Seasons

I think dogs have some sense of right and wrong. Do you have any dogs?

Ladydyke, you've given up. You've decided life is purposeless. Not all of us agree with you. Though it certainly lends itself to becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Why not ask and try to answer the question, "what can I do with this existence?"

You've confused me a little bit because it seems like you say in one breath that people have not become more moral over time and in the next that people have become more moral since Jesus came along. I think you'd find there have been lots of good people in a great many societies, and I certainly wouldn't lay the notion of "rule of law" at Jesus's feet -- after all, the Law was something he cast off, no? Let's not give him more than his due, historically at least.

As to the question Corwin answered, I think three factors contribute to Christianity being constantly under scrutiny and outside criticism (I'm not sure it gets the number one spot though -- for example, Islam's been getting rather a lot of attention lately, you may have notice! ):
1) Christianity is the most successful (in terms of numbers) religion in the Western world. So it's omnipresent. Even in this country which is supposed to have separation of church and state it is impossible to avoid being reminded at every turn that this is a Christian country.
2) Most denominations of Christianity place a high value of proclamation, "spreading the word", and conversion. When you put yourself in someone's face like that, you should not be surprised when they look at you.
3) Perhaps any dominant faction would have behaved as badly, but rather a lot of wickedness has been done in the name of Christianity and with the blessing of the Church. When you have been the victim of torture, political and economic disenfranchisement, religious persecution, rape and foul murder (as have many who were unfortunate enough to not convert when the Christians came to town) under the banner of the Cross, you carry some resentments forward through decades or even centuries. But it's OK, you *told* us about Christianity, so our "blood" is not on your hands.

Goodness has also been done under the same banner. But people tend to remember harm done them. Christianity's belief in its religious superiority I think is rivaled in modern history only by Islam.

My personal beef with Christian philosophy, if you haven't gathered by now, is the notion of damnation and reward and that, though I understood Jesus to have shown wisdom in prolaiming that it is not what is outside but what is inside that counts, to me this outside-placement of inside-states creates a psychological disconnect between the good and the just, and places the primitive childhood understanding of the world on a pedestal. In the present case, I just don't understand how a person can be moral or just if he does not generate these qualities in himself. How can you understand these if you cannot produce them, and these are things that I don't think exist if they are not understood by the perpetrator. The judge who rules correctly but doesn't know why cannot be said to be just. The man who helps the lady across the street but does so because he knows he is supposed to and not because he sees why it is good to do cannot be said to be moral. In my own reading of the reports of Jesus, it is this very thing I take him to have been reminding people of. To place belief above this -- in a religion where the Law has been disbanded... this I don't understand.

I live because things make me happy. And as long as those things exist or I believe that they will exist in the future, I'll continue to try to survive.

Okay serveral points were made that I will try to address: "Life finds a way" no it does not all the time recent scientific discoveries allude to the fact that everything dies, even the universe. Do dogs know right from wrong?(BTW yes I do have dogs 3 of them) Not really. They know what does or doesn't displease their owners. That is not the same thing. You won't find their wild cousins worrying about what a human thinks. As far as my seeming contradiction about the morality of humans what I really meant to say is that although society as a whole has changed their treatment of people, humans as individuals have not. the comment about "Ladydyke, you've given up." No I have not. I was using the point of life ending to illustrate a point. That point is that the sad facts of science are in and that leaves life without purpose or hope. In the book of ecclesiastes the author uses the same type of argument to illustate his point about the purpose of life. Whereas God gives us purpose in life and hope. Did jesus cast off the law? That has been a argument between christians and jews since the time of Christ. Old testment jews practised the ritual of sacrificing a lamb or cow, a firstborn without blemish, to cover their sins from God. But it was a temporary measure at best because it had to keep being repeated. Jesus was that sacraficial lamb for us. He died once and for all for all peoples sin so that we might have life. Does that mean He got rid of the law? No He fullfilled laws requirment for death once and for all.time. Because no one can meet the laws requirments to get into heaven, it is not humanly possible. A person would have to not sin either in thought or deed from the time they are born until the time they died. So people who accept Jesus's gift can be freed from the laws penalty. But we still have the reponsibilty to to show love to God and others. We still have to act responably. (yes I know that I can't spell for Sh*t) Yes some so called christains under a church very much in the wrong has killed and persecuted thousaands maybe more in the name of Christ. Does that mean that God would have blessed them for doing that? No He would be extremely angry at them for dragging Christ's name in the dirt. all of the 3 major religions who worship God have done horrible things in the name of their God. People are human and humans do alot of horrible things that is a sad fact of our species. God Himself will deal with such people. But that does not nullify The bibles message. Christains belief in Damnation and reward come from the old testament and new testament. If you look at your own jewish bible you will find a lot of the same theme there as well. The only thing people will be damned for is rejecting Christ's gift of eternal life. Like I said no one is forcing you to believe how we believe.h It is your choice but just remember crab that Christainians roots lie in the old testament, the jewish bible. Christ Himself was jewish from the family of King david.

