Posted on 06/17/2002 3:10:50 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Well, it's a genuinely hard question for Christians. But because it is so is not a reason to reject the wisdom in the Bible. (It's hard, so I have no need to find the right answer. I can do whatever I want.) The Catholic Church, as an example, only excuses killing in the face of a 'just war-' that is, when one is brutally attacked by killers and you need to defend yourself and your family - and after all other attempts at making peace have been foreclosed. That stance has much support in the Bible. The 10 Commandments are pretty strong laws for most - but it is a summary, and it doesn't mean that thoughtful,loving and God-oriented people shouldn't use their brains to try and understand what God truly wants. And is it really so horrible that the Catholic Church would try to promote peace and disdain killing, but that it makes an exception when your family is brutally attacked? You don't have to agree with that, but it's an honorable attempt to do the right thing.
Well, Jesus Christ, as an example, strongly upheld the need to follow God's laws - but also using common sense in doing so. Thus he chastized those who criticized doing good works on the Sabbath. And actually, what better way to keep the Sabbath holy than by doing good works?
As I said before, what you presented were the measurements of a "metal swimming pool" not the value of pi.
As a philsophical outlook, yes conservatives tend to urge others to help each other by voluntary means. However, that is not to say that in reality liberals are any less likely to help voluntarily. There are a lot of hypocrits in the ranks of both liberals and conservatives.
For my own part, I will freely admit I am unlikely to be quick to help anyone other than friends and family. I'm not down at the soup line dishing it up for the homeless. Therefore I can't be calling on anyone to do that. But if they like to do that, more power to them.
Well, if everyone made a good faith attempt to follow the path of Jesus Christ (including in those situations where a clear and precise answer of what to do may not be present in the Bible), our world would be immeasurably and unfathomably better. God (and Christ) gave us strong general guidelines, which we don't even bother following anyway.
But liberals often have an unfounded and misplaced faith in the government to solve societal problems. All too frequently, such government interventions fail disastrously. And then further, when they have clearly failed, liberals tend not to be able to admit such, and to clean up the mess they've created.
That's right. Some folks refuse to dig a little deeper to understand the text. They would rather push the same old line, some probably knowing it's wrong in an attempt to further their agenda. So much for objectivity.
Actually you could. If you were in a closed box of non-zero height, you could measure the time of fall of a dropped object from the ceiling, versus your weight on a scale.
In a gravity field, the time of fall would be slightly longer than in an acceleration frame -- for the same scale measured body weight.
Gravity and acceleration are only "equivalent" at points of zero dimension. Beyond that they diverge in behavior/intensity.
But which makes for a better society? That in which one is implored and pushed (by society and by God) to do good works for others (including strangers), or one in which we send off a check to the government bureaucracy to do good works for us, and then sit back and wash our hands clean? As an atheist, you have no powerful presence in your life (that you discern, anyway) pushing you to give of yourself to others. I do not have that luxury.
Have you ever heard of an approximation, or rough measurement? Have you ever heard of rounding to the nearest unit? Asking the Biblical value of pi is like asking what is the length of an adult male's forearm from the point of the elbow to the tips of the extended fingers.
And besides, why is a rounding of of pi to 5 decimal points the correct reportage instead of to the nearest cubit? This criticism of an ancient writer's choice of where to stop rounding pi is as ridiculous as me saying that your value of pi is incorrect because it really should be reported as 3.14159265358979. Whoever wrote I Kings had to round pi somewhere or else he would have been writing until he died and he wouldn't have been able to finish the rest of I Kings.
Cordially,
That makes those advocates ignorant -- it doesn't make them uncaring or unhelpful. You really can't tell who is a decent person in normal life by knowing their voting record. Abstract philosophical thought is quite different than actually being there to help friends, neighbors, family, or strangers. I'm not big on helping strangers. I admit it. But it has nothing to do with my political philosophy of non-initiation of aggression. Seperate things, really.
Do you do it because you love people, or because you fear hell? That's an honest question, not a put down of any sort. I think religion is largely motivated out of fear of the hearafter, all lip service to love nothwithstanding.
BUt I haven't said that. I've said that liberals put more stock in government to solve societal problems than conservatives do. I do think conservatives are smarter people, on average, not better people. I also said that those who believe in God have a stronger impetus to do good in their lives, as they believe it's a requirement for them. Atheists can do whatever they want (good or no good), as it conveniences them.
Not always true. 25 Democrats voted last year to allow babies to die in hospitals if they were fully and healthily born by accident in a failed abortion procedure. (The mom paid for the abortion, and we're going to give her a dead baby, no matter what.) To me, those were NOT decent people voting for that.
I do it because I believe God loves me deeply, and I love Him. When he tells me I need to do something for my own good, I trust Him in that. The same way a son may take the advice of a loving father on the value of the father's wisdom and love - even if the son is inconvenienced by such.
Even by your generous error margin, 1 Kings is off by over a full cubit.
And the point is that Deutsch (the guy I was talking to) was saying that EVERY word in the Bible was LITERALLY true and completely without error of any kind.
When someone makes a claim like that, ANY counter-example proves him wrong.
Religious people fear becoming bad people, and distancing themselves from God by falling into bad and evil acts. Such distancing, on our own accord, IS hell. But Christians believe God works very hard to keep us from doing that, and is willing to forgive bad things we do as long as we truly repent and try our hardest to be better people.
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