mood: miserable

I rarely blog about my feelings. I blog often about events or my thoughts and ideas, but rarely do I write about my own feelings. The purpose of this post isn't to gain pity or sympathy or whatever, in fact I want none of those things. The only purpose of this post is to put my feelings into words, because I find I express myself best and come to an enlightened state of understanding concerning my own feelings and thoughts when I put them to words. But not only that, I have to write as though I'm explaining it to someone, because ultimately I am, to myself. If I write as though no one else were going to read it, I might as well stick to just my thoughts because it comes out just as disorganized and muddled as it is in my head, but when I explain things to people whether in person or in writing, I feel a sense of clarity come over me that often leaves even me surprised due to the resulting insight. Thus is the preliminary to this post.

Last night I made possibly the biggest mistake I've made in a long time. As with all mistakes, full recognition of the consequences and impact of the decision didn't come until later, or today. I brought and consumed alcohol in my brother and sister-in-law's house. And not only that, I let it get out of hand enough that William, who I was drinking with, ended up getting sick over it and had to stay the night instead of driving home. When I got home from school today Kisty brought it up. Honestly she didn't need to say anything beyond "I know what happened last night and I'm disappointed" for me to realize in full what kind of decision it was. Not that she said much more beyond that anyways, for all her attitude and spunk she's awful non-confrontational and actually apologized to me a few times while discussing it, which I was quick to disallow. At the moment, I just feel miserable. She said it perfectly right when she asked "What were you thinking? I thought you knew better." and really I don't have an answer to it, and I should have known better. They've allowed me to be a guest in their house, a house they try very hard to maintain a certain degree of civil and religious standards in, and last night I knowingly acted against those standards. There's no excuse for it, I know that. Regardless of whose idea it was, or who (between William and I) was the one acting more irresponsibly, it all comes down on me
, and really it should. I just....I feel terrible, like there's this heavy blanket of guilt thats suffocating me. I feel like I need to get out of this house...as though the house itself is disappointed.
Eddie is out of town on a high adventure trip, and of course he needs to know what happened. Kisty was nice enough to allow me to explain it to him first. I have no intention of down playing it, or omitting details, least of all lying about anything. Personally I wouldn't be surprised if they asked me to move out, but if this guilt persists I may end up preempting that decision and moving out myself. I don't feel bad for the drinking, or even for allowing William to drink himself sick, those are things I'm okay with. It's all about location, location, location. It takes a long time to build trust with people and in one night I've shattered months of established trust, probably more. I think the worst part about it is how painfully obvious it is to me now how bad of a decision it was and that it didn't even really occur to me last night. I feel toxic...as though I've been infected with a disease I know I can't get rid of...

happy people

In this troubling world of ours there are two kinds of people. There's angry people and there's happy people. Sure there's some kind of 'in-between' breed, but ultimately when the chips are low you're either an angry person or a happy person. Perhaps it has more to do with the way people cope with their struggles than anything else. Some people are totally happy people, until they're tried, then they transform into our friend here on the right.

I work at Chili's as a server, and a server (almost by definition) is a high-stress job position. When it gets busy and you've got a full section, things can hit the fan very quickly. And it's in a job like mine when it's busy and everyone's guard is down, that you really get to see if your co-workers are angry people or happy people. And once I've made the distinction, it becomes obvious who I'd like to get to know better and who I can probably avoid entirely. Now, I'll admit, it's not a solid form of testing the character of a person, observing how they handle stress or cope with peoples' complaints and bullcrap, but I feel it's a reasonable indicator. I've only been working there about 3 weeks and I can point to each person I work with and tell you if they're an angry or happy person. And really it's the happy people you want to work with, the ones you want to talk to and possibly get to know better, maybe even hang out outside of work. But it's those people who really stand out, at least to me. It makes me wonder if those kind of people stand out to just me, or if they stand out even to the angry people as well. I like to think of myself as a happy person, someone who is upbeat and optimistic and usually wearing a smile, even when times are tough. At the very least, that's what I try to be. I also wonder if outside of a high-stress environment, if I could get along with some of the 'angry' people I work with. How much of the angry or tense or stressed feelings I see coming from these people at work at retained even when they're not at work. How much of lies dormant all the time just waiting for a trigger and how much of it only comes as a result of a specific trigger? Bruce Banner is always the Hulk, even when he seems happy and contented, the wrong thing could set him off and BAM! He just flattened your dog. See, if you knew Bruce Banner was that unstable time bomb just waiting to go off, you probably wouldn't have invited him to come along when you walked your dog. Bruce Banner is an angry person, that's just how he is. It's a residual personality trait, not a byproduct of specific and temporary events.

