Posted on 08/30/2002 10:31:06 AM PDT by thinktwice
That is just plain stupid for at least two reasons
a. The human mind was designed to think and make judgement on everything one perceives.
b. No person can blank out the use of their judgemental capabilites when they know they're seeing evil within another human.
You can forget God when judging adultery.
Wedding ceremonies typically include a fidelity pledge, and violating that pledge is the evil act.
Christians are notoriously hypocritcal when it comes to sex, and that is probably because they've been guaranteed instant "forgiveness" from God. Meanwhile, the truly injured party in an adultery situation, might well go to Christian Hell for not forgiving the adulterous one.
Your Christian sex ethic forgiveness beliefs are irrational.
We seem to agree on Clinton's blatant immorality, but you seem to think that selfishness is wrong.
Is it evil to selfishly care for your own family first?
Ever been to Hawaii? Christian's ruined the place.
While I'm at it, let's concnetrate on the absurdities in your list of Christian sins. Selfishness -- The antithesis of Altruism, where altruism is the ethics of selflessness and that ethics behind Christianlity and all communist/fascist slave-state societies.
Lust -- My dictionary says that lust is a desire to gratify the senses and includes sexual desire. Where is there sin in that?
Pride -- There are many things that I am rightfully proud of; so please explain why that is evil.
Greed -- People that work, achieve, and prosper are not greedy; but those that covet achievement and prosperity are generally those using the term "greed."
In short -- your Christian epithet "sins" are often no more than expressions of hatred of the good for being the good.
Best source I have is Mitchener's "Hawaii," an historical novel, yes; but convincing regarding Hawaii being an earthly paradise before sailors and Christian missionaries arrived.
The diseased sailors ruined the native's health, and the missionaries did even more damage in twisting their healthy minds.
Wow, you really are confused, thinktwice. Communism was radically different from Christianity. Why? Again, because communist altruism was about doing what was best for the commune, the individual be damned (or murdered, or tortured, or not allowed to believe as he saw fit). Christianity is about improving the self (to become more like Christ), knowing that the commune will improve as well. You have a distorted view that they are alike because they both have to do with 'altruism', i.e., helping others. But communist altruism and Christian altruism are radically and totally different. Again, communism insisted on improving society by forcing people to behave in a certain way. Christianity pleads and encourages with people to behave in a certain way - but does not force them to do so. Christianity respects (and loves) the individual. Communism has no respect at all for the individual. If you can't see the difference on something so basic as that, then there's not much hope you'll understand other more fine distinctions.
Every day, millions of men lie, cheat, deceive, tell women they love them (when they do not), are committed to them (when they are not) and betray in order to get sex. In this sense, lust is sinful. Lust is also sinful in other ways, but I don't think you'll understand them. But you need to remember something!!! You and I start out with different moral axioms. There is no way to reconcile many of them. Christians believe that not only did God provide for us these moral axioms, but that they are also written deep in our hearts (as we were created by God). Finding that resonance for many is quite difficult, however.
Christ's point, oft stated, was that greed (the love of money) often obscures people's minds from doing what is good and right. And it does. Which is better in your mind - spending your next $1000 on that new audio system you really want, or using it to help someone truly in need (like a starving kid in Africa)?
Again, you're referencing your moral axioms in labeling things good and bad. You asked what Christian moral axioms were, and I told you. I'm not here to argue the relative merits of your moral axioms vs. mine. There's no way to rationally do that, without both of us agreeing to some set of intrinsic moral axioms. As an atheist, you might have any set of moral axioms - Rand's, or Stalin's, or Nietzche's, or Pol Pot's. Whatever they are, it's clear they are significantly different from mine.
C'mon, thinktwice. I don't vouch for everyone who says they're Christian and commit evil acts (according to even their own moral axioms). Christians played a huge role in ridding the United States of slavery - something they did in accord with their own moral axioms. Can you not see the difference. In short, not everyone who claims to be Christian follows Christian morality.
No Christian is guaranteed instant forgiveness from God. One must truly repent (that is, be truly sorry about what one has done, and be truly committed to not repeating a sinful act). Christians who assume they can do whatever they want, and that all they have to do is go through the motions of asking forgiveness from God are NOT forgiven. Christianity IS quite rational, as Prysson pointed out. Again, Christian morality (its moral axioms) are different from Rand's arbitrary morality. That does not make Christianity irrational.
Christ's point about judging a person (as opposed to evil acts a person commits) have to do with our inability to truly understand what is going on within the person's mind. Here's a mundane example. My son was bullied for some time on the playground. The bully did some really nasty things to my son (who is no pushover, by the way). There's no question that the bully's acts were wrong (in Christian morality). We later found out that the kid's parents had been divorced, and that he was being sexually abused by a boyfriend of the mother. What the kid did wasn't right, yet Christ would ask us to not judge, given that the kids acting out may have been the only way he could cope with the true evil (in Christian morality) that had enveloped him. Christians leave God and Christ to judge people. We judge acts. You don't have to accept this, as you've chosen your own (or Rand's) moral axioms. But certainly you should be able (I hope.) to understand it. And actually, Christ does ask us to try our hardest to blank out blanket judgments of people themselves. It's hard, but it becomes easier with practice.
Descartes was a geometrician. He found only in mathematics and geometry the certainty that he required. Therefore, he used the methods of geometry to think about the world ... Following his geometrical model, Descartes proceeds to doubt everything -- de omnibus dubitandum. He will suspend belief in the knowledge he learned from childhood, all those things "which I allowed myself in youth to be persuaded without having inquired into their truth." Doubt will be his method, a deliberate strategy for proceeding toward certainty. (Descartes is a doubter not by nature but by necessity. What he wants is secure understanding so he can stop doubting.)
Descartes finds that he has no trouble doubting the existence of real objects/events -- our senses too easily deceive us. And we can doubt the existence of a supernatural realm of reality -- figments and fantasies are too often conjured by our native imaginations. But now his geometrical model pays off: in trying to doubt everything, he discovers something he can't doubt. What he can't doubt is that he is doubting. Obviously, I exist if I doubt I exist. My doubt that I exist proves that I exist, for I have to exist to be able to doubt. Therefore I can't doubt that I exist. Hence, there is at least one fact in the universe that is beyond doubt. "I am, I exist, is necessarily true each time that I pronounce it, ot that I mentally conceive it."
Descartes thus becomes the author of the most famous phrase in Western philosophy: Cognito ergo sum, or, in his original french, Je pense, donc je suis -- "I think, therefore I exist."
The ethical ideal in both Communism and Christianity is self sacrifice, aka altruism. QED
The subject was lust, and you immediately switch it to lying, cheating, and deception -- Nice try.
Why do you ask; could it be that you want to judge my ethics?
The best moral aspect about how I spend my next $1000 is that I earned the $1000, and the second best moral story will be about my righteous indignation over any moral judgement you may have about how it's spent.
What makes you think I'm an atheist?
Why is it that Christians often revert to slander in debate?
Have you ever read the 22 page essay titled "The Objectivist Ethics"?
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