Please People, You must have better things to do with your time then making up the sex lives of CARTOONS!, Some of those stories I have seen would consitute Child Pornography in Canada and the United Kingdom!
So with that, Stay Tooned for my series of Trent Free Daria Stories starting with iJob that should be done mid week and will be posted here.
Reciprocity
Trent is a Bum, That is my Story and I am sticking to it
I don't see how that can be, given that Daria is 16 or 17. Quinn is the only character who would be under-age under UK law, and I'm not entirely sure that the age of consent applies to cartoon characters anyhow. Also I think child porn laws only apply to pictures - written stories such as "Romeo and Juliet" and "Lolita" are perfectly legal, despite being about minors having sex. It used to be illegal for novels in the UK to have sexual content, but all that went out of the window after the famous "Lady Chatterley's Lover" obscenity trial (c.1950 I think). I don't know what Canadian law is like, but I was under the impression that the UK had the most oppressive porn/obscenity laws in the Western world so I would be surprised if the situation in Canada was more restrictive.
Maybe you should write some platonic fanfic episodes if the issue bothers you that much.
Yeah with the stupidity of English law, at 16 you can go out and get yourself a girl/boy friend and quite leagaly have sex with them, but you are not allowed to watch others at it (i.e. buy/watch a porn video), so the only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that the govenment thinks that looking at sexual stuff is worse than doing it :-) So if you did sleep with said boy/girl friend, you have to do it in the dark as you are not allowed to watch :-)
Don't take this post to seriously, it's not meant to be, and I don't want to start a porn debate on a.f.d, oh hell why not we've talked about just about everyting else !
Phill.
/----------------[ Courage is Grace Under Pressure. ]--------------------\
\--------[ I Want to look at life, In the Available Light ]--------------/
Now what would Freud say to the fact that you just referred to this group as alt.f?.daria :-)
We could start the discussion with the question "What is porn?". It annoys me very much that Americans often refer to anything related to sex and even nudity as 'porn' and that some people think erotic equals pornographic. One of those statements made me start working on my "Sleeping Daria" (probably to be renamed "Body Poetry" after a fanfic I wanted to write and never did). I hope that this picture will show the person who made the statement that something can be erotic without being filthy. It is possible (not seen very often in stuff made by Americans, though) to display nudity and sexuality in a positive non-appalling way, treating the persons displayed with respect. At least that's what most people believe in my part of the world. <sigh> At times like this it feels like Europe and America are 2 completely different continents. Wonder why that is :-) MSB
in my psychology text book there's a bit about a study freud did on a five-year-old who had a phobia of horses, because of their enormous "widdlers". we haven't gotten to this yet, but i know we have to do some work on a freud study, so if it's that one it could be interesting..
doesn't america have an absolutely gigantic porn industry (ie disproportionate)? i read an article somewhere that gave me this impression, have no idea really.
i remember having sex education in primary school, and being shown a video which included a brief view of a naked lady and later a naked bloke. the boys all laughed their arses off. the girls gave disapproving looks.
On Tue, 21 Sep 1999 20:24:42 +0100, "endless, nameless" wrote:
That's exactly the point. America produces tons of FILTH but nothing that's truely erotic. The dressed women in a German mail order catalog are much sexier than the nude women in US movies.
Ah, sex ed. Funny memories are connected to that. There's nothing more humiliating than being in a mixed sex class while the teacher's labelling parts on a schematic of your sex organ. At least boys and girls got the same share. MSB
The "Little Hans" case, Hans himself believed that the phobia was due to witnessing an accident involving a horse and carriage, interestingly none of Freud's six case studies actually support his hypotheses (he didn't do enough work for them to qualify as theories).
I don't know what to tell you Matthias. There are times as a yank when I'm embarrassed by my countryfolk. A lot of people have been instilled with the mindset that the nude human form=bad and that viewing such will turn a person into a serial rapist. IIRC, studies show just the opposite.
Then there is the idea that sex should be for procreation only, and if done for any other reason is sinful. Then there's those who believe that if you don't feel 'the bad kind of dirty' after sex, you're just not doing it right. There are still people here who absolutely cannot stand to see anyone else enjoy themselves. The list goes on and on. As a country, sexually, we're still pretty f*cked up.
Alli wrote about sex education in the schools. I can't speak for now but way back when I was in school, sex-ed was a joke. Most parents, being sexually screwed up themselves, can't stand the idea that their children are turning into sexual beings and will do anything to avoid the idea. I saw my first nude female form in 9th grade high school in German class perusing 'Der Speigel(sp?)' for gods sake.
I don't think that most yanks seperate erotica from porno and in some cases, even art. I think that a lot of us feel that if you want to make pictures of nude humans, it's fine as long as you are a long dead Greek or Italian, just make sure the kids don't see it.
we have two views, both of which are pretty insulting. One is that Sex is Evil unless you're married and have a house with a two car garage and want to have kids... and we're still not too sure.
Then there's "sex is recreation" which sorta denies any emotional attachments, romantic feelings, etc. associated with sex.
Nobody takes sex seriously.
We have a legal definition of pornography which involves both being sexually explicit and being lacking in artistic merit. It was this definition which allowed (at long last) James Joyce's Ulysses to be published here. Of course very few people actually make the distinction between art containing sexuality and pornography... mostly because we tend to ignore art in favor of simpler emotions (I've seen how many more cheap romances went out than copies of Ulysses), so we're left unable to make the distinction and supposedly well-meaning people call art pornography.
We are scared of sex, but moreso we are scared of love, emotions, attachments, commitments, because this is where it is the individual self emerges...
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
This is very true of our popular culture. On the one hand, it's supposed to be a part of life, not much more important than eating or defecating. Or, it's evil and may not be shown.
Neither is a very sane approach.
Sincerely Yours, Jordan
"Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; but he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction." (Dean William R. Inge)
I'd like to ammend this to: Nobody seems to take sex seriously. Sex is one of the most serious and most abundant subjects in our culture. It permeates everything. Off hand, I can't think of any subject where sex hasn't been linked into it someway. The problem is that people take sex too seriously.
This is true but there's a whole lot of grey areas inbetween. I recently saw a seriies on The History Channel about the history of sex and what struck me is that the views towards sex aren't anything new... they're are the same old views, they just keep getting regurgitated, recycled, combined in different ways according to the moral climate of each society.
Marie
"Life cannot defeat a writer who is in love with writing - for life itself is a writer's love until death." -Edna Ferber
Heh ... welll it's not as if sex was invented recently :)
Sincerely Yours, Jordan
"Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; but he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction." (Dean William R. Inge)
Yup, you've hit the nail on the head. When the individual self truly emerges, that's when we are at our most vulnerable-- rejection at that point implies a rejection of everything that we are. Scary, but exciting.
rich.
"Joseph Stalin, grab my armored muu-muu and together we will leave this foul Earth behind." -- Toon-La.
Is this the case where the bride is told by her mother, right before leaving for the honymoon to "Just lay back and endure it dear. It's the price us women pay for marriage."?
attachments,
Yup, sex for sex's sake only. Masturbation using another human being. The operative phrase being 'using another human'. I'd rather not be used.
I may not take sex seriously, but I take making love very serious.
attachments,
emerges...
Like the paperpusher said, this is where your ego can get crushed. However, if you are not scared of love, secure in your emotions, have the attachment and made the commitment, this is where two individual selves merge into one. When you care more about the feelings and the pleasures of your partner than of yours, and this is reciprocated by your partner, that's what making love is all about. It's a feeling like no other.
and you'd probably be right. we're obsessed with and afraid of sex. the new thing is to trivialize it, by handing out condoms out of candy jars. in rainbow packages. planned parenthood is slightly frightening (and misnamed as it's generally planned NONparenthood)
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
I guess. Maybe my lack of deep sexual experience is chalked up to a fear of the actual incident itself. Which, I should point out, is rooted in my parents' views on such and the Church's teachings on such. But when I wasn't in a relationship I didn't let it worry me too much...I had other things in my life to think about. Sex isn't supposed to be the be-all and end-all of one's existence. One should not obsess over it or expect it to be a part of their everyday lives. I know plenty of interesting and intelligent people who have banned sex from their lives, and they don't have a complex about it.
Sex is IMO meant to be an expression of one's most devoted love to someone else. I'm not one of those who'll go out and say, "you should save it for marriage", but I do believe you should have a longstanding monogamous relationship with someone before having sex with them because if not then you run the risk of getting hurt...and I am a believer that for every person you have sex with you give a little bit of your heart to that person. But...then again I'm not practicing exactly what I'm preaching. I haven't had sex...apparently not even close...and I'm engaged...so that goes a bit further.
Uh, I'm obsessing here, right? OK, me shut up now.
How about a free-willed sapient capable of personal moral choices?
Sincerely Yours, Jordan
"Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; but he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction." (Dean William R. Inge)
On 25 Sep 1999 18:59:59 GMT, [email] (Jordan S. Bassior) wrote:
Not an option.
Kyle
He complained when I hit him. All my friends do. Wusses.
i hate dolphins. they aren't remotely cute. and i bet the only reason they aren't covered in shit like pigs are, is because they live in the sea and the water washes it off.
Jordan S. Bassior of AOL http://www.aol.com writes:
That's the social construct one. The idea that our mental world is more important than the physical one. Society has to an extent superseded genetics in that individual humans can achieve immortality by passing on their memes instead of their genes. However this means of passing things on will only continue as long as our species does (or a successor one arrives, possibly), so we're still dependant on people who are determined to procreate, and furthermore they need to be ones who will produce offspring amenable to picking up the ideas that we would like to be remembered for.
Or perhaps that our mental world now controls more of our physical world than does our raw biology.
Yes, but someone always is so determined. Heck, I want kids too.
Sincerely Yours, Jordan
"Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; but he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction." (Dean William R. Inge)
that is true... my point was that too many people do trivialize sex... it should be something part of a very serioius relationship. There are lots of emotions involved and, yes, you're leaving yourself vulnerable to being hurt. That's why I think the first question about being sexually active should be "do you love him/her?" rather than today's customary "do you use protection?" because I think the emotional part of relationships is totally forgotten in our flurry to teach everyone about birth control and STDs.
I never really obsessed over sex when I was not in a relationship, just sorta ignored it. So, no, that wasn't disturbing for me. Of course a lot of people will develop some sort of "complex" supposedly about not having sex, but there's often something more at heart. One thing is simply a lack of meaningful relationships, feeling ignored and unloved. Another is feeling unwanted and deficient because of something in their minds that says that you have no worth if you don't have sex.
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
I agree. The assumption these days seems to be that sex is "safe" if one isn't at risk of catching a disease from it. But of course, to those of emotional depth, sex involves love, and love is never really "safe", because opening oneself to another human being inherently dangerous.
Yes.
And people who feel this way are especially at risk ... a risk which no amount of condoms can alleviate. The risk is that they will be wiling to settle for the worst kind of treatment by their lovers, acting on the assumption that they are so unlovable that they are lucky even for the smallest kindness or intimacy.
And this is definitely made worse by the current cultural attitude, which maintains that one should be having sex past a certain age if one is "normal", regardless of the presence or absence of anyone who really loves one.
This cuts both ways, of course. In the pop-culture view of sexuality, it's bad to have sex before a certain age (usually 16-18) and good to have it afterwards. Age is the sole issue ... the choice of a partner is assumed to be irrelevant, as is one's own personal emotional readiness for a physical relationship.
In my opinion this is a really sick and destructive view of human sexuality. Love requires lovers, and the nature of the lovers, and of the emotions between them, is much more the issue than anything else, assuming anything but a pure survival sort of situation.
And actually, I think Dagny and Diane have a lot more in common in terms of their attitudes here with each other than either does with the pop-culture morality.
Sincerely Yours, Jordan
"Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; but he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction." (Dean William R. Inge)
pop-culture morality? gotta be a contradiction of some sort :)
morality generally is something outside of social norms, let alone pop culture... which is how I know any religious leader who talks about "keeping up with the times" or "keeping up with the culture" is a phony.
I've heard preachers say stuff about how we need to enter the future, leave the past pretty much ignored, things have changed so much the same things aren't relevant, everything changes.
Of coruse the disprove themselves when they read 2000 year old works of writing from the same pulpit.
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
Actually, society does have a morality (or moralities). Morality has to do with priciples of right and wrong (paraphrased definition). Every society definately has them and they change according to her peoples. Think of the morals of ancient Rome and compare it with the morals of the purtanical New Englanders then with morals of victorian England... Today's morality may be more difficult to see because one, we're living it and two, we have so much information coming at us all the time that it's different to see the forrest for the trees... but it's there and it defines us even as we change it and ourselves.
Marie
"Life cannot defeat a writer who is in love with writing - for life itself is a writer's love until death." -Edna Ferber
I agree ... but I am WAY too alienated from it to take it very seriously. I make my own morals. I laugh in the face of danger ...