I'm not prepared to say all the people I see trembling and turning Green in the kitchen are 'Bruce Banners', but maybe they are. But at the very least, I can safely assume the people who aren't turning Green in the kitchen, and are instead relatively cheerful, are definitely not Bruce Banners, and hence would be safe to invite them along when I take my dog for a walk (that is if I owned a dog lol). Bruce Banner quit flattening my dog! HULK SMASH!

good guy/bad guy

Over the weekend I got into another philosophical debate with my friend William, and here is the organized result of what I learned:

Most people think of a bad person as someone who does bad things to people, and a good person is a person who does nice things to people. Well for this discussion, 'good person' is going to mean something a little different. See, to me, there are certain rights of individuals that people should never violate. These are the criteria I feel measure 'good' and 'bad'. The interpretation of these 'rights' can potentially vary from person to person based on their perspective of life. I feel like it should be constant across everyone, but realize any moral acting as a constant with everyone is wistful thinking. In any case, I feel these rights are limited to 'not stealing from someone', and 'not harming innocent people', whether it's physical harm or otherwise. If the intent is to harm an innocent person, you're violating that person's right. So during the course of my argument, when I say 'bad things', these things and only these things am I referring to.

Now, imagine if you will, a scale upon which your 'good' and 'bad' are measured, a scale which measures your moral integrity, aka scale#1. But like I said above, for this argument, 'good' doesn't mean doing good things to people, like a service project, but instead I'm going to use it in the context of 'someone who doesn't do bad things'. So on this scale that measures 'good' and 'bad', the bad people are people who violate the rights I listed above, a good person is simply someone who does not violate those rights of others and means nothing beyond that.

Now, imagine an entirely separate scale, one that measures a different kind of good and bad, what I'm going to call selfish and selfless, aka scale#2. Beyond the violation of rights, there's another part of life that can be measured, and that's how we act towards other people which is, again, completely separate from what rights we do or don't violate. On one side of this scale, we have a 'selfish' person, who really only cares about himself, he's out to fulfill his wants and needs and no one else's. He's rude, he's mean, he's selfish and greedy, and in fact he's just a complete jerk overall. On the other side of the scale is the paragon of benevolence, a selfless person who strives to find those in need and render aid where ever he can. He's kind, thoughtful, giving and honest, the kind of guy you like to be around.

Now to present one part of my argument: the person who violates the rights of innocent people and the person who gives and serves continually are not opposites of each other, they are being measured on separate scales, and for the sake of this argument, have nothing to do with each other.

Since we have two scales, we have 4 unique combinations now, and any number of 'blend' combinations, but lets just touch on the full-on combinations. Let's take the person who harms innocent people, let's say...a gangster (such as the one in the picture, Russell Crowe in the movie 3:10 to Yuma), who steals and kills and blackmails people, all kinds of violation of rights. Now on the other scale, he's on the 'good' side in that outside of his life of crime, he's very kind and gentle to people, he's giving and charismatic and thoughtful. You see this type of person all the time in movies, the likable charismatic villain, who, despite being a thief and murderer, seems like a good guy. Of course, you can have the 'mobster' who is on the 'jerk' side of the scale#2 making him a 'bad' person and also a 'selfish' person. Even worse.

