we SHOULD pay the consequence is meaningless -- or is insignificantly different from asking what the majority thinks.

A land mass' physical existence can be easily verified without any qualifiers.

But isn't the notion that Australia existed before any humans ran across it relative to some suppositions about matter and causality generally? Your absolutes are VERY relative, and they are relative to assumptions (which I happen to share) which have not always been held by even a minority of humans. (And in a few bazillion years when the sun goes Nova, or in somewhat fewer years when Christ comes again and heaven and earth pass away, Australia will be, at most, a memory. Your absolute then will be that once there was a planet with such and such a land mass.)

Have you ever read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason? Any Aristotle? The Timaeus of Plato? You seem to have an admirable commitment to articulating the Truth. I'd like to think that that commitment led you to interact with the great people who agree and disagree with you.

Have you read any C.S. Lewis? I'm thinking here especially of Mere Christianity. The reason I think of it is that Lewis's opening argument is about the relationship between the concept of moral law and the existence of God.

But if you think that God doesn't care about right and wrong, then, while we petty humans may be upset by it, it doesn't really matter in the final analysis. It's not verifiable, it's not of ultimate concern, (and, of course, I -- MOI! -- am above mundane concerns) so who cares? I shall do whatever I want, if I think I can get away with it. Yee Hah - Just as soon as I get me some Ben Gay and some Viagra, I'm headed for the Hootchie-Kootchie joint!

408 posted on 01/06/2005 12:06:09 PM PST by Mad Dawg (My P226 wants to teach you what SIGnify means ...)
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