(Ob Animation: "The Lion King" ... of course, Nala won that argument in the end)
Sincerely Yours, Jordan
"Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; but he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction." (Dean William R. Inge)
Victorian England is a location in time and space. Rarely do locations in time and space have morals, which is why they never feel guilty for hurricanes, tornadoes, storms, earthquakes, or volcanoes.
Its impossible to say there is a morality of a time and place. Bill Clinton, a rock star, and a Christian fundamentalist probably do not have the same morals, although they live in late 20th century America. Oscar Wilde and the Marquess of Queensbury did not share the same morals.
And so on.
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
Very good point. The "mores" of a social mileu really refer to the ethics and morals of particular groups of individuals adhering to philosophies, and (especially in the West since the Industrial Revolution) there can be very many competing, sometimes contradictory, moral systems. This was true even in Victorian England, when people as a whole tended to be living closer to the edge of starvation, and hence were more conformist, than we are today.
Sincerely Yours, Jordan
"Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; but he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction." (Dean William R. Inge)
This is an idealized and romantic way of looking at sex... but what you're are talking about is Making Love, not simply having sex. They mean two, very different things, even if they do share a central physical act.
True, but this doesn't mean protection should be dicarded just because of love. It is possible to love someone with a disease (that they might not even be aware of) and there is always the danger of pregnancy, even with protection. As far as I know, the most effective birth control (besides no sex) is only 99 point something percent effective... someone IS going to fall into the ineffective range there... If love should be the first question, then protection and responsibility should be the second and third. What kind of protection should be used to reduce risk of disease and/or pregnancy? And can the responsibility of living with a life-long disease and/or raising a child, having an abortion, or giving it up for adoption be dealt with at present (or ten months down the road)?
People should avoid obsessing too much over anything. But that is part of what makes us who we are... What our obsessions are. And there is no eason not to expect sex to be an everyday part of life, especially if one is young and in a loving relationship...
Ignoring something implies that there is something there to ignore... :) Everyone is different, everyone makes their own decisions about sex. Decisions are not always made for the right reasons. But then, who is to say what is right for each person? If we were all alike, the world would be a pretty boring place.
Marie
"Life cannot defeat a writer who is in love with writing - for life itself is a writer's love until death." -Edna Ferber
This is true. I think that people have the right to want sex without love or committment, but they should realize that this is dangerous, and not complain that everything is the fault of other people when something bad happens as a result of putting this attitude into practice. And I also think that it is dead wrong to seduce someone by pretending you are looking for something more.
be
Well yeah ... but in a long-term relationship, unless you are aware of and avoiding a specific disease that the partner has, you can assume that you ARE going to get any and all diseases the other person has that you are not immune to. There's just too much casual physical contact, and too many chances for condoms etc. to leak, to assume otherwise. The PSA's that imply that one is "safe" with a condom are LYING ... one is "safer", but condoms are not magical charms against disease transmission.
should
Obviously you don't want to inflict disease upon someone you love (though cruelly, because of the mechanics of disease transmission, it's generally loved ones who DO catch your diseases, of all kinds. Condoms will reduce the rate of VD transmission, but they will NOT stop them ... if you have an STD and you love somone you should NOT have full intercourse with him/her. Wearing a condom is not long-term effective in this matter, though in the case of some STD's you may succeed in innoculation.
The contraceptives which are MOST effective are NOT those which the PSA's go on about. Perhaps because they are female contraceptives, and to stres these would violate the canons of political correctness. Truth is that it's easer to stop one large egg than millions of teeny weeny wiggly spermatazoa. Nature wasn't listening to Women's Studies professors when she evolved the mechanics of sex.
_Indeed_. But I thinkthat Dagny's talking about people who aren't in loving relationships, or whose partners are absent. The "my boyfriend's away for a few months so of course he can't expect me to stay celibate THAT long kind of syndrome." For which the punishment is to be tormented by the ghosts of the wives of 19th century sailors ... ;-)
(ObMTV: "Road Rules")
Sincerely Yours, Jordan
"Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; but he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction." (Dean William R. Inge)
The best protection against disease is to have monogamous relationships, obviously, which should be a given if you have answered the first question. If you don't want to get pregnant, I'd suggest taking Depo Provera, that's your 99% effective thing and it's one shot every 3 months.
That goes back to emotional issues for the most part... giving a child up for adoption is generally considered hard emotionally (some people seem to think its easier to kill it, have an abortion, than give it up. seems odd to me...)
I am. :) well obviously you can't drag that logic out too far, or else who is to say it's wrong to go on shooting sprees? You get the point
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
Yes. Because you WILL catch a disease, if you are not immune to it and if you are often in the presence of someone who has it. If you engage in intimate contact with numerous people, you are going to pick up diseases. Not just VD's either, but ANY kind of diseases.
(Before AIDS, there was already a health crisis beginning among the promiscious, namely Hepatitis-B).
your
Yeah. There's also a French contraceptive device, I forget the name, but it's a subcutaneous implant. It's called RU-something or other. I do not know if it prevents egg production or simply prevents a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterine wall.
Odder to me, since I was one of the kids given up for adoption. I'm glad I wasn't aborted.
Sincerely Yours, Jordan
"Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; but he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction." (Dean William R. Inge)
On 02 Oct 1999 00:12:38 GMT, [email] (Jordan S. Bassior) wrote:
There is a German proverb: Better an end with horror than a horror without end.
I wasn't adopted (I originally wrote "aborted" here, but when I reread the message, it noticed that it is too obvious to mention), I have had a fairly good life and still I think my life (or rather the lack of it) would have been easier had I never been born. It is basically a philosophical issue. What is life? What is death? Many people think along the lines of "life is good - death is bad" but there are other ways of seeing it. MSB
On Sat, 02 Oct 1999 14:11:56 GMT, [email] (Matthias Benkmann) wrote:
I wouldn't call living with the fact that you murdered an innocent child an "end".
You need God.
Kyle
He complained when I hit him. All my friends do. Wusses.
i hate dolphins. they aren't remotely cute. and i bet the only reason they aren't covered in shit like pigs are, is because they live in the sea and the water washes it off.
hahahaha, "characters"? i found them completely unbelievable. you have all these *good* poor people and these *bad* rich people, but there are two or three *good* rich people, and one of the *good* poor people runs off with one of the *good* rich people, but then there's this horrible tragedy and the *good* poor bloke dies. they might as well have given them black and white hats, to make it even easier for the idiotic hordes of Leonardo di caprio fans to distinguish between the *good* people and the *bad* people.
On 2 Oct 1999 15:23:07 GMT, [email] (Howling Lunatic) wrote:
EVERYONE needs him. However, belief and trust in God does not implicate a certain view of life and death, unless you fall for one of those package deal religions where faith is bundled with a whole lot of narrow-minded and contradictory dogmata. MSB
Being human should dictate a view of life and death that says a person's life is his own. So YOU hate your life and wish you were never born. I'm sure a lot of people like their lives and are pretty damn glad they were born. Either way, it's pretty pathetic to say one person's life should be in the hands of another. Death doesn't have to be bad, but murder does, for the same reason robbery does: taking something that's not yours. This is the view not only of most religions but of most people with any ethics at all, that is classical ethics, not the sort of postmodern "whose to say what's wrong?" ethics.
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
On 02 Oct 1999 17:27:59 GMT, [email] (Dagny Scott) wrote:
Most Christian religions maintain that your life is your own, but you would be far better off leaving it in God's hands, because, being human, you WILL screw it up.
Kyle
He complained when I hit him. All my friends do. Wusses.
i hate dolphins. they aren't remotely cute. and i bet the only reason they aren't covered in shit like pigs are, is because they live in the sea and the water washes it off.
hahahaha, "characters"? i found them completely unbelievable. you have all these *good* poor people and these *bad* rich people, but there are two or three *good* rich people, and one of the *good* poor people runs off with one of the *good* rich people, but then there's this horrible tragedy and the *good* poor bloke dies. they might as well have given them black and white hats, to make it even easier for the idiotic hordes of Leonardo di caprio fans to distinguish between the *good* people and the *bad* people.
That's not what I was criticizing, what I was criticizing was the pro-abortion view that one person controls the life of another person. That's a nice view, though: giving your life to God. Implies free will. Free will is good.
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
On 02 Oct 1999 20:55:30 GMT, [email] (Dagny Scott) wrote:
Then I got a good compromise. Put the embryo's life into God's hands.
"Look, God. Here I got a D100. '1' means I will get the baby. '2'-'99' means I get the abortion. You're almighty, right? So manipulating that die should be an easy trick for you if you want to save the baby." <throws D100, '34' turns up> "Well God, seems you want to see the little critter dead. If that's what you want, I'm not going to oppose you."
MSB
p.s.: This is probably the most evil message I have ever posted here. But this forum is supposed to tolerate sarcasm, right? Please notice the bitter irony of throwing a DIE to decide over the life of the baby.
Oh, and to clear up possible misunderstandings. I do not support abortions (neither do I condemn them) and this message is solely intended to point out how ridiculous the "put life in God's hands" thing is. God has given life and the responsibility to live it into our hands. He won't take back that responsibility.
I think it implies an abdication of responsibility. "God told me do it." "I was only following orders." This might be acceptable to St. Peter but fortunately it is no longer a legitimate defence here on Earth, at least when being tried for crimes against humanity anyhow.
Um, if you follow the belief that leads to giving your life over to God, then you won't be on trial for crimes against humanity. Of course this leads to all those "How do you KNOW your God is the right one?" questions, and what it all comes down to in the end is faith.
Kyle
He complained when I hit him. All my friends do. Wusses.
i hate dolphins. they aren't remotely cute. and i bet the only reason they aren't covered in shit like pigs are, is because they live in the sea and the water washes it off.
hahahaha, "characters"? i found them completely unbelievable. you have all these *good* poor people and these *bad* rich people, but there are two or three *good* rich people, and one of the *good* poor people runs off with one of the *good* rich people, but then there's this horrible tragedy and the *good* poor bloke dies. they might as well have given them black and white hats, to make it even easier for the idiotic hordes of Leonardo di caprio fans to distinguish between the *good* people and the *bad* people.
I was saying "giving your life to God" is better than the people who believe God runs around running it whether you want him to or not. You can listen to him or not. It's a choice...of course if you believe in God most religions (originally, at least) don't portray him as someone who would have people go out and commit crimes against humanity. Of course people do those things "in the name of God" but mostly that's an excuse to invade lands you want to control and stuff and isn't God's decision at all.
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
It depends which books you read. The Old Testament is full of genocide, eg. God ordered the Jews to kill all the tribes in Palestine so they could take the country for their own. And when he found out they'd spared some of the natives' lives he turned real nasty. You should check out "Outrageous Tales From the Old Testament" which has all the juicy stories in comic book form. Remember this is the same guy who drowned practically all life on Earth in a big flood and later went on to sire Jesus by having impregnating an earthling woman who was already engaged to be married.
Christians get out of this by ignoring the Old Testament and adopting Jesus as their god instead. (Of course, god let Jesus, his own son, die too... what kind of father sacrifices his own son?)
OTOH, maybe these are just tales and didn't really happen. You pays yer money and takes yer choice, there's plenty of material in the Bible to back up any viewpoint. Some would say that the death of Jesus thing is basically a harking back to paganism, the king sacrifice and the cycle of the seasons: death and rebirth. Indeed Christianity has been described as the first neo-pagan religion.
Um, I don't ignore it at all. Jehovah (which I think is better in this case than "God", because many people would assume you mean Allah, or some other god) is a god of justice as well as anything else. The Palestinian tribes were punished for their sins, as they deserved. We should be thanking God for not doing the same thing. The people of the earth ALL had an opportunity to be saved before the flood, they all chose to ignore Noah's warnings. The divine conception was simply that, divine conception. Not some dirty sex act like you implied.
You basically speak of which you know not. When people devote their lives to analyzing the Bible, I don't think you can just skim it and get the gist. Jesus is NOT, in the physical sense, the "son of God". He is a part of God, who chose to be subservient to allow for the salvation of mankind.
Kyle
He complained when I hit him. All my friends do. Wusses.
i hate dolphins. they aren't remotely cute. and i bet the only reason they aren't covered in shit like pigs are, is because they live in the sea and the water washes it off.
hahahaha, "characters"? i found them completely unbelievable. you have all these *good* poor people and these *bad* rich people, but there are two or three *good* rich people, and one of the *good* poor people runs off with one of the *good* rich people, but then there's this horrible tragedy and the *good* poor bloke dies. they might as well have given them black and white hats, to make it even easier for the idiotic hordes of Leonardo di caprio fans to distinguish between the *good* people and the *bad* people.
Well, Abraham... y'know "God said to Abraham, kill me a son", so the son sacrifice could go all the way back to the Old Testament. Of course in both cases Abraham's son was saved and Christ was resurrected.
Actually Jehovah and Allah are the same God.
