Why Would God Care?

I guess the next thought I would have is just that there simply may be no reason, even Biblically, for such a taboo. Most of the masturbation taboo comes from a misinterpretation of the story of Onan. Onan was killed by God when he "pulled-out" while he was performing his traditional duties as the eldest brother-in-law to his brother's widow. But the Onan was not killed for "spilling the seed", he was killed for disobeying God.Beyond that there is nothing in the Bible even close to the sentiment, "Thou shalt not touch thy thingi except to pee" that some ultra-conservatives seem to want to uphold. Hence you have all this fictional medical "side-effects" of masturbation that were invented in the past such as loosing an ounce of semen is equivalent to loosing a half a pint of blood. (GO see the movie Kinsey if you haven't already).The "Best" argument I could see from a Biblical perspective against masturbation would just be that it is a lustful activity and Christians are commanded not to be lustful. It is debatable I suppose.In the end, there may be no reason to stop masturbating as long as you are in the right frame of mind.Pastor Orders Men to Only Think About Jesus While Masturbating

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

To think: When I was a teen, I was so close to coming up with one of these theories myself, but after a crucial moment, I lost all interest in it.

..Smoked a lonely cigarette and drifted off to sleep...

I've always said that the Commandments were intended for our benefit, not God's.Our actions come with their own built-in consequences. If you sleep with your neighbour's wife, he'll kill you. Then your brother will kill him back, and so on....I don't see any reason for God to pile more punishment on top of the inherent consequences. And I don't see any reason for God to concern Himself with actions that have no negative consequences.The bigger God is, the less our actions can "hurt" Him.The bigger God is, the more it's all about us.

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Sorry, I got caught up in the 'details'.Maybe we are not more important than anything else. The Bible says that the liles of the field and the birds of the air are provided for. But let's just say that we are that blindingly clueless. That this cluelessness is a product of our free will and intelligence, which God likes about us, because we are more like Him in those areas. So, God has some tender affection for us or something like this.

No, Dan....we are no more important in the grand scheme of things than refrigerator mold! Go ahead and make all the kids you want. You can be proud of your special little rugrats in the context of your own feelings...as if refrigerator mold ever had any feelings!We are nothing to God. Thats a cool philosophy! In fact, lets take God out of the theory! We are nothing and yet deep down, we think that we are evolving into some rather special mold, if we say so ourselves!

Why on earth should taking xian god out of the picture have anything to do with taking the odd belief that we are evolving into something special?It is us who are interested in us and we are right to be so interested.We have only the destiny we create for ourselves, not some predetermined special destiny.Sorry for going a bit OT.

Oh, the specific taboo isn't even really important. We could go for something equally meaningless, like making a graven image, or having sex out wedlock.For that matter, it could be taken up to the point of wondering why god would care if we were killing one another left and right, but I can't even get past the little stuff.I think Creavolution's idea in post fifteen is probably the closest; yes, you have to believe that we really are that important, when stacked up against everything else in the entire universe.

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"I know some of you are going to say 'I did look it up, and that's not true.' That's 'cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut."
-Stephen Colbert

If I raise children who know that they are extremely important to me in the context of my own feelings, and know they have the potential to be important to mankind from its perspective, I will consider that a job well done.However, Larni nails it. Of course we're important to us. We are us. The actions of our daily lives have a great deal of impact on... wait for it... our daily lives.Similarly, I'm willing to wager that the production of a somewhat musty smell is rather important to the daily life of a refrigerator mold. But frankly, from our perspective, mold is a slight inconvenience that we spritz with a bottle and forget about soon after.Why would God see us differently, if he saw us at all? Okay. You don't like it. Why doesn't it make sense?I don't personally think there's anything especially depressing about realizing that we are, essentially, a virus with shoes. But whether I care or not wouldn't really change anything.