The opposite of that person is, of course, the person who doesn't violate any rights and in addition to that is caring and kind and serving and so on. Great, good for him, you've got a stand up citizen there worthy of an award of some kind. However, you can also have the person who doesn't violate any rights but in all other ways is a complete ass. This person often gets a bad rap from society, wrongfully judged by many as 'worse' than the mobster who appears to be a saint on the surface.

The second part of my argument is this: It's more important to be 'good' side of scale#1 than it is to be on the 'selfless' side of scale#2. It is my argument that scale#1 always trumps scale#2 in importance. The selfish jerk who isn't violating innocent people's rights is infinitely more desirable than the paragon of benevolence who steals and/or harms innocent people. You can't harm people or steal things, and then justify it by going out and doing a good deed, they're on separate scales, they simply don't cancel each other out. Now whether doing a good deed for someone cancels out a mean thing you did to someone, say....make fun of them(for a tame example), whether those cancel each other out, that's not for me to say but at least they're on the same scale.

So then, in my view of things, I'll admit there's gray area on both scales. Very few people are going to tip in 100% on the side of 'selfless' on scale#2, most of us are are good to everyone but can sometimes let our emotions get the best of us and, whether intentionally or unintentionally, end up being that 'jerk' to at least a few people. Similarly, very few people are going to be a complete jerk to everyone and will most likely be nice and considerate to at least a few people. On scale#1, there's gray area too. It's more noticeable where in the gray area you fall as there is less criteria to be measured on in scale#1. The person who walks out of a bookstore with a pencil accidentally, but who realizes later and doesn't feel remorse, I'm not prepared to call that person a 'bad' person, and so they fall into the gray area. I suspect most people also fall into the gray area on this scale as well. Admittedly it's easier to avoid harming people in person than to avoid harming them in property (stealing).

In any case, I've made my point. I feel there should be a distinction made between good/bad and selfish/selfless. Not violating those rights of innocent people is what's necessary in a successful society, any good or benevolent behavior on top of that is just icing on the cake. If we had a society where everyone was a complete jerk to everyone else, but no one was stealing from or harming innocent people, well....that would be a step in the right direction I feel.

So next time you hear someone referred to as a 'good person', like our good friend Russell Crowe here, consider both scales of measurement to determine for yourself whether they really are a good person or not.

dry ice

Yesterday marked an epic day in the history of my life: It marks the day of my first real interaction with dry ice. Sure, I've seen it before in stores and bowls and stuff like that, but I've never gotten my hands on any to actually play around with and test and experiment with...until yesterday.

Eddie had a chemical shipped to him at work that had been shipped in a carton of dry ice to preserve temperatures (commonplace) and he brought the dry ice home to show me and the kids. Of course watching it melt in water is cool, and it sure entertained the kids (except Brynnley, she didn't want anything to do with it), but after awhile that got boring and Eddie and I decided to revisit our juvenile sides and tested out some dry ice bombs. Apparently dry ice bombs are all the rage, and I'd heard about them before, but lemme tell ya, they sure are fun. We were using standard size ozarka bottles instead of 2-liter bottles like most people use. The first one we threw into the pool, but since it was mostly filled it air, it just sat on the surface until it exploded. It was a lot bigger of an explosion than I was anticipating lol. Kisty came running outside from the house wondering if all her kids were in 1 piece still. The second one we wanted to sink in the pool, so we duck taped the bottle to half a brick and tossed it in. Well, the brick apparently wasn't heavy enough because although it sunk partially at first, as the pressure built up in the bottle it floated up to the top, again exploding quite louder than I expected. The third one we tied to 2 full-size bricks and sunk, and this one stayed at the bottom, floating upside down tied to the bricks. When it exploded the ground shook. Not a lot, but it definitely shook, which I also wasn't expecting. The burst of water in the pool wasn't anything extraordinary, it was mostly the submerged 'boom' and the ground shaking that was fun to experience. We sunk a few more, until we ran out of empty bottles. It never got any less fun. I don't see myself ever wanting to do anything malicious with dry ice bombs, but I sure do intend to revisit them sometime.

weakness

I thought I would sit and make a list of everything I feel to be a weakness of mine, to help me to better understand myself if nothing else.