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
Personally I don't think any race deserves to be punished by a "final solution", you can't tar an entire race with the same brush no matter what crimes some -- or even most -- of it's members might have done. Jehovah was a very evil god if you ask me. (And what was the Palestinians' crime anyway? ISTR it was simply that they were followers of a competing religion. This is the trouble with religions, they're always a good excuse for a bloodbath.)
This is the trouble with "holy" wars, they destroy human lives while making a blasphemous mockery of religion.
Abusus non tollit usus, as we often say here in Swadlincote. <g> The abuse of a thing does not invalidate its legitimate use: the trouble with electricity is it makes things so easy for torturers, so electricity is a bad thing; the trouble with affection is it's an easy way in for people who seduce others, so affection is a bad thing; the trouble with... (insert anything that some people abuse).
BTW, I'm *not* accusing Shez of thinking religion is a bad thing because some people abuse it!
I find it unlikely. I don't find it unlikely that Hitler believed that, however.
Well, depends on your perspective. Their crime was sin, and sin will always be eradicated one way or the other.
When you think you are on the outside, it's real easy to use phrases like "competing religions". When you know in your heart of hearts that those people are convincing others to go to hell, it's a different story.
People are right when they say a true believer is the most dangerous thing on earth.
AFAIK, the one thing you cannot say about Hitler is that he was a religious fanatic. Nevertheless, where this maniacal hatred towards Jews came from will most likely remain a mystery forever. As far as I remember (no I haven't met him, it was in a documentary) he even had a Jewish friend in his youth. If I could go back in time to ask a famous person ONE question, I would ask Hitler about the real reason for the Holocaust. I can understand all the rest. Conquering has been a favorite pastime of many leaders. But why the Holocaust? This is why I find Hitler more scary than Stalin. I think you can understand how Stalin's mind worked but not Hitler's. MSB
On Tue, 5 Oct 1999 22:12:28 +0100, "Martin Sylvester" wrote:
Why not? As I see it Hitler and Nazis in general are among the United States' favorite comedians. Think of some Simpsons episodes, Indiana Jones (part 2 is crap of course because it has no Nazis), Hogan's Heros, Wolfenstein. If something comes from the US and Nazis are involved it's always something hilarious. I don't need to mention that I myself am among the biggest fans of those US Nazis in general and the above 4 items in particular. Which reminds me, now that they have put the Simpsons in another time slot I have to watch Hogan's Heros more often. MSB
it's an advertisement for a mobile phone company... vodaphone? not sure.. vodaphone was the first one to come into my head, but that's probably because *i* have a vodaphone mobile. :) anyway, these adverts feature someone talking about who they would most like to have a "one 2 one" with.. "if i could have a one 2 one with anybody, i'd like to ask Adolf Hitler the real reason for the Holocaust..." etc.
Sounds like the Monty Python sketch "We'll ask our callers what they'd do if they were Hitler" ... "I'd annex the Sudetenland".. something about redecorating a bathroom... been too long.
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
did any of the UK residents here see that thing on BBC2 this evening, incidentally? the lumberjack song in german was good.. and the thing about the sperms.. lol. hadn't seen that before.
I only saw three and a half hours of it. Wait, there was only three and a half hours of it! It's funny that Monty Python get accused of blasphemy considering that "Every sperm is sacred" is basically one big advert for Catholicism. I enjoyed seeing the Life of Brian again, I'd forgotten how good it was. I liked the South Park bit as well - the dead Kenny sketch, and where they kidnap Terry Gilliam's mother. It was intriguing that the guy who plays the crucified Brian, Graham Chapman, went on to die in real life... that bit from his memorial service was priceless, where John Cleese is giving a speech and says something like "some people say he was taken from us too early in life [etc etc] ... well I say, good riddance to the freeloading bastard, I hope you fry"! I thought it was very brave of him to say that about someone who'd just died, and it certainly broke the ice at the service!
I'm glad it was subtitled! They took the trouble to change the words, not merely translate them ("...the mighty rivers of the South Tyrol."(?) "...just like my Uncle Walther.")
Which catechism have *you* been reading? ;:-) [1]
For those who know Catholicism only through received stereotypes, it's one big re-inforcement of those stereotypes. For people who do have a clue about Catholicism, it's doubly funny, of course, since it turns into a parody of the stereotype.
I saw a bit of LOB (it was *so* well written), and the South Park tribute. The statues came in just before the dead parrot spoof got tiresome: excellent timing (if only all SP were that good <puts on flak jacket>).
The spooky thing is, a lot of actors who played characters who died are now dead themselves. It's like, play a guy who dies, and sooner or later you're going to die too. <shudder>
(I'm not sure whether the above sentence should be in a Kevin voice or a Stacy one.) 8-)
riddance
I'll try to remember that if I ever get asked to preach at a clergy funeral. 8-)
Martin.
[1] The one I'm used to is at http://www.christusrex.org/www1/CDHN/ccc.html (in case anyone is interested!)
Incidentally I started a thread about Monty Python night over at uk.media.tv.misc yesterday. It's titled "Monty Python Night". Currently about a dozen messages, all very positive about the evening.
endless, nameless wrote in message news:[email]...
Hmmm... I quite liked the whole Oooh Aaarg Its Ambrosiaaaa campaign, particually the one were everyone runs towards the camera. Much better than Devon knows how they make it so creamy. Incidentally - a subject of much debate: In the Abbey National cartoon ad with the Dog cam and astronaut and stuff - Is it Jarvis cocker or not?
the "go west" one was a masterpiece, but "in the country" is crap.
"go west! where the grass is green, go west! where the air is clean, go west! where the sheep go baaa, go west! where they say oooh aarrrhh, go west! where the weather's nice, go west! where they make creamed rice!" or whatever.
no idea mate.. my brain's going too fast for me to remember. i've had a rather good day. :) :) :)
I think that it stemmed from his time as a semi-bum in pre-World War One Vienna. He had been a promising youth who was not fulfilling his promise as an adult, and was in danger of slipping into real poverty. He had had some emotionally upsetting encounters with Jews (not their fault, it just so happened that the doctor who attended his mother in her last illness was Jewish and so was someone who helped the young Hitler with money at an embarassing point in his life). Hitler (a prude from a small town) also found life in Vienna to be shockingly "degenerate", and his fellow bums and lower-class workers too Socialist for his petit-bourgeoise tastes.
In Vienna he encountered some extremely rabid anti-Semitic propaganda which essentially claimed that a conspiracy of "International Jewry" was holding down and perverting the German "race", using socialism as one of its tools (and international finance as another) He swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.
Hitler might have never gone beyond a "crank phase" (which he might have outgrown) had not the First World War come. Four years in the trenches inured Hitler to violent death (and probably pushed him over the edge from neurosis into full-blown psychosis).
The outcome of the war validated his delusions. Germany surrendered without having first been directly conquered (due to logistical and political considerations, but Hitler didn't understand or believe this). To Hitler (and many others) this seemed like a "stab in the back" by the Socialists, led by (of course) the Jews.
The rest is history.
Holocaust.
Hitler seems to have genuinely believed that the Jews were in general a "racial virus" corrupting every people they dwelt among, and specifically behind an anti-German conspiracy (in the middle of a total war). Given these assumptions, the Holocaust actually made sense.
Which should make you think again when you assume that "conspiracy theories" are in general good harmless fun. Theories govern actions, and someone who believes in a "conspiracy theory" will, if in a position to do so, act against those whom he believes to be conspiring against him or his ideals.
As Hitler did.
Well, the Soviet Holocaust (carried out by Lenin and Stalin), which claimed some 30 million lives, proceeded from similar assumptions to Hitler's. The "enemy" was simply identified as "international capitalism and its agents" rather than "Jews and Bolsheviks".
Sincerely Yours, Jordan
"Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; but he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction." (Dean William R. Inge)
I thought that aside from a small minority of religious fanatics we all agree that the Christian god is the same as the Jewish god and the Muslim god. Of course I can only speak for myself but _I_ believe my god is identical to Allah. I even believe (though I guess I am an exception among Christians in this) that Mohammad was His prophet. MSB
On 2 Oct 1999 17:41:03 GMT, [email] (Howling Lunatic) wrote:
And how exactly do I leave my life in God's hands? He doesn't take decisions for me. He doesn't tell me about the future. He doesn't warn me when I am about to do something stupid. It reminds me of TALD.
Daria - So if anything does go wrong, it's my fault?
On Sun, 03 Oct 1999 16:32:24 GMT, [email] (Matthias Benkmann) wrote:
Sure he does. He tells you via the Bible, he tells you via your conscience, and he'd be more than happy to tell you more directly if you prayed about it in any situation where none of the above covered the situation at hand.
But this is DEFINITELY my last post in this thread, because we all know these never get anywhere.
Kyle
He complained when I hit him. All my friends do. Wusses.
i hate dolphins. they aren't remotely cute. and i bet the only reason they aren't covered in shit like pigs are, is because they live in the sea and the water washes it off.
hahahaha, "characters"? i found them completely unbelievable. you have all these *good* poor people and these *bad* rich people, but there are two or three *good* rich people, and one of the *good* poor people runs off with one of the *good* rich people, but then there's this horrible tragedy and the *good* poor bloke dies. they might as well have given them black and white hats, to make it even easier for the idiotic hordes of Leonardo di caprio fans to distinguish between the *good* people and the *bad* people.
On 3 Oct 1999 21:54:01 GMT, [email] (Howling Lunatic) wrote:
Ever heard of "the way is the goal". The point in a religious discussion should not be to "get anywhere". The point is to make us think about it. To confront ourselves with our own views and those of others. It might not change anybody's view but we learn a lot about ourselves and learning about yourself makes you a better person. MSB
well that's your free will, you see, that you can do that. If you didn't have the right to say "I run my life", Kyle's statement that he lets God run his life would become null and void.
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
On Tue, 05 Oct 1999 19:11:57 GMT, [email] (Matthias Benkmann) wrote:
The problem is, this geek *gets* the joke. (Eep!)
Martin
(send all e-mail to "[email]")
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Yes. If it doesn't belong to himself, than who does it belong to?
(many ideologies have answered "the State", but these have generally been the ones that have gone on to make hells on Earth).
Most people do. Even if they complain a lot about the precise details of their lives.
Exactly. Killing someone else can be justfiable, but the fact that it needs justification indicates that it is normally evil.
I find situational ethics very scary, because if someone really believes then I do not feel comfortable turning my back on him. Who's to say that he won't happen to decide that the "situation" justifies attacking ME?
Sincerely Yours, Jordan
"Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; but he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction." (Dean William R. Inge)
No, the death penalty means that once you do something that is extremely vile and animalistic (like killing one of your own kind) that you forfeit the rights that ordinary upstanding citizens of the community have, most notably the right to continue to live. I'm a huge supporter of the death penalty as it stands today because it's fairly handed out, the accused has many chances to prove his/her innocence, and besides, anyone who opposes the death penalty must remember to focus themselves on the *victim*, not the *perpetrator*. If one feels too much sympathy for the perpetrator, one diminishes the significance of the life of the victim who the perpetrator has viciously and cruelly altered.
On Sat, 02 Oct 1999 22:58:22 -0500, Lady Interference wrote:
Just a question. It has happened and it will happen again that someone is executed and later proven innocent. Because the execution turns into murder the moment the person is innocent, don't you think the executors and the jury and the judge should get the death penalty for this murder. It would be a good deterrent for jurors/judges in future trials not to pass the death sentence on someone based on unstable evidence like eye-witnesses. After all, aren't the jurors supposed to declare the defendant innocent if they have even the slightest doubt? And if a juror or judge is not willing to bet his life on the guilt of the defendant, doesn't that constitute a reasonable doubt? I think everyone should be responsible for his actions. As the bible says: An eye for an eye. MSB
Ah, one of my favorite missunderstood bible quotes. The original quote is from the old testament, Exodus 21:24. However, modern christians are supposed to follow Jesus's teachings from the NEW testament, and specificaly, in this case, Matthew 5:38-42, where Jesus says, DON'T take an eye for an eye, but turn the other cheek.
Besides that, the phrase "an eye for an eye" is not meant to be veangeful. Previously there had been a life for an eye, or something like that. Basically that the punishment should fit the crime. Christ said to not even have that amount of vengeance but to suffer gracefully and be kind to your enemies.
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
First of all I do not distinguish between Judaism, Islam and Christianity so the OT is valid for me and the Hebrew god is my god as well as is Allah. Secondly, I know perfectly well about the point you are trying to make but like many other people I regard quotes simply as the spices in a discussion. You choose those that give the flavor you like and ignore the others. Yes, I feel guilty. No, I won't change this habit :-) MSB
No, it doesn't, unless it can be proven that the person (s) in question KNEW the convicted suspect was innocent and carried forward the execution anyway. "Murder" requires "evil intent".
Sincerely Yours, Jordan
"Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; but he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction." (Dean William R. Inge)
That's what I was about to say. Thanks for saying it, Jordan.