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"I know some of you are going to say 'I did look it up, and that's not true.' That's 'cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut."
-Stephen Colbert

Yep...and that includes the First one...that we are to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength! If little Jimmy realized this, he would be thinking less of Suzy 24 hours a day and focus his passions on the Deity! I'm sure that God overlooks the daily wank or two when little Jimmy is growing and learning to fulfill his destiny. Its when Jimmy buys the SI Be'once edition and spends every waking moment worshiping scantily clad women that the Deity may realize that Jimmy will never worship Him and instead will worship women until he makes himself a family, gets married, and spends the rest of his life making a hundred thousand dollars a year and worshiping football on Sundays, alcohol when available and that elusive bag of skunk weed that he and his wife smoke before having sex on Friday night!The second commandment, Love thy neighbor as thyself, also goes out the window when Jimmy, now grown and making a hundred thou a year, pretends to care about the rest of humanity by recycling his bottles and cans, voting Democratic, and joining together with the other educated elite of the world and affirming that we make our own purpose in life! Viva Humanity!

It makes perfect sense to someone who honestly doesn't believe that God ever could exist or..if God did exist that He would be concerned with us individually.If we are indeed a virus with shoes, it would justify the fact that we raped this planet of natural resources and are now searching the heavens for another place to trash. The problem with many people is that they have no idea how nice God actually is and how approachable he is. Any good Father is never too busy for their kids!God took a nanosecond to make a rock so big that He couldnt lift it...had a good laugh...then uncreated the same rock and looked at his laptop. Seeing little Jimmy busily pounding away, God knew that boys would be boys, yet He was concerned that Jimmy was gratifying his carnal desires so continuously.In fact....as God scanned the humans, He noticed that everyone was ignoring their spiritual development and were instead stuffing their faces with food, pulling levers on slot machines like lab rats, watching each other, and busily wasting away their waking moments serving themselves!If you were God, what would you do? Let the mold do its thing? Eliminate the mold? OR....perhaps you may foreknow that these humans may someday catch the vision that endless pursuits of pleasure for pleasures sake is not the best way to fulfill their collective destiny.

Sure does. And now I'm asking why it doesn't make sense to someone who does believe that God exists and gives a rat's ass.In other words, "why do you believe what you believe?" How do you figure? Raping the planet of natural resources is stupid from our perspective. It hurts us. God isn't required to think that's a bad idea. Given the number of times I have eliminated mold, the answer seems fairly obvious. This presumes a collective destiny of great importance, and is therefore tantamount to saying, "Yes, we are that important on a cosmic scale!"It also, of course, begs the question, "what destiny might that be?"Edited by Dan Carroll, : clarity

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"I know some of you are going to say 'I did look it up, and that's not true.' That's 'cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut."
-Stephen Colbert

Yeah, grownup Jimmy sure is a dick with all that... recycling?

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"I know some of you are going to say 'I did look it up, and that's not true.' That's 'cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut."
-Stephen Colbert

What does it mean to "worship" God?Is it just mindless repetitions?

quote:

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Chaplain: Let us praise God. O Lord...
Congregation: O Lord...
Chaplain: ...Ooh, You are so big...
Congregation: ...ooh, You are so big...
Chaplain: ...So absolutely huge.
Congregation: ...So absolutely huge.
Chaplain: Gosh, we're all really impressed down here, I can tell You.
Congregation: Gosh, we're all really impressed down here, I can tell You.
Chaplain: Forgive us, O Lord, for this, our dreadful toadying, and...
Congregation: And barefaced flattery.
Chaplain: But You are so strong and, well, just so super.
Congregation: Fantastic.
Humphrey: Amen.
Congregation: Amen. link

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Or is it doing what he wants us to do? Well... no."Our benefit" means loving thy neighbour as thyself.
"Our benefit" means our benefit, not "my benefit".We can not benefit God. We can only benefit ourselves (including our neighbours).God might care if Jimmy is rich while his neighbours are poor, but He doesn't care about anything Jimmy does that doesn't effect his neighbours.

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Lets look at the big picture, Dan. Basically, humanity can either worship itself or worship something outside itself. We are intensely loyal on a micro level. Parents love their kids to death! They become quite competitive around other parents, however. We thus have the "keep up with the Jones" mentality and have become a consumer driven society.Then lets look at our country. We can gush altruism all we want, but a deeper look will reveal that we compete with the rest of the world for the right to have the cheapest gas and the means to keep up with the Jones. Globally, even assuming that humanity overcame our competition
among ourselves, we would still seek to ensure our survival and comfort above that of any other aliens in the universe.Humans are selfish by nature!We make our own commandments.