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Author Topic:   Moral issues and the Justice system or something like that
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 129 of 171 (873804)
03-19-2020 4:29 PM
Reply to: Message 128 by Aussie
03-19-2020 11:49 AM


Re: Kill the Adults and Leave the Children?
Gosh, every time I have a thought about how biology or geology actually support creation or the Flood do you want me to bow and scrape to Science first, apologize profusely for a paragraph or so before I venture to have a thought about it? Would that absolve me of "preening arrogance?" Oh probably not, because merely having a contrary thought about it at all is the offense, right?
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 128 by Aussie, posted 03-19-2020 11:49 AM Aussie has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 132 by Aussie, posted 03-20-2020 9:24 AM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 130 of 171 (873805)
03-19-2020 4:36 PM
Reply to: Message 128 by Aussie
03-19-2020 11:49 AM


Re: Kill the Adults and Leave the Children?
We have to define the terms among ourselves...again God is evidently absent from this conversation as He is in every aspect of reality, or I would let Him talk. All we have is each other and the words we use with each other.
I'm trying to get you to state what you believe in no unequivocal terms so we all can get to the root of your morals, but I have a feeling you are afraid to show the true foundations of your moral system to even yourself, let alone the rest of us.
In other words you want to bully me into accepting YOUR view of things since you have no sense of the reality of God. But I do and what I've said is completely honest. It's not about me at all, it's about God's being God, and being God everything He does is right and He defines the rightness of His judgmnts. As I said. I don't understand them, they upset me as much as they upset anyone else, but I know they are right because they are from God. That's all I can say about it. You want me to accept your definition but your definition is false by my understanding.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 128 by Aussie, posted 03-19-2020 11:49 AM Aussie has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 131 of 171 (873807)
03-19-2020 5:04 PM
Reply to: Message 127 by Aussie
03-19-2020 11:21 AM


Re: Kill the Adults and Leave the Children?
Aussie writes:
Faith writes:
But no mention of a higher life? It doesn't necessarily make the people look different but there is an inner experience that many of us have that keeps us from going the direction you went. There is an inner peace "that passes understanding." It doesn't show on the outside.
Hi Faith, I understand what you are saying. That was my point when I said:
The way they are is normal, but they tell each other every week that they are different from the other outside groups...that they have more peace (The other groups cant even understand the peace we feel); more wisdom due to access to a mystical source of wisdom...
and:
And what you are left with is trying to sell an invisible product to someone...a product with no demonstrable reality, fruit, or objective benefit.
I'm not trying to sell anything here. The "invisible" or inner life is as solid as a rock to me.
I ran out of time and the patience of Job while I was typing to Phat or I would have clarified this point further. What I was alluding to was that pretty much all you guys have is inner stuff. Because on the outside, you are indistinguishable from anyone else. Same illness rate, same death rate, same divorce rate, same rate of sex before marriage, same rate of adultery, same rates of wealth and poverty.
Everything on the outside is identical. Literally identical.
I agree and that is very sad. The church is morally flabby these days and I'm one of them. Christians used to be willing to die before they could be seduced into illicit sex for instance, and divorce was absolutely out of the question. We might have a better record of healing if it weren't for our sins but that's not as important as the divorce and sex points. It's very sad, I agree, and if we weren't so morally flabby our prayers might be more effective for staving off such a thing as this current virus. As it is God hasn't completely abandoned us but I think our spiritual and moral weakness is evident and you are unfortunately only too right.
All you have is the inner stuff and it is no coincidence that the inner stuff can't be seen or verified. Like your invisible and hiding deity, all your fruit is also invisible and hiding. It's evident to all but those desperate to believe the lie.
But we don't try to persuade you about the invisible stuff. I only brought it up because of your former Christian life, wondering how you could have abandoned the powerful inner life I'm aware of. You seem to be claiming to have experienced it but then I have to wonder how you could have abandoned it.
I'm not accusing the average Christian of deliberate dishonesty, as someone who was able to escape from inside, I can understand the power of groupthink.
I'm not appealing to groupthink.
But these magical, invisible indescribable feelings you have are crutches used to prop up and give the illusion of reality to your magical fantasy.
Again I'm not trying to prove anything by them, but I must say that the way you talk about it makes me believe you never really had such experiences at all.
Again, Groupthink is powerful.
Groupthink has no power to save anyone. I'm not talking about groupthink but I'm also not trying to persuade you of the invisible life, merely wondering why you seem not to have experienced it considering the intense Christian life you describe having lived.
Aussie writes:
Faith writes:
You fasted for days, you lived the life, but why didn't the supernatural presence of God Himself take hold of you? Once you have that giving it up would be impossible I would think
The presence of God consumed me Faith. I was born and called to this. I spent hours alone with him daily. He was all I saw. He was all I wanted. I remember praying to Him to let me die before I ever became an atheist.
That turned out to be another unanswered prayer.
I prayed something similar, when I was a new believer in my mid forties, that He wouldn't let me lose Him again, the idea being that as a child I had at least a thin belief in Him that I gave up under pressure from a bunch of intellectual teachers and friends when I was fifteen. It was no avid Christian life, I didn't pray, I didn't try to live in any particular way, I hardly ever thought about God, it was just the barest belief in the back of my mind but that's what my prayer was about. And He did answer my prayer/
I know you believe that this is impossible to give up...you have to believe it at all costs, because it's all you have left.
I have no sense whatever of HAVING to believe this, I really do have a solid conviction that it is true. As I said, I could even choose Hell but I couldn't give up this rock solid conviction of the truth.
But I was able to find real freedom, and real...truly real, non-magical peace in the real world, and I'm a better man for it.
Well, what can I say? That's your life and your belief, it's not mine though for some reason you seem to be trying as hard as any Christian evangelist to persuade me of it.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 127 by Aussie, posted 03-19-2020 11:21 AM Aussie has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 133 by Aussie, posted 03-20-2020 10:05 AM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 134 of 171 (873842)
03-20-2020 10:31 AM
Reply to: Message 132 by Aussie
03-20-2020 9:24 AM