And, as I suspected, the focus has turned not toward the victim but toward the perpetrator. Let me tell you this folks, when one is so inhumane as to intentionally murder someone with premeditation (first degree murder, which is the type of murder that would get you the death penalty if convicted) then one does not deserve to have the same rights as those who do not do such things. How would you like to see someone who took someone else, chained them to the back of a vehicle, and dragged them until every limb was torn apart and the person had bled to death, and see them go free in 30 years? That's not justice, that's a mockery of the poor victim's struggle. Which is why I'm very glad the death penalty is there in Texas, to show those bastards in Jasper what you get when you take an innocent and maliciously make them suffer and die painfully.
My only problem with the death penalty is my fear of executing innocents. I have no problem with executing the guilty.
sympathy
who
That's my main reason for disagreeing with many death penalty opponents. They seem to argue (in some cases they do so explicitly) that once the victim is dead his life no longer matters (cause we can't resurrect him) ... now we must try to save the perpetrator. But once the perp is dead, by the same logic HIS life no longer matters ... indeed by that logic NOBODY's life really matters once taken, so why should we even punish the perp ... why not just let him go?
(He may kill more people, but THEIR lives won't matter once they're dead either, right?)
Sincerely Yours, Jordan
"Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; but he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction." (Dean William R. Inge)
Jordan S. Bassior of AOL http://www.aol.com writes:
I think the most common argument is that we should oppose it to save ourselves - that by killing people we lower ourselves to the level of the murderers we condemn. Sometimes retaining our humanity entails restraining our natural instinct for revenge. Christians perhaps find this a little easier as Jesus taught them to turn the other cheek etc., but even for religious folk I think occupying the moral high ground can often prove to be a challenge they are not up to. This is why people like Gandhi are so revered, it's much harder to work towards a better world through non-violence than violence.
He complained when I hit him. All my friends do. Wusses.
i hate dolphins. they aren't remotely cute. and i bet the only reason they aren't covered in shit like pigs are, is because they live in the sea and the water washes it off.
hahahaha, "characters"? i found them completely unbelievable. you have all these *good* poor people and these *bad* rich people, but there are two or three *good* rich people, and one of the *good* poor people runs off with one of the *good* rich people, but then there's this horrible tragedy and the *good* poor bloke dies. they might as well have given them black and white hats, to make it even easier for the idiotic hordes of Leonardo di caprio fans to distinguish between the *good* people and the *bad* people.
i dislike the idea of killing someone as a punishment for killing someone. murder is murder, whether committed by the state or by an individual. imo.. execution is a bad example to set to the public. two wrongs don't make a right. also (correct me if i'm wrong) iirc the murder "rate" (sorry.. poor expression.. couldn't think of a better word) is no lower in places where the death penalty exists, which makes the whole thing rather pointless.
in a discussion here a while ago, paul gate questioned whether the death penalty would be so popular if judges could be tried for murder if evidence emerged after execution, proving the executed innocent. as usual, i'm with paul on this one.
On Sun, 03 Oct 1999 20:14:57 +0100, "endless, nameless" wrote:
It's only murder if there is malicious intent. I'd be more than happy to let you put them on trial for negligent manslaughter, but I doubt you'd EVER prove it.
Kyle
He complained when I hit him. All my friends do. Wusses.
i hate dolphins. they aren't remotely cute. and i bet the only reason they aren't covered in shit like pigs are, is because they live in the sea and the water washes it off.
hahahaha, "characters"? i found them completely unbelievable. you have all these *good* poor people and these *bad* rich people, but there are two or three *good* rich people, and one of the *good* poor people runs off with one of the *good* rich people, but then there's this horrible tragedy and the *good* poor bloke dies. they might as well have given them black and white hats, to make it even easier for the idiotic hordes of Leonardo di caprio fans to distinguish between the *good* people and the *bad* people.
endless, nameless wrote in message news:[email]...
extremely vile
the rights
the right to
stands
prove his/her
innocents. I
I can see a reluctance to impose a death penalty. What about a mass murderer though? Or even worse, what about the paroled murderer who kills again? There are people, and we've seen them in the news, who seem to enjoy killing. Having served time for their first murder they resolve to do it again. They enjoy killing. When these guys walk the streets, people die. They've demonstrated it repeatedly. In such a case society has to rid itself of such people rather than run the risk that they might be accidentally released or escape.
I propose making someone eligible for the death penalty on the second offense. Like "every dog gets one free bite," every person gets one free murder. Well, not free but at least no death penalty. One court trial might have been in error but the chances of a second court trial also erring are more remote. Surely by that means you could be assured that the defendant is a truly heinous person deserving extermination.
I understand some states already have similar laws.
I would have no problem killing someone who had committed genocide, in fact if I ever met ex-president Suherto (sp?) of Indonesia I would probably try to kill him. But then I don't claim to be a virtuous person and I'm not particularly concerned about the possibility of an afterlife or being judged for my actions by God.
One of the troubles with Western society though is that if you kill one person then you're a bad person, but if you kill ten thousand then you're a sales opportunity for the arms industry. In the UK there was this event known as the Dunblane Massacre where this guy went into a school and killed 20 children with a handgun. As a result handguns were made illegal in Britain. Yet when the Indonesian army committed the equivalent of ten thousand Dunblane massacres in East Timor, our response was to sell them more arms to replenish what they'd used up. When that guy killed those kids in Dunblane his crime wasn't that he killed too many but that he didn't kill enough to get the arms industry on his side, pleading his case as being a valued customer and helping preserve British jobs by buying lots of guns and bullets.
All in all I think the Dadaists had society pretty well sussed.
On 02 Oct 1999 17:27:59 GMT, [email] (Dagny Scott) wrote:
You're basically right but you forget one thing. There is no general agreement among Christians about WHAT is a person. It's theoretically possible to mate two apes, extract the fertilized egg, replace the 1% or 2% of the DNA that distinguishes the ape from a man and then have that egg grow in an artifical womb. Once we have enough understanding of DNA, we don't even need human donators for the 1% replacement, we can have the computer generate a correct human DNA at random. Now is that a human being even though no human being was sexually or genetically involved in its conception or birth. And if you say yes, what if we just replace 0.9% of the DNA or 0.8% or... When does the creature become an animal? The same reasoning applies to an embryo. Any adult mammal is emotionally, mentally and even in its appearance more similar to an adult human than a 2-days old shapeless cell-cluster with human DNA. Now, when does that cell-collection become a person? From the day of conception? Why? What if as mentioned above, the egg was conceived by apes? Or do you see apes as persons? What about cattle? Maybe one day we'll even be able to create real cabbage patch kids, i.e. humans grown in plants. When do they become persons? Are plants persons? And what about the distinction between mother and child? When does the child become a person of its own? You say for yourself that a person's life is his/her own. How do you distinguish between mother and child? DNA? What about a clone with the same DNA? The child and the mother are linked by the umbilical cord. Now which part of the cord belongs to the mother and where does the child start? And what if carrying the child would mean death for the mother? You say her life is her own and it is wrong to take another persons life at the same time. So is she or is she not allowed to get an abortion to save her own life? And speaking of life. When does life start anyway? Biology does not even provide an exact definition of what life IS. Is a fertilized egg alive? I have not seen one definition of life that would declare a fertilized egg alive and not declare strange objects alive at the same time. The point is that there is no universal answer to these questions. No religion provides answers. There is much room for different beliefs even within the same religion. MSB
On Sun, 03 Oct 1999 20:19:18 +0100, "endless, nameless" wrote:
<MSB bows to audience> You know, it really makes me think (pun!) that I get applause for posting a lot of disturbing questions without giving answers. It's so destructive, you know. Ordinary people would rather applaud someone who gives them easy answers. I am so glad that's different here. MSB
p.s.: For those who DO prefer the easy answers. It's MONEY! The reason for all your problems is money. Money is the source of all evil. Money was created by the Antichrist. Give me all your money and I will bless and cleanse you. If you believe in me I can cure all your illnesses. But to show me that you really believe in me, you must give up your greed. Sell all your belongings and give me the money. Hallelujah!
Matthias Benkmann wrote in message news:[email]...
what constututes a human being]
Some of your examples were extreme, Matthias: most abortions are not of clones, or of fertilised ape eggs with human DNA spliced into them, then transferred to a human womb. The extreme doubt applies only to the extreme situations: not to a normal pregnancy.
Even if we grant that people are unsure as to when a human life begins [1], then let me use an analogy.
You're out driving your six-wheel off-roader and you see a tent on your proposed route. The people with you have an argument as to whether there's anyone asleep in it: there might be one, might be two, might be none. Then someone comes up with a solution: since we don't agree as to whether driving over the tent will kill a person, we can drive over it.
Martin.
[1] I'm not unsure as to when human life begins, btw: I know if my mum had had an abortion, I wouldn't be here, and I know I'm human. More technical argument on request, or, perhaps to other readers' preference <g>, consult dejanews for my contribution to the last discussion on this topic.
On Sat, 02 Oct 1999 17:01:46 GMT, [email] (Matthias Benkmann) wrote:
Nope. But I do believe that his personal plan for everyone does involve the general Christian view, as well as the Bible as a starting point for their journey to know him and fulfill their destiny.
Kyle
He complained when I hit him. All my friends do. Wusses.
i hate dolphins. they aren't remotely cute. and i bet the only reason they aren't covered in shit like pigs are, is because they live in the sea and the water washes it off.
hahahaha, "characters"? i found them completely unbelievable. you have all these *good* poor people and these *bad* rich people, but there are two or three *good* rich people, and one of the *good* poor people runs off with one of the *good* rich people, but then there's this horrible tragedy and the *good* poor bloke dies. they might as well have given them black and white hats, to make it even easier for the idiotic hordes of Leonardo di caprio fans to distinguish between the *good* people and the *bad* people.
On 2 Oct 1999 17:22:18 GMT, [email] (Howling Lunatic) wrote:
And I think I am perfectly aligned with the "general Christian view" as I think I am aligned with the "general Jewish view" and the "general Muslim view". "General" is a very general word. MSB
I think MSB is right... life has it's good and bad moments... one can argue if life is all good or all bad but I think everyone will agree with me there ARE bad aspects of life... If no human would ever have lived they wouldn't have had to suffer all the bad aspects... and they wouldn't have missed the good aspects... That is why I am, in general, opposite to life. I believe no-one has the right to decide wether or not someone gets to live... I couple that decides to 'have' a child is really gambling with it's life as they can't be sure it'll be happy... and God... well... He gambled with the whole of mankind... I do not believe in God but if He does exist I'd like to ask him why he did such an irresponsible thing...
Excuse me if my English isn't correct but it isn't my native language.
On Tue, 05 Oct 1999 13:08:26 -0600, Aran Benner wrote:
If you are wondering why God has created us and the universe, use DejaNews and search the old messages for "Matthias Benkmann how to create a universe if I was god" and read the (really funny!) essay I have written on the subject.
If you're just wondering why He allows all that suffering, the answer (that I believe in) is simple: FREEDOM God could turn us into puppets and have us play only happy things any time but then He could just as well abolish the whole universe. First of all, because He would know everything that's going to happen (my position is He has voluntarily given up omniscience to give us freedom, see above essay for details) and so it would be pointless and secondly because the puppets could not enjoy their happiness because it would be so arbitrary. MSB
Aran Benner wrote in message news:[email]... [on the creation of life] [...]I do not believe in God but if He does exist I'd
Love.
Standby for some heavy Trinitarian theology.
God's experience of God's own life as Trinity is experience of loving relationship: three persons, yet one God, equal and undivided.
(BTW, if you find this hard to understand as we go along, well, so has everyone. We're at that point where human language breaks down: we can only use analogy to give some sort of a glimpse of God's inner life, as God has revealed it to us.)
And since love is at the heart of God's life, God chooses to create beings capable of loving. If you'll forgive my irreverence: "This love stuff is so good I can't just keep it to myself: let there be light."
(Also, forgive me if not using pronouns to refer to God is irritating you: but to speak of the Trinity as "He" in an age of sensitivity to inclusive language would be crass.)
A being can't be capable of love unless that being has a choice in the matter: else it wouldn't be love, but only programming.
And some people choose, as a way of life, or in particular concrete decisions in our daily living, not to love. Hence suffering. Hence death: Adam & Eve isn't a journalistic report, it's a theological statement that death and suffering are part of our experience because of humanity's refusal to live as God wills.
You might say, "Yeah, well, you're going to tell me that God thought it all worth it to create beings capable of sharing heaven with God: but God didn't take the risk! God set it all going, and we suffer the downside of freewill. I still say it was irresponsible: it hasn't cost God anything!" Remember Calvary. Reflect on the suffering of a parent watching a child suffer, then multiply it as often as you will, and you won't get a shadow of God's compassion in human suffering.
But still God knows it's worth it. And one day, if so we choose, will we.
That idea staggers me: a bliss eternal, and so intense, that all humanity has suffered will seem trivial. One of the reasons why I *seek* to do God's will.
Hey, Axe, you expressed yourself with perfect clarity.