Lady,

I'm not trying to be funny or anything, but your posts are completely unreadable when you don't break up those gigantic paragraphs. I just tune out anything that dense, and I'm sure others do too.

Even James Joyce inserted a line break now and then.

As to the universe and life coming to an end, you may be right, and it doesn't change my mind a bit philosophically, but you may find some hope in omega-point theory, if you're interested.

It's not my intention to stage a contest between Chrstianity and Judaism or any other religion. However, I don't think you're right in saying that the Torah is the biblical source of heaven, hell, and damnation -- also, the reading you offer of the Temple sacrifices, while interesting, is much more in line with Christian notions of sin and redemption than Jewish ones. Christianity gets its identity (certainly its early identity) in many ways from generating *differences* from Judaism. Of course Jesus was Jewish, but that doesn't change Judaism any more than the Hellenic Jews did. The very early Christians tried to assert that Christianity was in fact Judaism, but to try to say that by way of recalling roots does not have much more explanatory power than saying American Democracy is the same as the British Monarchy it blossomed in defiance of.

For instance, it's been many centries since recruitment by way of conversion was an acceptable practice in Judaism -- and indeed, it was never (with the exception of a few politcal-mystical movements at various times) the stated intention that the whole world should be Jewish.

Skysaw got a point, lady.

Well said, Sky.

If the Father and Son are the same entity, that pokes gargantuan holes in the idea of the Son coming to save us and make us free. Look at all the needless oppression, suffering, and death in the Old Testament, so much of it a direct result of the Law or the Father's temper tantrums. If it's the same entity coming back in a different form, that's not heroism, that's restitution.

Mr. Crab,

The fact that I could not become righteous without God does not mean that I do not participate in the process.

I probably will regret asking this, but what is omega point theory? I know what an omega point is in hyperbolic geometry.

Concerning the Law, Jesus himself said that his purpose was not to abolish the Law but to fulfull it. Yes, Christianity is different from Judaism. But Judaism should have changed, because Jesus is the Messiah. He fulfilled every Messianic prophesy in the Hebrew Bible, except for those that will be fulfilled when He returns. He is the Seed of the woman, the Son of David, the Holy One of Israel.

Butterfly Dream,

The Covenant of Grace was part of God's original plan. He always intended to redeem us.

Yes, I was obviously way too tired when I wrote that. Obviously Judaism has hardly stayed static over any significant period of time, or even unanimous at any moment in time. The fact that in some ways Christianity turns Judaism on its head is all I was really trying to get at. What I don't like is when you (or others) assert the tenets of your religion over mine. When talking with someone of a different religion than I am, I would always be clear that I present a perspective, not invalidate their perspective. I'm certainly not going to get into a spitting argument "no, God did this, no, God did that". Ridiculous.

Now, you may or may not be interested in a short history of Messianism, but for now suffice it to say that it is not to be found in the Torah. It is, of course, possible to retroactively find prophecies of just about anything in the Torah, provided you are willing to fly fast and loose with the text. While the word "Moshiach" (which means "annointed") is not really used in the Torah to refer to people, it can be found in some post-Toraic parts of the Jewish canon, limited however to a couple of mentions of kings David and Cyrus, for example. Very subsequently the notion of a person-Moshiach-"redeemer" who would rescue them from oppression blossomed in the society of Jews living under Roman occupation, and perhaps reached its height around the time of Jesus. Judaism as a movement has retained the notion of a Moshiach being the person or event to usher in the World-to-Come. But recognizing the Moshiach in this tradition is beside the point -- it is only the trumpet heralding the arrival of the World-to-Come. His arrival to Jews would have no significance if it were not accompanied by this change. One of the most esteemed commentators upon the bible, the Rambam, stated the generally accepted principle that at any time in every age, there is always at least one person who could serve as the Moshiach, should God deem the time right. But again, you have to see this, historically, as an outgrowth of a desire for supernatural rescue from the woes of the Jewish nation.