First and foremost, I would probably label discipline as my biggest weakness. Not like discipline in all areas, just certain things I've noticed throughout the years. Most commonly, getting to bed at a reasonable time is very difficult for me. I don't know why exactly, I just have this unshakable desire to waste time whenever I begin to think about going to bed. Usually if I'm in the middle of doing something, playing or game or doing something else on my computer, I'll just keep pushing it and pushing it little by little until I end up going to bed 2 hours after I had intended. And if I get home from something late, instead of going straight to bed, I feel like I have to take time to unwind from whatever I was doing, even though just going to sleep really SHOULD be unwinding enough.

So then the problem of not going to bed early enough manifests itself the next day, and when I'm in school (like I am now) it can result in missed classes, which of course, has more compounded results. Even if I don't miss classes, if I don't get enough sleep I'll probably end up sleeping through them, in which case I might as well have stayed home in bed.

In addition to not being able to get myself to go to bed on time and the negative effects that can have on my classes and grades, I also have a very hard time reading out of textbooks. I'm not a huge reader to begin with, and when it's something as boring to me as a textbook, especially when I have something else on my mind that I'd rather be doing, it's almost impossible for me to concentrate and actually LEARN the stuff I'm reading instead of just letting it go in one eye and out the other, so to speak.

These two poor disciplinary habits are what I attribute to my failure at school when I went to BYU. They are still problems, but at least I recognize them now and I can adjust my life accordingly. It's kind of easy for me right now because I don't really have to study out of a textbook for any of my classes now, and my day starts with work 3 days a week, which will assuredly get me out of bed and started in my day even if I was up late the night before. I'm nervous about when I transfer to UNT in the fall, if the classes are harder, if the curriculum is different, I might find myself needing to study from a textbook a lot more. Also I may not be able to find a cush job like I have now to start my mornings with, so I'll be pressed to keep attendence at my classes. We'll see though, I know what the problem is so I hopefully can address it.

Other than certain disciplinary problems, sometimes I have ego trips. I try very hard to keep an open mind about things, to not shoot down other peoples' opinions and stuff, but sometimes people will use some fact or reference to support their argument, and somewhere in the back of my mind I might feel like I am more of an expert on that topic, so I'll insist that they are wrong, and argue it out. Sometimes I was right about them being wrong, sometimes I'm not, but usually the way I handle it always makes me come out looking like an ass.

Or another problem, when arguing a point sometimes I will use definitive statements to support MY argument, but in the heat of proving my point my definitive statements might not always be right, and usually it'll come out that it's wasn't right, and I'll desperately try to back pedal and try and to change the meaning of what I said so it looks like I wasn't wrong and don't lose ground in the argument. Just like the other thing, even if I CAN manage to play it off successfully that I meant something else and therefore wasn't wrong, I still come out looking like an ass.

I normally will admit my mistakes, if I have mispoken or mistreated someone, but just like the previous thing, I can lose myself in the heat of trying to prove a point or save face, and will shift the blame to something or someone else.

Sometimes I get a high-and-mighty complex too. I will feel like I've come upon some great achievement or enlightenment, and without thinking might pass judgment on people who don't derserve it, thinking they haven't done what I've done, or don't know what I know. I try not to, just sometimes I don't realize I'm doing it.

I'm trying to think of more weaknesses, because I know that's not all of them. I'll post more later if I can think of them, but I'll let this be a forum to add to as time goes on and/or as I develop new ones.

post on religion

This topic was brought up in my Govt class. It's a different way to look at religion as far as it affects moral behavior in both person and society. Religion is a complicated thing, certainly is has far deeper effects than most people realize. However, important though it may seem sometimes, it's still silly to me.

http://islibertylost.blogspot.com/2008/04/religion.html

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Religion

“The belief in a God All Powerful wise & good, is so essential to the moral order of the World & to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources...." (James Madison to Frederick Beasley, November 20, 1825)

Does a belief in this kind of a God cause people to be less willing to harm others, as Madison suggests? Does believing that there is no God (as in the case of Stalin and Mao) cause one to be more willing to harm others?