Martin Sylvester wrote: <snip of the best religious speech I've ever witnessed)
Fr Martin, why aren't there more priests out there like you? You're the coolest priest I know (well, you and Fr Paul). Your message was so beautifully put that I feel like all your sermons are the best. Hm...which airport is closest to Swadlincote, now? And how much do you figure a one-way airline ticket from San Antonio over to that airport would cost?
Ready to become a part of Fr Martin's parish (heck, I'd attend every Mass I could no matter what!),
Lady Interference wrote in message news:[email]...
coolest
put that
\|/
Woah, thanks! 8-) The credit goes to the Holy Spirit, of course.
/|\
Well, East Midlands (EMA) http://www.eastmidsairport.co.uk/ema.html is only ten miles away, but its international services are mostly to continental Europe. You could connect at Amsterdam, I suppose. Birmingham (BHX) is 24 miles away, and Manchester (MAN) is 50 miles away.
Oh, let's see. <spends his coffee break playing with Sabre> You could get a round trip ticket from San Antonio to Birmingham for $637.95. One-way tickets usually cost more, of course, because the airlines rarely discount them.
Martin Sylvester wrote in message news:7tfam1$dtc$[email]...
I think you're a good Priest, too, but I can't join your parish 'cause I'm a Protestant. Worse yet, I'm a Lutheran, and I don't think the Cathlic church has forgiven us about that whole 97 theses on the church door thing. That Martin Luthur was such a vandal!
(there's nothing I like better than making an obscure christian history 'joke' that no one is likely to get!)
Well, aside from there being only 95, actually, about 80 or so have already been resolved or agreed upon. With one more, and that being a really big one, soon to follow. The joint declaration between the Vatican Congregation for Sacred Doctrine and the Lutheran World Federation on the nature of Justification is to be signed this year on the anniversary of the posting of the 95 theses. In Wittenburg.
Of course, in the US, the LCMS and WELS are not members of the LWF, but how many people on a.t.d know what those initials mean, anyway?
Besides, Catholics are really good on forgiveness. All ya' gotta do is agree with us now, and, BINGO! All is forgiven.
I have to admit... Love is really a great thing... and it's absolutely true you can only really feel love if you have a free will. But, still, this is one of the good things about life that we wouldn't have missed if we never existed. It's like someone saying: "Hey, being freed really feels good, so why don't I create a prison, put as many peole in it as possible and then free them all. Okay, they will have a traumatic experience but at least they will feel the joy of beeing freed." I think God could have known our free will would get us into trouble... yet he gave it to us, along with our life, just to let us feel love?
I suppose God is free to make the decision to suffer in order to create something beautifull... but all that time he didn't think about the suffering his creations would have to endure. Or maybe he did but he went ahead anyway.
You probably disagree on this point as well but I don't believe suicide is necessarily a bad thing... if someone feels the love in his or her live isn't worth all the suffering he or she should be allowed to make the decision to end it all. There are only two downsides: I don't know about the afterlife but as the person has already felt love it will possibly miss it. And, of course, the people who loved the person will be hurt. Both of these downsides can be avoided if the person never was born. Now replace 'person' with 'mankind'... hmm... the "funny" thing is that with all the environmental issues and all the wars going on I sometimes feel we are commiting suicide as a people.
Now the point I think I'm making is that God made a crucial mistake... how could this have happened if he was/is so knowledgable and wise?... Well, I believe this is possible because he was created in the minds of men and women to replace something they miss... to create answers... to create comfort...
I hope I have not offended anybody... this is just what I believe in... although it may be my 'truth' it may very well be nonsense for anybody else...
More than feel love: experience love. I'm not being picky about words here: in everything I wrote I was talking about love not merely as a feeling, but as, amongst other things, a way of life, an environment for growth, a motive, a collection of choices that put the beloved before the lover.
I'd go for the second, if you asked me to speculate. When a parent consents to a child having a medical procedure that will cause some temporary suffering, but will save their child's life, or lead to a vast improvement in their child's quality of life, they're not failing to think about the suffering: they do think about it "and go ahead anyway." Because they want their child to live, or to enjoy life more. God wants us to live (for ever) and enjoy (eternal) life more than our experience in this vale of tears can ever equip us to imagine. So God went ahead anyway.
Geek warning, I'm afraid! Think of the ratio. A parent might consent to their child enduring three months discomfort so that their child might have 70 years of life: 70/0.25 is a ratio of 1:280. Now do the math for eternal life: infinity/70.
Yes, I disagree. Suicide is a defiance of God: it's abrogating to ourselves a decision that is God's alone.
And that decision may cut us off from the eternal life God wants us to enjoy.
You're right, of course, and the damage is also more widespread than the people who were close to the person who committed suicide. They get the intense suffering, but a more diffuse damage is done to human society by members of that society killing themselves.
By neglect of our duties to our planet and each other, rather than by deliberate choice, yes.
Because, as you agree, free will is a condition of love. Any other solution won't permit the evolution of love. A God who wouldn't take the risk of being rejected wouldn't be God as we know God, but the blind watchmaker, or the divine force, or any other of the constructs of human philosophy that satisfy some theories, but don't describe God as God has revealed God to be.
God does entrust human beings with the task (and privilege) of being God's co-operators, of having a hand in the ongoing task of creation. We are (awesome, this) both creature and co-creator.
Of course when people approach that task not as loving co-operators with God, but as people who see our ability to create as something to turn to selfish advantage, we end up messing up our planet and our relations with each other (and with God).
Same goes for me.
I believe in objective truth, as it happens. My opinion, sincerely held, can be true; my opinion, sincerely held, can be untrue. I do notice Aran's use of inverted commas: I'm not accusing him of failing to believe in objective truth.
I don't think the whole of mankind will ever manage to take up love as a way of life... ever... Mankind just seems to have too much bad sides, like selfishness, greedyness, hate, etc, etc, etc... I'm not saying everybody is like that... just in general...
But even if we do manage to take on a completely different way of life, even if we manage to stop all wars, solve all environmental problems, stop poverty, stop all hate and we would be completely happy... even if we find out all this happyness is worth all the suffering we have endured as a people... even then I believe we would have been better off if we would never have existed in the first place.... 'cos then we wouldn't have known what happyness was, let alone miss it...
Exactly... they WANT their child to live... I get the feeling this isn't about what the child wants... but that is beside the point 'cos instinctively the child probably wants to live too... Another difference between this and the situation of God creating mankind is that the parents have this doctor saying: "Yeah, don't worry, the quality of live will be good." and I don't think God had a person like that helping him in his decisions... but this is besides the point too... The _big_ difference between this situation and the situation of God creating mankind is that this child already was created, and therefore (possibly, hopefully) has tasted love and happyness and will miss it if his disease takes his life away from him... If the parents never had the child in the first place all suffering would have been avoided... Not only the suffering of the child but also the suffering of the parents, and all the other people and living beings on the face of the planet... as it's yet another mouth to feed... and will probably grow to become yet another polluting individual...
Well... the way things are going now I think wars and pollution will make the life of mankind shorter than that of the dinosaurs...
Uhm... yeah... well... for one nobody ever said we will live forever... and who is saying life in the afterlife will be all happyness?? Okay, maybe God has promised you that... but as I do not believe in God that argument doesn't mean much to me...
I thought we had free will? Doesn't that include freedom to decide over our own lives?
Well... it is a fact that many people commit suicide... so if they don't get to live forever because of that they will just have experienced suffering anyway... Maybe suicide is stupid... I don't know... but God cannot hold his own creations responsible for their own stupidity...
Agreed... but the mistake I was talking about is not giving us a free will.... but giving us a life in the first place...
...And this way God's plan might fall to pieces... and he didn't concieve (is that the right word?) this was possible?
To be honest, I don't really understand what you are saying... I personally believe there are facts, which are true... but when it's about believes or things that can't be proven people may have different 'truths' of their own... of course this is vague... because who decides what good proof is?
Yes, I see how soemone who believes that this life is all there is would take that view. of course, I take a different view, as I outlined before.
But since God is ominiscient, God doesn't need to take advice.
What if the child is newly born?
Oh, that's the difference between us, of course. I do believe God exists, and has communicated with the human race God created. So naturally you and I won't agree, since we don't share that fundamental starting point. I'm not really arguing, more attempting to express my view in case you're interested (or anyone else following this thread is interested). I'm not expecting you to slap your forehead and say, "Oh, yes, I see now!" My point of view makes no sense at all if God does not exist.
Suicide would not be *possible* if we didn't have free will. My local council would be exceeding its authority if it decided to introduce the Euro this year: that's a decision for Parliament. But they could still pass that resolution. We can choose to busy ourselves with the decisions that belong to us, and leave to God the decisions that belong to God; or we can choose to abrogate God's decisions to ourselves.
God never holds human beings responsible for stupidity, only for sin: freely choosing to do something that we know to be wrong.
See the first part of my earlier post, in answer to the question you'd like to ask God.
Yes, it's the right word. Of course God saw it as possible: free will is not free will at all if people can't choose to be selfish. And free will is necessary for love, as we agree.
At one time, it couldn't be proven that the earth was a globe: but those who believed it wasn't were still wrong. At the moment, it can't be proven that God exists, and invites us to eternal life:...
You say you don't really understand, but I'm very impressed with how well you're following the discussion, especially bearing in mind that English is not your first language. I'll try and expand a bit, but it is really difficult stuff. Even after six years study of philosophy and theology, including a year of ontology (the philosophy of being) and a year of epistemology (the philosophy of knowledge), I find it immensely challenging to express myself simply, because it just isn't simple.
A fact doesn't become a fact only when proved: the tree outside is still there when I'm not looking at it.
We're often careless about labelling things as "facts" or "opinions." We agree that the moon orbits the earth, so that's a fact. I think that _Daria_ is way better than _Beavis & Butthead_, but that's an opinion, since other people have other views, and we have no agreed objective criterion for deciding which is better: in fact, we're really saying, "I prefer x."
It's possible to say that each of us is telling what for us is the truth when we say, "x is the better toon." because that statement is actually a paraphrase of "I prefer x." The truth of that sort of statement does depends on me, not on some outside object. You can't tell me I prefer _Beavis & Butthead_ to _Daria_. You can't tell me _B&B_ has higher ratings than _Daria_, and therefore I must prefer _B&B_.
But if I think the moon is made of cheese, and you think it's made of rock, we each have what we might loosely call opinions, but one of us is wrong; we are saying something about the qualities of an external object. "X is made of Y" is not a paraphrase of anything like "I prefer X to Y." My sincerely held belief can be wrong, and to say that it's true for me that the moon is made of cheese, and true for you that it is made of rock, is nonsense.
Now, whether a thing exists is even more basic than what it's made of.
If one of us thinks God exists, and one of us thinks God does not exist, one of us is wrong. That's what I mean by objective truth: its veracity depends on the thing we're talking about, not on our views about it (in the way which is the better toon - which really means which one I prefer - does).
In case you wonder, yes, I'm aware of Thomas Aquinas's five "proofs" of the existence of God: but in the sense in which we know use the word "proof," they're not proofs at all. They're demonstrations that the existence of God is a reasonable belief to hold, consistent with all we know. But they can no more prove God exists than you can prove that I do. Only meeting me would prove to someone that I exist. But it's reasonable to believe I exist, even though the appearance of my postings here could be explained by alternative theories.
Phew!
I've just got in from a school governors' meeting, so this is the best I can do at the moment: sorry if any of it is harder to follow than it ought to be. But I thought your post merited the courtesy of a prompt reply.
I guess you're talking about the afterlife? I am curious; what do you think life-after-death will look like? This reminds me of an interesting point a friend of me came up with: "Isn't the definition of death the end of someone's life?"
I personally believe it is not just our free will that is to blame for all the bad sides of mankind. It's the way life works, the way the world works, that makes it necessary somehow, for us to be the way we are. The evolution theory explains a good deal of this... not only offers the evolution theory an excuse for mankind to be less than perfect, also it can explain why people are selfish by nature... as it is our deep desire to let our own genes pass on rather than someone else's that makes us 'fight' for the best mate... and, projected on the modern world, makes us want to earn a lot of money, makes us want to look good, and makes us want to steal the land of our neighbour... well... Okay, I have to admit... I never felt the deep desire to conquer our neighbour's yard... But evolution theory explains this too.. as there is the evolution-theory-for-groups... the idea of this is: if you help a friend he might someday save your life... Luckily we have some intellegence alongside our instincts... so naturally exceptions can be found. Hmm... come to think of it... the evolution theory is based on the idea life ends with death... which isn't really that farfetched, to be honest... The whole idea is to pass on your genes as much as possible 'cos when your dead it'll all be over... If God created mankind, this competition wouldn't be necessary as we'd all live forever anyway... everybody could allow himself to love one another... But somehow God created a life that doesn't permit this... my explanation for this? Well, either God didn't create mankind but evolution did, or he isn't so omniscient (is it ominiscient or omniscient?) as some people would like to believe...