Ladydyke got me thinking, so I did some research into the korbanot (sacrifices). Two kinds of sacrifices touched on the theme of sin (the Hebrew word, "cheyt", actually does not mean transgression or defiling, as I think are implied by the word "sin", but is translated as "missing", as in "missing the mark".) The "chatat" offering, which can only be made for "unintentional sins committed through carelessness", symbolized or effected reconciliation for such errors. The "asham" (guilt) offering was prescribed when it was unclear whether a sin had been committed (and therefore no legal punishment was associated with it). Interestingly the "asham" also was the perscribed sacrifice for stealing from the altar or committing a breach of trust. I don't know why. There are no sacrifices that can be made to atone for intentional sin, because in Judaism one is judged by one's actions. For transgressions against one's fellow man, one can only receive forgiveness from the wronged person, and as for sins against God, these are supposed to be weighed in judgement (by God) on Yom Kippur against the good one has done and forgiven or not at that time. I'm not asserting anything about Christian concepts of sin and forgiveness, but I think there are some differences.

But I thought we were s'posed to be talking about morality???

Anyway, omega-point theory has to do with what happens at "the end of the universe". A main question that has preoccupied people studying this otherwise fairly uninteresting event is the question of whether life can survive to the end of the universe and what form it would have to take. Just as there are two theories of how the universe will end (expansion and contraction), there are two totally different directions of omega point theory. And, as usual, there's a "strong" version and other less bizarre versions (you may disagree, I tend to find the "strong" versions of these theories suspect, because they are nearly always very self-serving and psychologically motivated, such as the "strong" anthropic principle). So some people are concerned with how life can survive in an increasingly cold universe (surprise! it probably can). More interesting to me is the question of how life can sustain itself in a collapsing universe, where things get increasingly hot, heavy, and fast until they collapse to nothingness or somethingness nothing could have structure in. Next paragraph:

The question here is not so much "can life survive" (who cares?) but can *intelligence* survive, and if we conceive of the potential for intelligence being the ability to move information around a structure (like a nervous system), some theoretical physicists and computational scientists agree that such systems can occur as the universe contracts, under certain conditions (which conditions may be create-able if we know what they are). What's really interesting is what happens to time as the universe contracts, and that according to relativity, in the instant before final collapse, time will stretch to infinity (the *real* omega point). Beside the point if there's no intelligence, excellent news if there is.

The founder of this theory (whom it has outgrown) believed that any intelligent being(s) with an infinity of time on their hands would eventually develop the science to trace the history of the world backwards, and would "resurrect" past beings accordingly. This is not as crazy as it might sound, though it certainly assumes that the omega-point intelligences are also moral or benevolent enough to value the hopes of the trillennial deceased. Anyway, the founder goes on with a rather shrill but also sadly feeble attempt to demonstrate this is the fulfillment of the promises of various religions. It matters not -- the math is sound.

So I thought you might find that interesting, especially ladydyke. You can read about it if you want, there's a few books and any number of scientific papers. There's probably also some online discussion of it.

Uh Crab, take Skysaw's advice.

I'm not an expert on religions, I only know that regardless of which religion it is, if someone tries to shove it down my throat, I'll be more likely to rebel against it, regardless of its merits. My beliefs are taken from various bits & pieces of religions I know a little bit about, but I DO believe in God. It may not be the same God you believe in, but it's my soul and my choice.

As for morality, who of us, regardless of our relgious beliefs and how dedicated we are to them, can say that we can always make the most moral choices, even knowing what our God of choice stands for? As I believe it says somewhere in the Bible, "Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone." I believe that regardless of our religion, when we intentionally act immorally, that we defile not necessarily our God so much as ourselves. We are all perfectly capable of damning ourselves or saving ourselves, depending on our actions. No, maybe we can't be moral all the time, but we can do the best damn job we can, and hope that when we're old and gray we'll be proud enough of how we've lived our lives to tell our grandchildren about them. Maybe we'll still go to hell, but we'll have done the best damn job we could do, and that's all anyone can really ask of you.

And I don't think we need strong religious beliefs in order to act in a manner we know we can be proud of when we're old. I think all we really need is a perception of how our actions affect ourselves and our fellow man, and the ability to care about what our friends, neighbors, and even total strangers think and feel. The hard part is the balance between giving to others and keeping something for yourself. Some people can be perfectly happy taking care of others and letting themselves go to rot, some can't.

And just think: What would the world be like if we all belonged to the same religion and believed in exactly the same things? We wouldn't be able to have a discussion like this at all, and it'd get pretty damn boring. So cheers to diversity, and the ability to state your own beliefs without condemning someone else's. There is good and bad in all of us, and that's the way it should be.