Re: Kill the Adults and Leave the Children?
Just asserting that I show no knowledge of this or that without any evidence I might try to answer, is very bad form and I can only assert in return that I knjow what I'm talking about. You are basically just saying the standard science is right, no need to argue it, just an assertion, and therefore I'm wrong. After all the work I've done on my arguments I find this blanket dismissal out of the blue obnoxious in the extreme. Who are you to speak for science or for anything? You just popped up out of the fog, having never said a word about any of it before. Yuck.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 132 by Aussie, posted 03-20-2020 9:24 AM Aussie has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 135 by JonF, posted 03-20-2020 10:40 AM Faith has replied
 Message 138 by Aussie, posted 03-20-2020 11:38 AM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 136 of 171 (873848)
03-20-2020 11:11 AM
Reply to: Message 133 by Aussie
03-20-2020 10:05 AM


This time around it's more offensive than hard to understand
I know, I know, Jesus did away with the stoning. He told the adulterous to "Go and sin no more."
But then he went and mandated Eternal torture for the adulterers. He lists that sin by name in Revelation as part of the group that will be cast into the Lake of Fire. So...are you going to commit to the proposition that young people and adults who have sex before and outside of marriage deserve to be burned alive and not allowed to die? You aren't going to answer this directly I think, but ... *sigh*
[
Unrepented sin is what Jesus is addressing in Revelation. He meant it when he said "Go and sin no more." People who continue in a sin without any repentance are among the wicked slated for the Lake of Fire. It's rather a long list, why pick out adultery?
Since the last post I made I came to the conclusion that you had been a true believer and gave it up. That's been hard for me to believe about anyone but this time the passage in Hebrews came to mind, about how if a person who has tasted the supernatural realities of the faith fall away he can't be renewed to repentance. First time I ever applied that to anyone. There are others here it probably applies to also, people who did have a genuine Christian experience and life and yet fell away. It takes my breath away.
I understand choosing sin over God and being willing to take the consequences, stupid though that is, but I don't understand how you could let your flawed moral standards judge God and reject Him on that flimsy basis. I resent your trying to pin your puny idea of morality on me as if that is the standard we should all adhere to. Others here do the same thing. I don't judge God because He's God and He made it all and He knows what He is doing. The report of His judgments should teach us about the terrors of the Moral Law. It's the height of foolishness to apply a self-centered human standard to God. "I am not like you" He has said. His judgments are hard for us to accept, and we wouldn't accept them if human beings came up with them, but . God's judgments are omniscient. And really they should teach us just how terrible are the operations of the Moral Law. We should learn that and learn from it the fear of God that is the beginning of wisdom, but instead fallen humanity has the effrontery to judge God by our ignorant vague and foggy standards. That's all you've done and it's all others here do. God isn't a human being, He's a terrifying Judge and yet a Judge who offers mercy to us fallen creatures. Oh well, there's no point.
I'm sorry really, I like you. Not so sure of that though after you denounced me in the previous post. THAT was extremely offensive. Perhaps this post is as offensive to you.
-----------------------------
AbE: I think we really don't have any appreciation of the real offense of sin to God, or to the Moral Law. It seems trivial to us. Sex outside marriage by young people seems trivial, right? What's the big deal? But we aren't in a position to see what such an offense does to the fabric of the Moral Law so to speak. We are creatures made in the image of God, we have enormous powers we hardly recognize. Every sin, every act against what I think of as the fabric of Moral Law, does something drastically destructive to that Moral Law. Such acts rend the spiritual universe. ALL sin does, llying, stealing, murder, coveting, as well as adultery in all its forms. Has to do with the nature of the Moral Law which we aren't in a position to judge. Our sins cause earthquakes and hurricanes, provoke all the judgments of God. And the Covid 19 virus.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 133 by Aussie, posted 03-20-2020 10:05 AM Aussie has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 141 by Aussie, posted 03-20-2020 12:57 PM Faith has replied
 Message 152 by GDR, posted 04-02-2020 7:59 PM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 137 of 171 (873849)
03-20-2020 11:33 AM
Reply to: Message 135 by JonF
03-20-2020 10:40 AM