6 comments:

Derek said...

There are two things that Man fears, the wrath of his God, and the wrath of his fellow man. All actions dictated by fear will be influenced by these two factors.

A man who is a devout believer in God will most certainly fear the wrath of his God if he acts outside the boundaries he believes his God has set. By nature, a god-fearing man will be more afraid of his God than his fellow man, and if he believes he is acting in behalf of his God, the wrath of his fellow man will become much less, if any at all, of a deterrent.

This fear of God will be an influencing factor for the life of that man, as, by nature, God cannot be usurped.

A man who has no belief in God will not have the influencing factor of God's potential wrath, and all his actions will be dictated on only on the wrath of his fellow man, which, by nature, CAN be usurped. This fear will only deter as long as the man feels weaker than others, but once the man gains power and feels stronger than others, he loses this fear as well, meaning that he has neither governing fear to dictate his choices, leaving him (allegedly) without morals.

The argument that fear is a prevailing motivator is a solid one. Ideally, the driving motivating factor behind peoples' decisions would be something else, such as compassion or something, but we don't live in an ideal world.

So then the question to be asked is "which causes more fear, wrath of God or wrath of Man?". This, of course, is going to be different to different people.

Certainly a fear of both is going to cause people to act in the most socially acceptable way, and a fear of neither would be disastrous. I don't think anyone could argue this.

A fear of JUST man would be adequate, but only until man can be usurped.

However a fear of JUST God can be equally dangerous, even though God cannot be usurped. Once a man's belief in his God becomes so strong that he no longer fears his fellow man (religious fanatics), ANYTHING is fair game, it's only a matter of details after that. And what's worse is that the fanatic can then turn other God-fearing men into fanatics as well leading to genocide as easily as the man who fears only other men, but has risen to power. (hence the Crusades)


So then it really isn't a matter of belief in God, it's just a matter of belief. All God's aside, all men aside, it's all about what principles you believe in. People will fight to the death for the things they believe at the core of their being to be right and wrong, whether those beliefs were instilled by Man or God. The godless 'heathen' can be more morally established than the godless 'saint'. It's all a matter of perspective. I'm willing to suggest that all morals are subjective. There's a few core beliefs that I believe to apply across the board, and those are the ones that I will fight for to the death, but my list of core beliefs will probably differ from many others. Though I believe MINE to be true, and ONLY mine, that doesn't mean that (at least on a theoretical level) they are true.

So then you move to the assertion of a majority rule. A majority of people would agree that murder falls under that list of core beliefs,that stealing is on that list of core beliefs. But that doesn't mean it is. UNLESS you are willing to adopt the belief that right and wrong is established by the majority.

In the American society where we are ALL about preventing the majority from violating the rights of the minority, this can be a very difficult concept to swallow. But if you agree with all my logic thus far, the next question is "Where do you draw the line?". How BIG does the majority have to be for a belief to move from 'subjective belief' to 'core belief'?

Does 100% percent of the world (or for this example, the United States) believe murder is wrong? I would seriously doubt it. My guess would be a split of maybe 99.99% to .01%, or possibly a greater split than that. But so then you have to ask yourself, if 20% of the nation's population believed murder to be okay, would that take it off the list of 'core beliefs'? Would the Supreme Court make a ruling declaring it unconstitutional for States to make any law concerning the legality of murder? And would they say that murder lies in the word 'liberty' in the due process clause of the 14th Amendment?

Goodness, I realize this is a very extreme example, but my argument is this: morality, whether its the subjective beliefs or the core beliefs, are established by majority rule, they always have and they always will, it's human nature.

It's not a belief in God that creates good men, it's good men that create good men, and THAT, I believe, answers the blog question adequately.

Just my long-winded, extensive, and probably unnecessary explanation of my opinion.

Mr. Powell

April 16, 2008 2:42 PM

MI said...

Three thoughts in response to Mr. Powell.

"Morality, whether its the subjective beliefs or the core beliefs, are established by majority rule, they always have and they always will, it's human nature."