Than it has already tasted life and ending it would allready be a whole different matter... Hmm... this way we seem to come back to abortion... I think I would have preferred it if I was aborted... but that is besides the point... To be honest I don't know exactly at which state an unborn baby is aborted, when it's just a lump of cell's or when it's has already grown a brain and is possibly aware of itself and life... But I personally believe the child has not developed enough to notice and care about it...
Yeah... well... as I believe it's more or less the existence of God we are discussing I suppose we just have to take a differen approach... and use arguments that we both on agree are 'true' wether God exists or not...
Well... I believe that in order to allow mankind to grow and develop further than it's creator (if there is a creator) which would be any creators dream, I think... it should be able to break free from the rules and principles set by the creator... Evolution allows rules to evolute alongside with life...
As I said earlier in this post I am not entirely sure we chose to be selfish... I think many people are bothered by their bad-sides but can't really help it... I know I am one of those people...
Yeah... well... it's actually quite easy to prove the earth is a globe... and I think it was certainly possible many many years before the idea that earth is a globe was officially adapted... Somebody probably had proven it but found it nearly impossible to share his findings... This is why I believe it's no good to stick to old rules and regulations... I think you should always keep an open mind... not just as an individual but as a people... and I have the feelings most religions don't permit this or somehow disencourage it.
Thank you :) I find this very interesting and stimulating too...
I know what you are saying... although with quantummechanics this is a bit different...
Yeah... although I think the question wether or not God exist is somewhere halfway between 'cheese and rock' and 'Daria and B&B'... you'll have to admit it is all a bit illusive... And there are people who believe 'God lives inside them' and I have allways interpeted this as: God is something personal, some entity within me... If I say I have my own personal God named 'John' within myself nobody can say that is not true...
If I may quote my first reply to your first posting:
only
has
God's
I can no more imagine what eternal life will "look" like (I don't even know if the analogy "look" is valid or not) than a tulip can imagine what it looks like to work as an animator on _Daria_. The only information I have is the analogies used in sacred scripture and apostolic tradition: but since we don't agree about the existence of God, let alone revelation, it would be fruitless, and perhaps irritating to you and others, to write a synopsis of what revelation says about the afterlife. If you are interested in such a synopsis, see, for example, http://www.christusrex.org/www1/CDHN/art12.html#EVERLASTING
It's quite a few years since people who make dictionaries of English changed from prescribing to describing. (It may be different, of course, in your first language.) They used to say, "This is the definition of the word, and if you use it mean anything else, you are wrong." Now they describe how people use the word. For someone who doesn't believe in an afterlife, the word "death" means the end of a human person; for someone who does, it means the end of this earthly life.
I don't agree with this assertion.
I see no incompatibilty between evolution and creation. As long as people remember that the Bible isn't a physics textbook, and that having a PhD in physics doesn't make someone a theologian. As to ominscience, see, if you wish, my point in my earlier replies about God knowing the cost, but knowing the benefit will outweigh it beyond measure.
It varies between, at the one extreme, preventing the implantion of the fertilised egg, and, at the other, dissecting the baby alive and removing the cut-up body parts. But that's not the point: see, if you wish, the point in my earlier post, about knowing that if I'd been aborted, at whatever stage, I wouldn't be here now. And I'm glad I am: I do hope one day you'll be glad you're alive. 8-)
See, if you wish, my point in my earlier post about the "proof" of God's existence.
And we haven't? Look around you. 8-/ See, if you wish, my point in my earlier post about the damage done to our planet and our relations with each other by our choosing to "break free from the rules and principles set by the creator."
Actions have consequences. I can't say it's unfair that I can't break free from the law of gravity and jump unharmed from a tower block window. If God went round behind us all the time, undoing anything we'd done that might harm us, or someone else, or our planet, then free will would be a mockery. If (assuming you live at home) your parents said you were free to move out, but every time you do they send round a couple of guys to bring you back as soon as you fall asleep, so you always wake up back in your present room: *are* you free to move out?
I get it wrong as often as anyone; but I keep trying. The more often we choose to (using your terms) defy our bad-sides and go with our good-sides, the better we'll get at choosing what's right, at turning love from a sentiment into a way of life. Like speaking a new language, or playing an instrument, or training for a sport: we get better with practice. And then (though I understand you won't accept this) there's grace: God's help for those who choose to seek to do what's right.
We do have more choice than we're led to believe. Which of these is more useful to people who get rich on consumer materialism: people who make conscious choices, or people who think that if they want something, they've no choice, they've got to have it? The latter make compliant consumers, to the delight of those who sell and advertise the useless crap they get rich on. And the (carefully fostered) attitude that we can't help being selfish also creates people with the deepest alienation the world has known: those who can't afford the products they've been led to want, and those who've bought them and still aren't happy. "This isn't right: I get what I want, and I do what I want, so I should be happy. All the ads say so. Oh, look: that looks good. The people on the ad look so happy. I want one. I'll buy that. I'll be okay then." Yeah, right.
Eep! Without any of the discoveries or insights of the astronomers and geographers since Galileo? Well, anyway, perhaps (though I can't see how), one day this side of heaven people will be saying "It's actually quite easy to prove that God exists."
I can only speak from my own experience, and I find that an open mind is encouraged and treasured among Catholics. Look at the long history of honouring reason as a gift from God. Look at the scholastic movement. Look at the part the Catholic Church played in spreading education. And why do you think that one of the first things on the checklist of totalitarian regimes is surpressing the Catholic church, or seeking to corrupt it or replace it with something homegrown and more pliant? I mean no disrespect, btw, to other denominations or faiths.
"God lives inside me" only implies God does not also live outside me if God is smaller than a person, and bounded by space. God isn't either.
But I can say that in that sentence the word "God" is used in a different sense to the way it's used in this sentence from my first reply to your first post:
(Wittgenstein rules!) (<ahem> Sorry, got carried away for a moment there. <g>)
One of - no, *the* great insight of Wittgenstein, IMHO, was that philosophy should pay more attention to language. I'm also a fan of GE Moore's _A Defence of Common Sense_, btw. 8-)
LOL. Oh, yes, we've heard all about it. <bg>
I agree with you. Not creates, but exploits; and, by indulging, strengthens.
Decisions surround me Decisions that hound me Decisions, they abound Every night and each day. Decisions around me Decisions have bound me Decisions, I've found Steal my freedom away.
*claps* Hey, that was really good...sounds like you could put it to some Missing Persons music (which is almost as big a compliment in my book as saying it sounds like Simon LeBon wrote it).
Thanks for saying so, Diane... I like it but I always like my own scriblings, even the bad ones... I did think it kind of fit in with the discussion, though... ;)
Yeah... I really like this poem too... I'm making this site with dutch and english stories and poetry etc and I'd love it if you'd contribute something. Please contact me if you're interested.
:) imo stupidity is involuntary... however imo all other behaviour is also involuntary.. a response to stimuli. therefore, nobody is responsible for any kind of sin, including stupidity. ;)
Uh, hello...God created us! God is perfect! God has every right then to judge us, and in my faith I believe salvation comes from both accepting that Jesus (God's only son) by dying on the cross saved us, that by believing in that we are continually saved, and by seeking out salvation we will get saved.
Besides, as one of my religion teachers said, "It's better to believe and be disproven than it is to not believe and be disproven." Logic: if you believe in God and it turns out that there is no God, you haven't lost anything. But if you don't believe in God but it turns out there is a God, you will only fail to be saved but will also be forever thrown in with the forces of evil and live a torturous eternity.
On Fri, 08 Oct 1999 22:13:06 -0500, Lady Interference wrote:
I *REALLY* hate that argument. Theists who turn to something like mean well, but just aren't thinking straight.
In the end, reason is a function of this world, and God transcends (notice I didn't say 'does not exist in') this world. You can't logically prove the existence of God (and you can't logically disprove the existence of anything).
Unless, of course, what God hates is a self-interested, oppurtunist hypocrite who only believes in God to save himself. Which is why it doesn't ultimately work, of course.
I never really liked people who focused on "believe in God and be saved" because I can't see why going to these Christian parties and wearing bracelets and saying "I believe in God" is really improving anything.
If believing in God or anything else makes you generous and kind and happy and fulfilled, go for it. Whether its true or not it doesn't matter if its already improved something.
If believing in God make you believe you should carry out hate campaigns against homosexuals or Jews or Muslims or anything else, you've already done more harm than most atheists, and I'd hate to think there's a God who would favor you just for believing in him.
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
Heh ... if I were God this would annoy me. Suck-ups.
(ObHum, "Monty Python and the Meaning of Life" ... "Oh God, we are so very small and you are so very HUGE ...")
Sincerely Yours, Jordan
"Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; but he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction." (Dean William R. Inge)
Well said. The question with Pascal's wager is, "What do you mean by 'believe'?"
bracelets
I like the people, usually, but not their attitude. I do think that "owning up" to Christian faith does do good, but only if that faith goes to the heart of a person, and doesn't stop at the superficial stuff Dagny caricatures so well. I really don't want to start a scripture-quoting competition here, but I can't see how "all ya gotta do is believe" squares with Micah 6:8 "This is what the Lord asks of you, only this: to act justly, to love tenderly, and to walk humbly with your God." Nothing about bracelets there. And that's only the OT: the Gospels have plenty to say about people whose faith is only skin deep. Once again, it depends what people mean by "believe."
and
already
I don't agree. It amounts to saying that deceiving people is okay if it alters their behaviour in a way the deceivers approve of. If people's happiness is based on a delusion, that's cruel, because sooner or later the delusion will become apparent. "Whether it's true or not" matters more (in my view) than anything else in life.
I think most of those sort of Christians never actually read the Bible. That's the sort my Aunt Ginny is and I think there's too many big words for her. All they know is John 3:16. They may find some interesting things, like that whole "love your enemies" thing, which very few people get at all. Or some of the stories in the Old Testament... I think the people in Fremont would try to ban them! I'm thinking of like Lot and his daughters or Sodom.
In some ways I can see your point... like The Matrix (that's a good movie!!) they're REALLY in a fantasy world, but this one is constructed to use them, which is more like the fantasies constructed by people who are apt to say God wants us to go out and kill Muslims and attack gay people and stuff. But I think belief is the point of religion, and there really is no way to prove or disprove it conclusively, which is why there are atheists and Christians (and Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Bahais, umm... you get the point) so if the belief urges towards good things it is a good belief. It's sort of Vonnegut's idea of "foma", although believing there's a point to life gives life a point, if done right.
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
On Fri, 08 Oct 1999 22:13:06 -0500, Lady Interference wrote:
Ah, religion. Reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End." In it, the alien race known as the Overlords gave historians a device that allowed them to view the events of the past as they happened. A lot of very popular religions got blown out of the water when the true facts became known. :-)
Martin
(send all e-mail to "[email]")
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You may recall one of my prior posts about a certain Junior High English teacher, a Catholic sister, who challenged my love of sci-fi by asking me to "find what's wrong with the scenario" in many of my favorites. "Childhood's End" was right at the top of the list.
And the answer was "The author presupposes the non-existence of God."
and most religious philosophers and other religious people that are up for a nice discussion (like the Jehova's witnesses that dare to ring our doorbell... most of them reply when I try to start a constructive discussion: "Oh, you're one of those"... next time I open my door I'll open dialogue with: "Oh, you're one of those"... that'll teach them :).... but I digress) do so with the assumption that God exists...
To be honest, in this NG I've met the first person that defended his believe with arguments other than: "Because that's just the way God wants it."
forgive me if i've said this before: there is a significantly higher instance of schizophrenia among jehovah's witnesses than among non-jws. so watch it. ;)
that argument pisses me off. it's the logical equivalent of "god must exist because you can't prove he doesn't."
lol... I think that sort of belief is sort of perverse, especially if you figure everything is the way God wants it. People in Europe may have thought God wanted them to go to war in WW1 (many did think that in fact) and if this God guy did set that whole thing up he's gonna have some serious scores to settle and better watch out.
Well duuh you can't prove anything negatively. You can't prove there's not an alien from Mars standing behind you. You can't prove you weren't involved with killing JonBenet.
I have heard the argument that, since there is no empirical evidence to suggest the existence of a God, one must assume his non-existence, which makes slightly more sense.
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
Whenever you try to prove the existance of God by looking for empirical data, ISTM that thy point hath been missed.
To me, it's more a matter of faith that it is of evidence. Either you believe that there is a God or you don't. Either way it's tough to convince anyone to change their mind.
Is everything the way God wants it? The way God wanted it was in the Garden of Eden... Mankind has done the rest... Free will and all that...
Oh no, watch out! It's got a probe! <g>
Nah, I've got an allibi for that one...
I don't see how either argument has any more validity then the other... they're just more comlicated ways of asking is the glass half-empty or half-full?
Not to mention that "argument" implies a willingness to submit to the rules of logic. And "I believe God exists because God wants me to believe he exists" is logically fallacious. It's begging the question.
