Seasons

Yes, JB, but it sold considerably less than his second, more popular book: "So you're going to hell..."

And who's to say that God isn't just an embodiment of moral principles that were inherent in reality before he existed? (Which leads to another thought: How can God create himself? Perhaps reality is founded on paradox and there's no point in trying to understand it.)

As for God "forcing" us to love him...he isn't, he's just giving us an ultimatum. If he REALLY wanted to force us to love him, we wouldn't even know we COULDN'T love him.

First day of summer. Thank You, Whomever.

See, there's just so much there we are never going to agree on. You're presenting religious doctrine as fact, and premising your other beliefs on this one that human beings in and of themselves are vile and incapable of worthiness or even self-improvement without God. There's simply no way I can accept that. And while I fully respect your right to believe what you will, I personally would characterize this perspective as both needless and destructive. It includes denigrating (not merely humbling) the self and placing all one's hopes in a thing one cannot know exists. Far more rewarding to me anyway is what we say in my personal church, which is that human beings are born neutral and become what they make of themselves.

My real point you stated just so, Eugene: there is an objective standard of right and wrong to which even God, if God existed, would be bound, and by which we (and He) may be judged. This objective standard does not "come from" anywhere, it is the natural result of certain facts and the emergence of consciousness capable of making choices.

Mr. Crab,

Truth is not relative. Maybe what I believe is wrong, but it is not neither right nor wrong.

So you say that we are what we make of ourselves. How much power over ourselves do you really think we have? Can you make yourself never tell a lie, never have a thought that is lustful, or covetous, or selfish, or otherwise evil?

OnyxFlame,

God didn't create Himself; He has always existed. That's not much easier to understand, but there it is.

My mastery of myself may have practical and theoretical limits (for instance, I'm pretty sure I can't make myself levitate). From a moral perspective, one's worth as a moral agent is determined by the choices one makes and the effort one makes to act morally, not by perfect moral action. In real life we often have conflicting moral claims upon us. I am not responsible for the initial conditions, only for my response to them.

If *I* can't make myself "never tell a lie, never have a thought that is lustful, covetous, selfish, or otherwise evil" (not that I would agree with you any of those things is of necessity evil), then no one else can make me.

He's got a point, eugene.

Eugene, I'm going to ask you something I wish someone had asked me ten years ago: can you conceive of the possibility that reality MAY really and truly be different from everything you were ever taught, everything you are afraid not to believe in? Not IS it different, but might it be different? Can you imagine that possibility, if only for the sake of honestly putting yourself in the other person's shoes?

The fact that we have lustful thoughts and the ability to lie does not make us inherently full of sin. It is only because we have these capabilites within us and choose not to that we can have anything like morality. If we were not capable of sin we could never choose to do good. Without that capacity to choose we are not moral or immoral, but amoral.

I'll take sex and money over philosophy any day.

pick a religion where lustful thoughts are not a sin. There are so many other sins it would be more useful to avoid.