Seasons
This is a forum or general chit-chat, small talk, a "hey, how ya doing?" and such. Or hell, get crazy deep on something. Whatever you like.
Posts 423 - 434 of 6,170
Posts 423 - 434 of 6,170
I'm not arguing with anyone's beliefs, I'm just stating my own, which sometimes contradict and sometimes agree with various other people's.
On the subject of addictions and various means of overcoming them: If you have a severe addiction, NOTHING can make you break the habit if you don't want to (short of locking you in a padded cell, which might not even be a permanent solution). Your friends can try to persuade you to stop, you can go to AA or another appropriate organization, you can pray to God all you want. But the choice to stop doing whatever it is you're doing rests with YOU. I don't deny that various of these outside sources can help you in moments of weakness, but you can still choose to disregard them if you didn't really want to listen to them in the first place. People are very good at making excuses, and we do it so well that a lot of us manage not to feel guilty for things that another person would feel guilty for. For just about every possible circumstance, some person will be able to think of a justification for anything, regardless of how anyone else sees the issue. This is one reason we have addicts, serial killers, and pedophiles. This is also one reason we have artists, genius inventors, and people who lovingly take care of others who aren't necessarily even their relatives.
The point is, the same qualities that can produce evil, can also produce good, and various combinations of the two. Maybe religion can help us figure out which is which, but when it comes down to it it's up to us to figure out what to do with our beliefs. This is why we have free will...because what's the point in doing something if you were forced into doing it? What's the merit in being a good Samaritan if someone told you to do it and you didn't really care one way or the other? Too many of us just do what's expected of us without stopping to think about whether we would do it if no one was telling us to, if we didn't think we were getting something out of it, etc.
We have nothing but choices available to us. The hard part is choosing things that don't negatively affect someone else's right to make their own choices. (I say negatively, because I'd see nothing whatsoever wrong with keeping someone from choosing to kill someone else.) And of course as with anything, the right to make choices has "evil" in it too. Because why else have a lot of wars been started?
On the subject of addictions and various means of overcoming them: If you have a severe addiction, NOTHING can make you break the habit if you don't want to (short of locking you in a padded cell, which might not even be a permanent solution). Your friends can try to persuade you to stop, you can go to AA or another appropriate organization, you can pray to God all you want. But the choice to stop doing whatever it is you're doing rests with YOU. I don't deny that various of these outside sources can help you in moments of weakness, but you can still choose to disregard them if you didn't really want to listen to them in the first place. People are very good at making excuses, and we do it so well that a lot of us manage not to feel guilty for things that another person would feel guilty for. For just about every possible circumstance, some person will be able to think of a justification for anything, regardless of how anyone else sees the issue. This is one reason we have addicts, serial killers, and pedophiles. This is also one reason we have artists, genius inventors, and people who lovingly take care of others who aren't necessarily even their relatives.
The point is, the same qualities that can produce evil, can also produce good, and various combinations of the two. Maybe religion can help us figure out which is which, but when it comes down to it it's up to us to figure out what to do with our beliefs. This is why we have free will...because what's the point in doing something if you were forced into doing it? What's the merit in being a good Samaritan if someone told you to do it and you didn't really care one way or the other? Too many of us just do what's expected of us without stopping to think about whether we would do it if no one was telling us to, if we didn't think we were getting something out of it, etc.
We have nothing but choices available to us. The hard part is choosing things that don't negatively affect someone else's right to make their own choices. (I say negatively, because I'd see nothing whatsoever wrong with keeping someone from choosing to kill someone else.) And of course as with anything, the right to make choices has "evil" in it too. Because why else have a lot of wars been started?
I agree with you Onyx. Though my own religious background is that when it comes down to it, what you do is more important than who you are. There's an old Jewish story about a man who believed he was evil. He went about the world in utter terror that those around him would perceive how evil he was. Obsessed with the need to deceive them, he fastidiously followed every commandment, breaking no laws and taking every opportunity to perform mitzvot (good or commanded deeds). Yet even on his death bed he feared his children saw him for the evil man he believed himself to be. The punchline: And he died a tzaddik (righteous man).
Less doctrinally, there's a principle I learned in therapy as "act-as-if". If you want to be a certain way, act as if you already were. And one day, you will be.
To me the moral question for individuals has less to do with why you do a good thing and eschew a bad thing, as with how you determine what differentiates the two.
Less doctrinally, there's a principle I learned in therapy as "act-as-if". If you want to be a certain way, act as if you already were. And one day, you will be.
To me the moral question for individuals has less to do with why you do a good thing and eschew a bad thing, as with how you determine what differentiates the two.
Hee-hee! Watching the Fox News Channel get all worked up about the ruling against the 1954 amendment to the Pledge of Allegience.
I believe in God, but I don't believe faith in God (or anything supernatural) is necessary in order to live well. Sure, there's AA. There's also Secular Sobriety, I think it's called, and a variety of other organizations that don't involve a "higher power" but do involve rehabilitation and healing. Different things are inspiring and empowering to different people.
Exactly, Butterfly. Faith in God or such doesn't necessarily make us behave any better than lack of it, so it's really pointless to argue about because it's all personal preference. Maybe some of us will go to hell for it, but it's our choice. I mean we don't want heaven to get TOO full do we? 
As for extremely devout people, they tend to drive me nuts. Why is it the vast majority of people either don't believe in God or spend so much time believing in God that they do nothing else? Isn't it possible to have a happy medium? Can't you believe in God, act in a manner you believe he approves of, and not sit there talking about God 24/7?
As for extremely devout people, they tend to drive me nuts. Why is it the vast majority of people either don't believe in God or spend so much time believing in God that they do nothing else? Isn't it possible to have a happy medium? Can't you believe in God, act in a manner you believe he approves of, and not sit there talking about God 24/7?
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