The insistence of the Founders that ideas of right and wrong come from God (and that our basic rights from God) is a denial that morality is whatever the majority says it is. Every single Founder, as well as people like Lincoln, insisted on this point.

You can disagree, but it would be good to give some reasons why you disagree.

"A fear of JUST man would be adequate, but only until man can be usurped."

Perhaps the reason why Marxism leads to totalitarian government is because if there is no God to fear, then government must be extremely powerful in order to keep people in check. The Founders would have seen it this way.

"What's worse is that the fanatic can then turn other God-fearing men into fanatics as well leading to genocide as easily as the man who fears only other men, but has risen to power. (hence the Crusades)."

Is it agreed that the Crusades were the work of God-fearing fanatics? What were the Crusades? What was the purpose of the Crusades? Is there only one way to understand them (a negative one) or is the matter more complex than that?

April 17, 2008 10:04 AM

Derek said...

"The insistence of the Founders that ideas of right and wrong come from God (and that our basic rights from God) is a denial that morality is whatever the majority says it is. Every single Founder, as well as people like Lincoln, insisted on this point."

Who said anything about the founding fathers? I don't believe the debate was over what the founding father's believed or didn't believe about God, but what we thought. My previous comment reflects how I feel and, in my opinion, just because the founding fathers, or anyone else, believed in God-given rights doesn't make it true. All of my comments were coming from a very theoretical level, which they have to because if we only talk from perspective set in reality we wouldn't be able to think outside of our social context.

"Perhaps the reason why Marxism leads to totalitarian government is because if there is no God to fear, then government must be extremely powerful in order to keep people in check. The Founders would have seen it this way."

I believe you are agreeing with me here, but I'm not sure. I'm not trying to defend Marxism, and indeed I'll be the first to admit I don't know much about Karl Marx in the first place. But I believe I know what 'idealist' means and I believe Communism to be just that, idealistic. So idealistic that it's impossible to achieve, and efforts to achieve it will most likely result in morally void behavior.

"Is it agreed that the Crusades were the work of God-fearing fanatics? What were the Crusades? What was the purpose of the Crusades? Is there only one way to understand them (a negative one) or is the matter more complex than that?"

The Crusades, in my opinion, were the work of God-fearing fanatics. Not every soldier who fought in the Crusades was a fanatic, but I believe the people who started it, who were backing it, and who fueled it, were. Like I said: fanatics, who in my opinion are also morally instable, can take the belief of others who AREN'T fanatics, and twist it and manipulate it to get other believers to act in their cause. I believe the Crusades was a war fought in a morally instable time period by morally instable people. As to the negative or positive effects of the Crusades, well, I'm no historian so I won't pretend to know much about that.

April 21, 2008 6:32 AM

MI said...

It definitely is a good idea to think about whether or not there is a God and whether or not our rights actually come from God, independentally of what the Founders thought.

The reason I brought in the Founders is because they understood what the political consequences would be of believing that right and wrong is whatever the majority says. In their opinion, the political consequence would be that there would be no security for rights and so no liberty. They believed that there must be someone independent of mankind who defines right and wrong, or else injustices and even atrocities great and small would regularly take place.

As to the Crusades, I would just say that personally I am going to reserve judgment on the best way to understand them, until I have spent a good deal of time studying the matter. There is, for example, a well-respected three volume history of the Crusades by a historian named Steven Runciman, that would take many hours of work to read through. I think it is important not to be too emphatic about out opinions until we put in the time it takes to understand the matter we are studying--and even when we have put in the time it makes sense to be open to the possibility that we are not done thinking about the matter.

So I am just pleading for open minds and more thinking about this matter.

April 21, 2008 8:15 AM

Derek said...

I agree with you that it's important for every person to come to a verdict of whether God exists or not, I have come to that verdict myself and found that I believe God does exist. I know it may seem like I am atheist in a lot of the things I've said, but I find religion to be a particularly insubstantial area of belief and consequently find myself playing Devil's Advocate any time I can.