Re: Kill the Adults and Leave the Children?
Whut?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 135 by JonF, posted 03-20-2020 10:40 AM JonF has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 140 by JonF, posted 03-20-2020 12:16 PM Faith has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 139 of 171 (873851)
03-20-2020 11:44 AM
Reply to: Message 138 by Aussie
03-20-2020 11:38 AM


Re: Kill the Adults and Leave the Children?
I came here originally in 2001 but wasn't here at all for nine or ten of those 19 years.
Since you admit you don't feel qualified to talk about science, commenting on what I've argued is particularly offensive.
When I say you just popped up out of the fog, I mean on the current topic.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 138 by Aussie, posted 03-20-2020 11:38 AM Aussie has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 142 of 171 (873877)
03-20-2020 7:05 PM
Reply to: Message 141 by Aussie
03-20-2020 12:57 PM


Re: This time around it's more offensive than hard to understand
Good grief, you object to my concluding that you did believe as a true Christian but gave it up??? As opposed to thinking you never really believed? Speaking of course from the Christian perspective. Oh well, I guess I can't say anything at all. One would think Christian theology would be the standard, but you'd rather make it up for yourself?
You continue to talk as if God were a mere human being instead of the Spirit who permeates every bit of the space around us.
The flawed moral standard I referred to wasn't specifically yours, it's the human standard since we are so unable to grasp God's.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 141 by Aussie, posted 03-20-2020 12:57 PM Aussie has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 144 by Aussie, posted 03-20-2020 8:01 PM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 143 of 171 (873879)
03-20-2020 7:59 PM
Reply to: Message 141 by Aussie
03-20-2020 12:57 PM


Re: This time around it's more offensive than hard to understand
People who continue in a sin without any repentance are among the wicked slated for the Lake of Fire. It's rather a long list, why pick out adultery?
Actually, I made quite a long list back in post 127. You are the one who picked extra-marital sex out the long list, so I went with it. I agree that the list is very long, and the punishment for all of them is death. Death and eternal burning.
I took a look at that message and don't see a list of sins, rather a list of what you say makes Christians like everybody else. I picked out the two sins on it, divorce and adultery. But the list in Revelation is a list of sins. I'd have to go look that up now.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 141 by Aussie, posted 03-20-2020 12:57 PM Aussie has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 145 of 171 (873881)
03-20-2020 8:13 PM
Reply to: Message 144 by Aussie
03-20-2020 8:01 PM


You can't judge God from our perspective
I NEVER "run away," I don't know what gets interpreted that way but it's tiresome, maybe just that I think a discussion has come to an end but the other person doesn't? Or I get bored with it or distracted by something else? That there's just no more to say? That I've said my bit and the other person has said his and what else is there? Or sometimes I don't have an answer, and that ends it? I don't know. But it's true that I shouldn't say a conversation is over when it may not be. It just seemed that we'd reached an impasse.
Your list of moral examples would be morally wrong speaking of human beings but God is not on our level. He sees into the inner workings of our minds. My comment about flawed morality was general but since you insist on that list the point is that our morality can't apply to God even if it applies to us because we don't have His perspective on what sin is and what consequences are deserved. One thing we can't see is how sin accumulates over time and generations. All we see is the present and don't see that very well. I really don't understand how you or anyone can speak of God in such broad human terms.
I really don't have a problem judging reality at all by the way.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 144 by Aussie, posted 03-20-2020 8:01 PM Aussie has not replied

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 151 of 171 (874460)
04-02-2020 4:00 PM


Another Netflix Documentary: "Making of a Murderer."
It drags some, at least in my experience, because it's so detailed. By the time I got through Part I I was worn out, but also sick with the horror of how the system can convict two innocent men all from "the best of intentions." I cried about the boy in the first part of this thread, now I'm crying about this horrific miscarriage of justice. It can make you pretty disgusted with humanity. At least it did me. I'm about to start on Part II, which wasn't in the works at the end of the first part. I'm hoping for a happy ending but I hoped all through Part I for a happy ending and it never came so who knows.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 153 of 171 (874476)
04-03-2020 4:43 AM
Reply to: Message 152 by GDR
04-02-2020 7:59 PM