There are however, a few arguments the Christian Apologist can use in favor of the existence of God. The aforementioned Pascal's Wager is the last of these. Thomas Aquinas cited "Five Ways" to at least infer the existence of God from the existence of the Natural Universe. Peter Kreeft adds to these five, which he calls the "cosmological arguments", with 15 others which he calls "psychological arguments".
On 11 Oct 1999 16:10:39 GMT, [email] (KTrick45) wrote:
Which goes along with what I've been saying all along! The existence of God cannot be measured by things such as logic, reason, or science, because those are the tools of this world. God transcends this world, therefore those are inapplicable. It's like trying to measure the value of a dollar bill by it's weight.
And, therefore, since we cannot prove or disprove the existence of God through natural means, we finish with the SAME way we've finished the last 10 religious discussions. "It's a matter of faith".
Or it could not make a difference. Religions have validity that transcends simply whether they are historical facts... like the story of Creation does not have to mean Evolution is not true, because the Biblical account is not a historical or scientific account, it's a story you're supposed to take something out of.
But I think there is a pretty good backing to say that Siddhartha Gotoma, Jesus Christ, and Mohammed all lived. Whether they are divine or not and what they stood for are the real questions.
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
ah, right. good luck passing Biology, all of modern Biology is centered around the "theory" of Evolution.
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
On 10 Oct 1999 19:59:07 GMT, [email] (Dagny Scott) wrote:
I don't take Biology, I'm a journalism major. And I fully expect 95% of modern biology to be debunked in the next couple hundred years, same as the "modern" sciences of the past were.
Funny, Biology is a requirement in high schools here. Colleges, too.
Besides that, Evolution is not only well-accepted in the scientific community, it is well-proven to. We have seen organisms evolve through natural selection: which is, for example, why our bacteria are becoming immune to certain anti-biotics, such as penicillin, because the occasional mutation causing immunity to penicillin allows those certain bacteria to survive while the others do not.
And not so many theories are totally "debunked" as much as expanded upon, like relativity expanded upon Newtonian Physics. Theories that are not at all believed are more wholly ones like Lamarcke's theory of use or disuse in terms of evolution (if an animal doesn't use its legs its children won't have legs) and those theories were never fully accepted, or else very primitive theories like those from Ancient Greece, and even some of those have been expanded on more than disproven.
Anyone who believes in the Bible literally is going to have problems with most science, not just Darwin. It also says in the Bible that God made the sun stand still in the sky: well, there goes Copernicus. There goes the fact that we fly out of the Earth's atmosphere to the sun in the Ulysses probe. There goes Newton and Kepler because if the Earth ceased to rotate (causing the sun to appear stopped) we would all fly off the face of it. There goes the solar day, since there were days before the sun. There goes carbon dating, since that would set the creation of the Earth before it would Biblically.
I don't think Genesis and modern science are irreconcilable, if you give up the idea that the Earth was created in 168 hours. In a way, it supports it. The classical scientific view is that the universe sort of always existed... but modern science says it was created, the "big bang". Now, this can be interpreted as "Physics provides an explanation for the universe besides God" or it can say God created the universe by setting off a chain reaction which led to elements forming stars and planets, and on some planets, into cells, and these cells into more complex cells, and these complex cells into multicellular organisms. Now, this didn't happen in 168 hours, but it is reconcilable. A group of nomadic desert people can take a bit more out of a metaphorical story than a Physics lesson. If the Bible was history and Physics lessons, it wouldn't be much of a basis for a religion.
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
On 10 Oct 1999 21:31:10 GMT, [email] (Dagny Scott) wrote:
I took in it high school, during my year in a christian school.
Evolution is a fact. Evolution as an explanation for origin of species is not.
I can't disagree, although you aren't quite looking at the big picture. Our theories ARE primitive by the year 4000 standard. 400 years past the origin of the "4 elements" theory, it was still being "refined".
That's pretty shortsighted, and we both know it. If God can make the earth cease to rotate, he can surely make sure we don't be flown off, right?
And carbon dating is, and always has been, crap. It's got so many exceptions, I don't know how it's ever been taken so seriously. Not to mention it's never been independently proven to be accurate for long expanses of time.
I've heard this all before, and I'm pretty nuetral about the "definition of a day" theory.
Indeed, evolution appears to be broader than mere biology; it's a universal organizing principle in any situation where there is a way to pass a "heritage" down among generations. Cultures, artifacts, and even certain kinds of computer programs also "evolve" over time. Some scientists have even suggested that the Universe as a whole may be "evolving", though that's a more philosophical sort of concept.
Yes. Generally speaking a new theory supplants an old through extending it to explain phenomena which the old one could not explain. Einsteinian physics built upon Newtonian orbital mechanics and Maxwellian thermodynamics as its bases.
Sincerely Yours, Jordan
"Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; but he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction." (Dean William R. Inge)
Personally, evolution is one of my favourite theories... it's just so basic and simple, that's it's strength.
I don't believe it is... In general churches welcomed the Big Bang theory with open arms... 'cos who else than God could have triggered a Big Bang?? This is interesting on itself... the Big Bang is a singularity exploding, which has lead to the creation of many different kinds of atoms, molecules and, eventually, life... If God indeed triggered the Big Bang it wouldn't be very likely it interfered with this massive project... The _great_ thing about the Big Bang is that it's this relative 'simple' thing that caused a complex structure like the universe and it would be odd if God decided to take one of the planets that were created and created life on it... Triggering the Big Bang God placed Himself at the outside of it all... and therefore He should have no say over our culture or way of life... At the moment the universe is expanding, but if it turns out to have enough mass, gravity will make it collapse again in time... either that or the universe will continue expanding untill all stars have died and it turns into a big cloud of dust in space-time. Either way the big bang and the universe can be seen as this globe in space-time... a globe with 4 dimensions, that is... hmm... a bit hard to visualise I suppose... Anyway, the idea is there is nothing outside this globe, everything that 'exists' is inside it... so there can't be a God triggering it's birth... There are theories suggesting that when a black-hole collapses it'll start a new Big Bang in some different space-time... Of course there is room for many of these universe-globes in the space-time... and the most stable one will live the longest (and possibly dominate)... the most stable one will also be the most likely to create life... so there you go... evolution theory for universes...
hmm... I find it a bit hard to explain all of this... but I hope you guys catch my drift... if you're interested in this stuff... may I suggest "The life of the cosmos" by Lee Smolin, _anything_ by Stephen Hawkings, and _anything_ I might publish in the future if I'll ever have the guts for it ;)
Truth is we don't know what happened "before" the Big Bang, or even if "before" is applicable in this case. Time, as we know it, is dependent upon space and hence cannot exist before the Big Bang. It is of course possible that there is some sort of "superspace" and "supertime" in which Universes are embedded ("like bubbles in foam" was an analogy used by one science writer), but we don't at present know anything about such media ... we don't even know if they exist.
Calling the unknown "God" is as good as calling it anything else, I guess, but we should be prepared for the fact that the unknown does not always remain unknown.
Yes. There's definitely a process of "evolution" of some sort in the first second of our Universe, as physical laws are determined by energy patterns, in ways that we do not yet understand. (Btw, if we ever DID understand them, we could theoretically CHANGE physical laws within a local zone, given enough energy ... but keep in mind that "enough" is a very large quantity here).
We'd be like an experiment. Read Olaf Stapledon's novel _The Star Maker_ sometime ...
At least :)
Maybe the "fittest" one will be that in which the inhabitants progress to the point of being able to colonize other universe-bubbles. In which case, why haven't we met people from others yet? A Super-Fermi Paradox, hee hee hee :)
Sincerely Yours, Jordan
"Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; but he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction." (Dean William R. Inge)
Back in my own Jounalism major days (mid-'70s) I was required to take only two semesters of science. One of them was "Biology 110: Continuing Concepts in Modern Biology - 1". And the content was... Evolution by Natural Selection. Nothing else. Just that. Back then, the idea was to inculcate what would later become known as "Politically Correct Values" in potential jounalists. The other required science was "Biology 111: Continuing Concepts in Modern Biology -2". It was a class on "safe sex" and "responsible drug use". I decided that Jounalism was to sleazy and cynical a career, even for me. I took a job in Emergency Medical Services (where you need to know *real* biology) and, 21 years later, I'm still there.
On 11 Oct 1999 00:42:29 GMT, [email] (KTrick45) wrote:
I am the only conservative (am I, in case you weren't paying attention, am pretty darned conservative) on the editorial staff at our newspaper. The others are all rabid liberals (what a shock, liberals in a college!). Believe it or not, when a pro-life group requested to purchase space for an 8 page pull out ad, I was the only one with reservations about printing it.
When I had Biology in College, my Prof told us, on the first day, that there were two main accepted theories of evolution... Genesis and The Big Bang(natural selection)... and since we were in a science class we would be learning about the latter... It impressed me that he didn't just state outright that Genesis was myth and false from a scientific viewpoint as I had heard other science teachers say... His point of view was that Genesis had never been disproved and therefore could still be considered viable...
A poor argument, as I said before... I believe my Profs point was that he wasn' t going to have theology arguments in hs biology/science class... I believe both theories can be valid... I've never seen or heard one thing to absolutely disprove either... And who's to say what a day is to God? Time is so subjective... The more I learned about science and the way life and everything depends and interlocks and builds upon everything else, the more astounded I became... It really is such an intricate work of art... any being that could create all this, I realized, was so far beyond the scope of my limited human understanding, that I don't even try to understand... It would be like an ant trying to comprehend a human... only infinitely more complicated and confusing... How can we even begin to comprehend such a thing?
I don't think it has to be Genesis vs.Darwin though. They're both explanations of the same phenomenon in different forms. Genesis is what we'd call a "prmitive" form because of the culture it came out of was what we'd call a "primitive culture. But maybe we should really take a look at the accounts...
The Universe (or Earth) was "formless and empty". Then suddenly it was. Genesis 1:2, or the big bang. Then more about light, which could correspond to the formation of the stars. (Day One) Then the planets: specifically, the Earth. And there was volcanic activity and all sorts of good stuff and land and sea formed, and the atmosphere formed from the oxygen released by microbes in the sea (Day Two) And then there were the plants, which evolved from colonies of microbes (Day 3).
And on day four comes perhaps the first difference, that the sun and moon were formed after that. If you're gonna argue for this one you'll have to go with "Copernicus is the Devil" and support Ptolemy too. One must understand that the idea that the sun rotated the Earth was common in earlier times, as that is how it appears. Remember, this is a religious text, not a Physics lesson.
And then came the age of the fish, and then birds, the lower animals, (Day 5) Last to evolve were the animals and finally man (Day 6).
So what exactly is contradictory in the two texts, besides exact amounts of time and the fact that the Darwinian view does not require (although it does not exclude) a God as a force? Both show life moving from simple to complex and from chaotic to orderly.
Saying "there are two theories of Evolution, Darwin and Genesis" is not as accurate as there being two ways of explaining the same process of evolution coming out of two periods of history.
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
Possibly. But I'd rather think the laws of Physics are unchanging and part of God rather than mere inventions of God. I guess this really is part of the "What is God?" God is the eternal, the everlasting. Part of what is everlasting in this world are the laws of Physics. Obviously that's not all God is, God is love, God is logos (word, number, or argument). Those are all eternal. Basically that these things are part of God, or these things ARE God, not creations of God.
The fact is that Genesis is the work of ancient Jewish people recording the works of God with startling accuracy on the whole. But it was a way of making sense that cohered then, which included the Earth as the center of the Universe. The rest of the Universe was not comprehended yet. The point though is that it served a religious purpose, whereas Darwin served a scientific one. Darwin dealt with "fact", Genesis dealt with "truth". Truth is a larger ideal which can exist seperate of "fact".
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
You know what's interesting? There actually wasn't any light until after the Big Bang, anyway, if the current theory holds true. I don't remember the precise details on the physics, but I always thought that that particular bit of info was kinda interesting, in a creepy sort of way.
rich.
Helen: Bureaucracy is the price we pay for impartiality.
I once had an interesting Priest. I did not agree with everything he said, but I liked this. He once told me that he wished "anti evolutionists" would just admit that evolution happened. His argument was that the descent of man was arguable, but evolution was not. I, of course, accept the descent of man, but the Creationists would be taken a lot more seriously if they didn't deny evolution. Evolution is more than a theory you can watch it happen in successive generations of bacteria in a lab.
On Thu, 14 Oct 1999 16:40:42 GMT, "\"President John J. Sheridan of the Interstellar Alliance, Capt. Earthforce, Ret." wrote:
I apologize for promoting myself so shamelessly but again I have to mention this essay I have written on "How to create a universe the elegant way". The same article contains a part on why evolution is a fact and my homepage at http://www.cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de/~benkmann/ has a simple computer program (DOS .exe and PASCAL source included) that illustrates evolution at the example of Adam, Eve and their offspring. If you don't have access to a lab with bacteria you might want to try it. MSB
The same could be said for any old story though. The thing is, Genesis doesn't put forward any kind of theory as to how the world, or life, was created, it just characterises the beginning of things in a suitably dramatic narrative.