Also, I don't doubt at all the the Founders' beliefs in an active God and God-given rights and the passing on of those values to American society has helped create the great American nation we know today, I don't doubt that at all. I strongly believe that the 'core beliefs' the Founders believed in (or as you call the Sacred Triangle of Rights) is an important part to any successful society. I agree with those beliefs, again I just find myself playing Devil's Advocate. I question the beliefs of the Founding Fathers for reasons you yourself argued: just because an authority figure is telling you something doesn't make it true. You've said this about yourself many times.

As for the Crusades, I'm just going to remove myself of them entirely. Like I said I'm no historian and I clearly don't know enough about the topic to use it in reference to any kind of argument I'm making.

I had hoped in no way that in my explanation of my opinions and thoughts that I was done thinking about the matter. I hope and strive to be an open-minded person, that's why I play Devil's Advocate so often, even though a lot of times I agree with the original sentiment.

I guess if I had to make one argument it would be this, and I'll try to put it in a logical structure.

PREMISE: There are hundreds of different religions and hundreds of more ways to look at each one. Each proclaims to be the one and only truth.

INFERENCE: No religion can prove their's is true and the others are false, at least not in a way in which all can accept it (scientifically being an example of a way to prove something). Belief in any particular one requires a 'leap of faith' to varying degrees.

CONCLUSION: Given the diversity of beliefs and opinions among religion and moral beliefs, and the lack of any real proof one over the others, it can be said that predominating beliefs found among a majority of religions can be considered 'God-given'. Or to put it another way, morals are establish via majority rule.

-Mr Powell

April 21, 2008 2:48 PM

MI said...

I do appreciate the questions that you are raising, Mr. Powell. As you say, raising such questions help people to think more.

The point you make in this comment reminds of something we haven't discussed yet about the idea of God-given rights.

In the Declaration, the Americans say that the fact that all human beings have certain basic rights is a "self-evident" truth--that is, it is a truth that can be agreed to by human reason alone, independently of the revelation of religion.

In Activity 68, Locke (as quoted by Story) says that the right to freedom of worship is something that we know exists not only from revealed religion, but natural religion as well. Natual religion, I assume, means idea about God that we can arrive at by means of reason alone.

So the Founders at least believed that we can arrive at the idea of God-given rights by reason alone. (I'd have to think more about how exactly that is done.)

April 22, 2008 9:39 AM

vengeful god 2!

So....how big of a jerk is traditional Christian God? I was thinking about this the other day, and God is supposed to be this benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscience father figure right? Well, if you had kids, would you teach them by killing them? That's what God has done, according to the Bible. Not frequently, but in a lot of cases, and in a lot of circumstances, when the people began to be 'too wicked', he would just strike them all down, flood the earth, sink their city into a fissure in the earth, plague them all, or some other in-your-face show of power. What kind of God is that? I mean, if he's omnipotent, then he coul just make us do right. If you argue that's an example of taking our free agency away, then what is killing someone if not the ultimate removal of free agency?

It just seems to me that as parents, our objectives are to raise our children in what we feel to be the best way possible. Discipline is a problem for all parents to varying degrees, but that's part of the challenge of being a parent. Is figuring out what works for your children and what doesn't, what they will respond to positively and what they respond to negatively. If you can't control your children, they will control you.

But that's what's tough, we're just human beings, we're not omnipotent and omniscient, we have to work at gaining the knowledge of what works and what doesn't. God should already know these things. If God knows everything about everyone, he should easily be able to influence the lives of those who are 'wicked' such that they will want to change. I realize that God today doesn't kill off huge amounts of people for vengeful purposes (or at least no serious religion is claiming such) but that doesn't excuse him from his alledged 'past' behavior. Like I'm seriously am having a hard time understanding how anyone could believe in a higher being that would commit mass genocide as a solution to the discipline problems of his supposed 'children'.

I don't see the difference between God using his omnipotent powers to simply control our actions as a puppetmaster would (which I think people would have serious problems with), or simply killing us, which he does loads of times in the Christian Bible, and in the LDS Book of Mormon. Someone please explain this to me.