Re: Judging God or Biblical Misunderstanding?
Y'all remind me of the cadre of authorities who "proved" the quilt of the two men in the series I mention above. They made it up out of whole cloth but they believed it themselves. You think it's *MY* view of God you are judging, rather than God himself, without caring for half a second whether maybe *MY* view of God is true. You don't care because you are so absolutely convinced of your own view. In fact you could say that for everyone forever. Could say it about your view and everyone else's forever. No such thing as actual objective truth so why do we bother at all? Oh it's *THEIR* view of God, THEREFORE it's not the true God. What kind of reasoning is that? Utterly self-indulgent self-satisfied nonsense, that's all, just like all the men who convicted the two hapless absolutely innocent men in the Netflex series "Making a Murderer."
This happens all the time at EvC. In fact I kept thinking that as I watched this series. There is no point in arguing anything here from my point of view, because everyone here already *knows* the truth -- about absolutely everything I say too. Not one thing I say in defense of my own political or religious opinions could ever be true although you all think all I I have to do is produce the evidence. Ha Ha. You don't understand the logic or the psychology of what you are all doing here.
Sorry, what I said about God is what God said about Himself, I didn't make it up, yes I know how you can all make a case against me, I know oh so well how you can all make a case against me, and really there is nothing I could ever say to persuade you otherwise. There is no debate here at all, debate is impossible because of the entrenched mental set. I keep reading Tangle and you on the other thread and although I am more persuaded of your point of view than his in that context I know you don't stand a chance of convincing him of it. I don't stand a chance of convincing you of the absolute truth here either. Yes the truth of who God really is. So there's no point in trying.
Another thought is that it's very similar to what is done to Trump every single day by the Democrats and the media. I am allowing that they all believe their own crap but perhaps that is too big an allowance. In any case they create a fictional view of everything he says to convince others. Ugh, it turns my stomach.
Besides, all this is really off topic. So was the whole discussion with Aussie. The only thing I'd want to discuss IF anything is to be discussed here at all, is either of the two films I mentioned, both about egregious and extremely sad miscarriages of justice.
Cheers.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 152 by GDR, posted 04-02-2020 7:59 PM GDR has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 155 by GDR, posted 04-03-2020 11:38 AM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 154 of 171 (874478)
04-03-2020 7:03 AM


Continuing with "Making of a Murderer."
You want to think the justice system works, that where it makes mistakes they follow principles that will lead them to correct them and in the end it will all work out. Isn't that how the Founders envisioned the American government? It was to be a government for a "moral people" as John Adams put it, saying it would be "inadequate for any other," but it was also realistic, designed so that one influence would function as a corrective to others, which is a way of dealing with the fallen human nature, the knowledge that we are all selfish, subject to bias, full of self-seeking inclinations that should first of all be checked by internal standards -- that's the "moral people" thing, but when that isn't enough, by the influence of others.
When the whole system breaks down, when we are no longer a moral people, when the whole system allows for ths kind of corruption that railroaded these two men for crimes they did not commit, what then?
Well, I'm into Part 2 of this series and another investigator has finally become involved and she is a determined systematic investigator and I hope for the best. But she might not have taken his case. She almost didn't. People who could have helped him, procedures that could have helped him, offices and agencies that would have helped him, failed him over and over. It's easy to suppose that he might never have received any help at all and perhaps there are many who never do.
The film itself is the biggest help but for the most part all it does is record the horrible miscarriage of justice which just seems endless. Even with that huge help he might never have received any really useful help. I still don't know where this is going to go, again I'm optimistic that it will have a good outcome, especially since he finally has someone who has both the expertise and the motivation to help him, but that good outcome should have come many times in the preceding years and didn't.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 156 of 171 (874500)
04-03-2020 4:50 PM
Reply to: Message 155 by GDR
04-03-2020 11:38 AM


Re: Judging God or Biblical Misunderstanding?
That is so annoying I have to keep this short or I'll blow a gasket. Any "functamentalist" or biblical Christian who proposed stoning people for adultery or for anything at all would not be a fundamentalist or biblical Christian. It takes a biblical/theological illiterate to think such a thing. The source of any violent punishment of any kind of sin at all, and most particularly disbelief in Allah, would be Islam. Go take a flying leap.. iknto a bown of marshmallows or something.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 155 by GDR, posted 04-03-2020 11:38 AM GDR has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 157 by vimesey, posted 04-03-2020 11:37 PM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 158 of 171 (874503)
04-04-2020 12:29 AM
Reply to: Message 157 by vimesey
04-03-2020 11:37 PM


Re: Judging God or Biblical Misunderstanding?
Standard Protestant theology says what I said, and high profile Muslim leaders say what I said about Islam. Which is what I already said anyway.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 157 by vimesey, posted 04-03-2020 11:37 PM vimesey has not replied

  
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