Whitedragon wrote:
That post is a bit presumptuous, because it indicates that the bloggers have not really suffered yet. We all can share stories of our suffering on here. Furthermore, if you had any children at all, you should know that sometimes, no matter how you parent them, they just do not adhere to their upbringing. Certainly, we cannot claim to be helpless apes, as you put it. Granted that there are some things out of our control, but if someone starts out good and then wantonly fall from that grace, we hardly can call them helpless. Perhaps the word we are looking for is stubborn.
Your argument is a hasty generalization and your cherry picking; if some people misbehave does their lack of 'morality' give a cause as to why we ALL had to from grace like the bible suggest. I may not know for sure but I think there is one or two percent of people at both ends of the spectrum who will either give a strange the shirt off their back (or their life to save them) or will hurt and/or take from others without remorse; the rest of us try to help others when we can but mostly we just look out for ourselves and those close to us. Also I'm pretty sure that most of the western and industrial world is rules by a hard work ethic that makes near impossible demands on its workers where they have to sacrifice for the 'common good' and get little in return other than a possibility of a 'normal' life. On top of that we all have to deal with the human condition which threatens to unravel each person as well as society as a whole.
Given all that we have to face, I'm more surprise that people don't behave WORSE than they do instead of really expect them to be more 'moral'. Also I think that people that are so critical of the 'moral' failures of some people in our society greatly underestimate what those people have been through. As the saying foes, it is easy to judge someone until you have walked a mile in their shoes. As someone that grew up in the projects, there is nearly an endless number of people that silently do the best they can no matter how many times life gives them the short stick. If one or two people turn out 'bad', I think some (or most) of their sins are atone for by those of us who do the best we can; this is of course if you take 'humanity' as a whole.
Whitedragon wrote:
We do what we can, but according to the Genesis myth, the Lord forewarned us about whatever it was we were supposed to avoid. It is a good response, Burning Ghost, but even today people warn us to stay away from things and often all that pushes us to ignore the warning is blatant defiance. Of course, there are circumstances that are out of our control, but if we hold true to the myth; there was some point where we had no reason at all to jeopardise our security and happiness. Again, there are still many examples of how we do the same things today. If a man or a woman were in a happy relationship as man and wife, they still would give all that up for an affair. Why do we do these things?
(For some reason this part of your post reminds me of the play Oedipus where Oedipus is interrogating the blind man as to whom and how the former king was killed and it is obvious in his speech that Oedipus knows this already because it was him that committed the crime.)
I hate to keep saying that it is all caused by the 'human condition', but more or less it is. If you realize (like some of us do) that our lives are finite and any 'happiness', 'security', 'health', 'wealth', etc is fleeting at best, you might understand why someone might risk it all if it is a given that everything they have can already be lost at the drop of a hat even if they don't do anything 'wrong'. While 'God' (or at least the church that tries to represent his will) and human societies may expect us all to obedient automatons no matter how many times that someone spits in our face, unquestioning/blind obedience and 'faith' is something that can not be expected from all of us.
Even just from a psychological perspective, let alone a moral one, expecting man to be less fallible then our nature makes is isn't something that can be reasonably expected. While it is plausible for one of Soren Kierkegaard's 'knights of faith' to transcend the moral limitations/fallibility of normal men such 'transcendence' doesn't come without it's own price; namely one replaces the importance of their own wants/needs with fanatical goals whatever they may be. But I don't think you would necessarily like any of these 'knights of faith' more than you would like typical slothful guy (complete with a wife beater T-****, easy-boy recliner, beer in one hand and remote in the other) but at least their are not as susceptible to some of hedonistic ways and vices. Perhaps future technologies like mind-machine interface could be used to hard-wire most of the human race to be mindless automatons that religion has expected us to be for the last two millennias. It would be ironic for science and technology to eventually be able to do what religious dogma has always attempted but been unable to accomplish.
Whitedragon wrote:
No, Spiral Out, the Lord created us with a good nature. There was no law in paradise, because man naturally did what was good. In dream symbols, trees often present security; the tree of life represented the security of immortality, which people have been hammering on all this time. On the other hand, the tree of knowledge of good and evil represents placing your security in what belongs to someone else. That “tree” was not theirs to eat; it associated with the Lord’s property.
Knowledge of good and evil was not a bad tree, but it was not meant for us, because we could not handle it. Supposedly, a tree holding the knowledge of good and evil would give us a better insight, but instead it just confused us. The Lord created Adam and Eve naked, but when they ate from the tree, they felt ashamed. If he created them naked, nakedness must have been natural and good in the creator’s eyes. Looking at the myth again, it seems the tree of knowledge of good and evil confused them instead. They started saying that what is right is wrong, and what is wrong is right. Very much what people are still doing now.
How could the Lord let them eat from a tree thereafter, which would make them immortal? That would mean; Adam and Eve would still be alive today, in pain and confused. Again, devil spelled backwards gives you, “lived.” He did not create Adam and Eve with a sinful nature, but that does not mean they could not change their hearts afterwards. They placed their security in the wrong thing, instead of choosing immortality, they chose to be thieves; and very much like the story of Sir Author Conan Doyle of “The Blue Carbuncle,” they ended up stealing something they could not use.
It is plausible that there might be some truth to that, but I believe it is more plausible for the Genesis myth (and the bible as a whole) to tell us nothing other than be obedient little sheep and to not bother authority by ever questioning it. If 'God' wanted automatons he could have made them, but he didn't. Also 'God' could of created us as we are and he could accepted us as we are warts and all (which is reasonable if he is 'God' after all), but according to Abrahamic religions he didn't. OR it could just be that the powers that be just want us to act like little automatons and use the concept of 'God' to help them do this; as a popular saying goes 'Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful'.
The question I have would people trying to be more like automatons (or perhaps becoming something more like a genejack from Sid Meier's Alpha Centaur) than they already are really change anything for the better even if such people could behave better as you suggested? As far as I can tell, Islam is more successful at turning people into drones than western Christianity. If so does that make Islam a better religion or at least in the way you seem to be defining it?
-- Updated December 18th, 2016, 9:21 pm to add the following --
Whitedragon wrote:Fooloso4, what would have happened if the Lord granted humankind to eat from the tree of life after the fall? Can we speculate?
Maybe we would become God-like, maybe we wouldn't. It is hard to make a rational assessment of what might be from something that seems like nothing more than a fable from a child's story. I know that if we were able to just extend human life for a few extra decades that could be HUGE improvement to our quality of life, but to improve it by making us live hundreds of years would change things so dramatically that it is hard to say exactly what would happen. Perhaps we would have to go to school for 25-50 years before we could get a job, and we would have to work for 3-4 centuries before we could hope to retire; if retirement was even allowed at all at that point. Perhaps all of us would just have to work until we no longer were alive.
-- Updated December 18th, 2016, 9:30 pm to add the following --
Dark Matter wrote:Greta wrote: It is those with faith who seek resolution, not agnostics.
Stranger still. it was you who said, "I would like resolution to the big questions" but then resign yourself to a defeatist attitude.
How familiar are you with Buddhism? Or is that just another ancient superstition?
Maybe she meant resolution in the for of some kind of salvation.; if there is no 'God' or 'goodness' that we have to adhere to as religion says then it would be pointless to seek some resolution/salvation through something that is none existent. I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure she (or perhaps he) seeks answers to big questions, which would provide more tools for atheist and non-atheist to work with.
If salvation is tool/means that we can never have (other than perhaps simulating it through technology) than clinging to it will just cause more grief and suffering; not that it is much more than a drop in the bucket of grief we already have to deal with.