Faith writes:
I understand your point, Mike, but unfortunately my conduct isn't always that exemplary, although lately I've been doing a lot better. And I added "hurt" because it does, and maybe you feel you have a choice about how things affect you but I don't. If it hurts it hurts.
Interesting that you mention a guy whose name I know only from seeing it at Evolution Fairytale. Did you expect me to recognize it from there?
I see a new member of evolution-fairytale with the name, "Faith", I have provisionally assumed it is you. Of course it may well not be, but I am guessing. Usually my guesses prove correct but not always.
And I disagree that "if it hurts it hurts". I do know what you mean though, when someone is mean-spirited and they say something that shocks, confuses, flabbergasts, hurts initially, yes, it hurts initially, but then we have a choice, we can literally make a decision to not let it fester. I speak about a FACT because I can remember times when I let things that hurt fester and I can remember times when I chose to let them go.
So then, logically speaking, is something "just hurts" emotionally, and it can't be helped, then how was I able to, "not hurt" those times when I specifically made a choice to let it go?
Mike Summers is a psychologist who has not experienced anger hatred or felt hurt by insults for 35 years. His story is complicated, he is a man with no legs who went through something tremendously difficult and self-taught himself a Christian philosophy based on an astonishingly practical and factual basis - that we are deceived when we believe the lie that the atmosphere has control over us and when we believe that people have control of our emotions. We cause them ourselves and are duped into believing that other people cause them.
Exhibit A:
"I beat my wife because the dumb t*a* put sugar in my coffee, she made me get made because I told her twenty times to never do that, an f-ing cat could have obeyed my instructions."
In this example, we can actually see that normal civilised people don't beat people to a pulp for making basic errors, PROVING logically that in fact the real reason he beat her up had nothing to do with the sugar in the coffee. He made a choice to think that "she shouldn't have done X so the punishment is just", then he FED that deceptive thought and EMOTED to the point of getting so angry he hit her.
In the garden of Eden this was part of the first deception, that the first people would only be happy if they could obtain X, which Satan proposed as a deception. In fact the correct response would have been to say, "I am totally happy, I don't believe a piece of fruit can affect my level of peace or the desire for something, or that desire should run my brains."
Faith, you can go on hurting yourself at forums like these. Everyone knows what forums like these are, they are spiders-webs to catch creation-flies.
All I'm saying is, have you ever tried purposefully choosing to say to yourself (thoughtfulness) "I am jettisoning this insult, I immediately forgive, I laugh at this feeble taunt, why on earth would I make myself hurt because of this?"
Just think about it - we are the ones that make that initial emotional disturbance turn into a terrible nightmare we create. All it is, is a word, spoken by a person that is in their sins, it is expected nehaviour, as a creationists at places like these, you are regarded as an ostricised dog-turd and so am I, to their debased minds, we don't even count as human, and to their minds it is justified if we are treated badly, "because they don't accept evolution, which is OURAGEOUS and deserves punishment" (pride and self-righteousness)
I am not saying all evolutionists are like that, some are obviously more naturally nice and more intelligent, and they stay away from the dirty side of debate, but a lot of people are obviously not all that smart or knowledgeable so they have to depend on insults and poor behaviour.