It's also worth noting that the Big Bang and the Theory of Evolution are two quite separate things, each with their own set of evidence, and formulated by different people at different times, and whilst the evolutionary theory of life is universally accepted (except by one or two obscure tribes and a couple of American states), some jury members are still out on the big bang, which a more recent and harder to prove theory.
The problem I have with these discussions is it seems to me so much easier if you take out the superfluous bit, namely the supernatural god. Looking purely at the physical universe, evolution suffices in itself to explain Life, and to my mind the idea of Life pulling itself up by its own bootstraps is a more wondrous thing anyway. Similarly, although the Big Bang theory doesn't explain why the universe came into being, positing a god who pressed the button doesn't answer this question (ie. who created god?) it simply puts a smiley face on the unknown.
That's not to say there is no place for gods or religions though. Unlike Richard Dawkins I'm not a radical atheist (it seems to me that Dawkins has failed to grasp the subtleties of religion at all). However it seems unlikely to me that any god is physically real in the sense that stars and planets are real. Possibly there is some underlying force in the universe, (eg. people have posited that something like the mind might exist at the quantum uncertainty level), but such a thing is going to be quite alien to us, and to think of it being in our image, making decisions and listening to our prayers, is a notion that's frankly on the same level as having a pet rock. (Not that I've anything against pet rocks.)
Most religions though deal with a more human god, one who does not manifest himself on the physical plane, but rather inside people's heads. It seems reasonable to suppose that such a god is either a part of oneself, or perhaps an organising principle as in memes. When dealing with the complexities of the mind though, Occam's razor can produce strange results, making it easier to think in terms of independent entities such as gods or spirits than trying to cram the totality of the human condition into a purely materialistic model of mind that then becomes so complex as to defy analysis.
God is superfluous if you have evolution? And where does evolution come from? If it weren't such a waste of bandwidth I would repost my "How to create a universe the elegant way" essay whenever this discussion pops up (<self-promo>If someone has not read it, yet, use DejaNews, it's really funny<\self-promo>). MSB
I hope you are aware of the fact that you are evading the question. So your reasoning is like this: "I don't need God because I don't ask the questions that require Him as answer". But let's see this another way. You say that evolution is the underlying principle. The only principle that "is just there". The rest is created by evolution. Without God the commandments and religious rules were just conceived by humans. They have developed or rather _evolved_ in human society over a period of time through natural selection because they are (or were at the time) beneficial to society. In other words, universe was created and the commandments were passed to man by your god, the mighty "Evolution". You see, He has many names and many shapes. He reveals Himself differently to different people. Just believe in your god "Evolution" and follow the laws and rules he/it has brought to us and you shall be saved. Allah is merciful and wise. MSB
I've given up asking questions, there comes a point where you just have to get on with living. If you want answers it's a pity you don't get the BBC as they showed Monty Python's The Meaning of Life tonight, which addresses just about every thing you could want to know about life the universe and everything.
No, my god(dess) is called Eris. Evolution is a process not an entity.
i hadn't seen that... it's quite good. :) "this is mr death... he works down in the village, he's a reaper." "i am... the GRIM reaper." "i should think so, with weather like this, ha ha ha ha." and the sperm song.. lol. anyhow, having some good tv to watch took my mind off... err stuff. being a two-faced slag, or whatever. :(
Well, I could rent the video. There are lots of English-language video rentals around here. But I won't. They showed it on tv here some time ago and I didn't watch it because I usually don't like their kind of humor. I make an exception for LOB, though. It definitely rulez! I even have this really large script to the movie (though I think the German translation is better than the orginal. It's obvious that it was done by huge MP fans). And that one scene in that other movie where the black knight is chopped to pieces is one of my all-time favorite scenes, too. MSB
That would be "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," also known as "M�nty Pyth�n ik den H�lie Grailen." (Well, it's known that way in the credits.) It *finally* came out on DVD a few weeks ago, and it is now *mine*! Muahaha!
BTW, according to a friend of mine, the entire series of Python shows will be coming to DVD soon as well. *Sigh* There goes all of my "Cabin fund" money for a while. ;-)
rich.
Jake: I love camping! I love it! ... Has anybody seen my pants?
I believe my parents created me, and my grandparents in turn created them and so on and so on... possibly God triggered the Big Bang but that doesn't give Him the right to judge me... I am an individual, how can anybody truly judge me correctly?
And about God being perfect... If I may quote Frank Zappa... I hope I don't offend anyone...
"After all, God created us to be _just_ like Him. So if we're dumb, God is dumb, and a little ugly on the side..." ~ F. Zappa
Except that you feel misguided... besides, I think that many people have started to depend on God, would be to afraid to live if they'd learn there is no God looking after them and if they'd be hit by a car it _doesn't_ have a meaning.
Oh dear. Well, there goes the tolerance and free-will thingy...
XI Thou shalt do whatever I say or burn forever in Hell
I can respect the people who believe in God because they've thought about it for themselves and came to the conclusion believing is God is the right thing. I cannot respect the people who believe in God out of fear and I _refuse_ to fear God or Hell myself.
You know what? Just forget the whole argument. I most certainly don't feel like dealing with this type of discussion. I simply believe in God and ever since I was little have felt that anyone who doesn't can't possibly be ok. So what I did in my post was try to be intellectual about it instead of just saying this outright. And since I'm an idiot I couldn't get the whole intellectual argument right. So...forget it. I'm certainly not in the mood.
I also hope you're feeling better soon... I never meant to make you sad... I respect the fact that you believe in God, although I don't do the same... For myself, I'm not always okay, but I think no-one is perfectly happy all the time, and I don't think this has anything to do with my lack of faith in God...
Pagan, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, Jew, Catholic... it doesn't really matter... as long as you're happy
God did not create us "to be just like him"... He created us in his image... This is another thing entirely... Which part of us is in his image? Our bodies? Our souls? Our ability to reason? Our sentience, which truly divides us from all other animals on earth? Or the whole package? It's pretty obvious that God isn't human as we are today. Perhaps we're meant to evolve into what he is one day? Or would that be Sacreligious?
I find the idea of all Christians (or muslims or buddists, etc) without their faith, without their God a supremely frightning idea... Some would give up and commit suicide... And some might even keep leading peaceful, generous lives... But others, without a God to dole out punshment to child molestors, rapists, murderers, etc when the law failed might decide to take matters into their own hands... And wouldn't murder be a thousand times worse? If there was no afterlife, nothing beyond our few fragile years, then wouldn't life be that much more valuable? Murder would be even worse then it is today where at least there's the hope of something else... And why even bother being nice to people you don't care about? Why not just take what you want? Why restrict your pleasures or behaviors? Life is fleeting and all there is... Death is a constant spectre...
Hell is a translated concept... Hell was the dumps for bodies and garbage... Hell is spiritual death...
Fear is a natural part of life... A natural state of the human psyche... We all fear something... I fear dentists... It would make more sense for me to fear an all-knowing, all-powerful super-being capable of creating and eradicating all life... But I guess I'm a little short of sense... I can't even say I've ever known anyone who solely believed in God just from fear... To own the truth, I can't even imagine how such a thing could be possible... What do they fear exactly? Just wondering...
An image can be a visual picture of something but it can also be just a likeness to something or a representaion of something... It doesn't have to be visual... it's just that as visual creatures we tend to use it that way...
if a word is used "in that way," then that is its meaning.. i.e. if the word "image" is used to mean "visual picture," then when the word is used, it should be interpreted as meaning "visual picture." the use of the term "image" in this case could easily be argued to be metaphorical, but that's very ambiguous and as you said, open to many different interpretations.
You seem to have remarkably little faith in humanity! It seems to me that the world actually works the other way round, that religion codifies the value systems and behaviour that have been found to be beneficial to us. Take the god away and you are simply left with humanism. Society didn't just spring into existence when someone waved a magic wand, it evolved with us as we became human, and binds our behaviour closely through a process of socialisation without any need of help from some external being.
this pottery with blue Dutch stuff painted on it. It's not very interesting.
It's a city, I think, too, in the original Holland
Dagny
http://parsley-firefly.isCool.net
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
prove it. ;) your statement makes a large assumtion... you have no way in which to prove that the tree remains a tree when nobody can see/touch/smell it. how do you know you're not hallucinating a tree?, for a start. :) all "facts" rely on assumptions.. for example the assumption that gravity makes unsupported objects fall to the ground relies on the assumtion that time passes from *beginning* to *end*.. ie if we are viewing time "backwards", then gravity makes objects *fall off* the ground. :) as for proof of God's existance, i'm not really sure what kind of proof there *could* be. he has no form, iirc.. can he speak? it seems to me that the only way in which God's existance could be proven is just by "proof" of whatever form existing in someone's mind... ie belief. imo God exists in people's brains and nowhere else.
Good point! :) Although you can argue... if everybody sees the tree whenever they look at, then it doesn't really matter if the tree is gone when you don't look at it... You can say it only exists if it really is there... but then the word 'exist' would become obsolete 'cos you never know for sure it's really there... You could say someone is really strong only if he can lift the empire state building, but no-one can so that would mean the end of the word 'strong'... So we ignorant humans say something 'exists' when WE can see/touch/smell it... so, my point is, it's important you get your definitions straight when you enter a discussion... make sure everybody is talking about the same thing...
if time really passes backwards I suppose God would be a bit confused :)
On Fri, 08 Oct 1999 21:05:58 +0100, some letters randomly coalesced from individual pixels, claiming to be from "endless, nameless" , and it said:
<snip response>
Of corse, when you consider the idea that "nothing exists that He did no make" (I'm almost sure I read that somewhere), saying that God exists is about as inane as any other comment one can make about God. If the mere concept of existance is by His whim, then He must be somehow... more than existant. For something He created to try to concieve His form is... I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here. Maybe that's my point.
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Exactly! That's why probably more has been written about/to Him then any other single person/subject... words are too limited... though we keep on trying... How do you explain the unexplainable? Poorly...
if you don't exist, you get to be the urban spaceman.
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
well you know to change our religion a sec "life is suffering"... of course, still, life is also wonderful. and everything changes and everything stays the same. I don't know if I'm being profound or I just can't make up my mind, but that's life. I'll return to my stupor now. Thank you.
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
Maybe not the best place for this, also not regarding a human life, but I'll try it here, this relates to some of what is said here and some other posts on this thread.
I see above how it works for having a child and in my case. My dog today had to be put to sleep today so he wouldn't have to suffer the effects of Cushing's disease, which would have slowly takes his ability to walk as his legs wouldn't support his weight for much longer. (Buster 5/1/85-10/7/99)
Originally we took him in only until we got him a new home, in 3 days we found one....ours. He originally came from a house with a young child who grabbed him by the tail and threw him around, so for Busters safety we took him in to find him a home. I mention this as it is the same as a couple wanting to have a child, (no less love because of it being a dog) Within those 3 days he turned around mine and my family's lives forever, especially my mothers. She had a disease that kept her dizzy and always nervousand jittery, she could not go in public for too long at a time or she'd have panic attacks. Buster, as soon as he was old and strong enough took to her and never let anything happen to her, never out of her sight, he guarded us with his life, and we appreciated him for it, once my mother was cured, he still stayed with her and let no one hurt her, and as a friend he got her through the roughest years of her life, without him I don't know how she would have turned out, but she's fine now.
The last couple of months Buster was barely able to get up and support himself on his legs, was getting heavier and fatter, was having a harder time breathing and would have had congestive heart failure if we would have let him live on, so being my mothers choice she felt as if it was time to put him down, after all the years of fun and joy he brought to us, it was hard to let him go, but after all he did for us we weren't going to let him suffer and so we sent him on to his eternal rest, my mothers lastwords to him were in reference to my grandmother, her mother, who love him very much as well who passed on in '92, "Go on, go find Grandma" this almost seemed to relax him and he closed his eyes and that was it.
The reason I describe all of this is because you have to love someone boundlessly in order to let them go. Would we have taken him in 14 years ago if we had thought about his death at the time? I doubt it. It is this kind of unconditional love that makes us human, were we wrong to decide to end his suffering and take his life, I don't think so because to keep him here would make him suffer and we would be selfish to let him live just to prolong his suffering and delay our pain.
Although I don't go to church as often as I should, I do believe in God, and I believe that is why we made the choices we did, from first adopting him, to ending his suffering, it was all about pure unconditonal love for a family member, even if it was only a dog, but he was a family member first and foremost. Could we have spared ourselves all of this pain that my family feels today, yes, by never taking him in, but we would have missed out on some great times as well. God made the right choice in allowing us to love others, we may not have missed love, but I'm sure we'd have an empty place inside all of us if love never existed. As said in "The Misery Chick" O'Neill: It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all. Quoted from Tennyson.
Finally, I'm sorry to ramble on about this way off topic subject, but after the events of today I had to share this with more than my family today, as this seemed the thread to do it. These are my beliefs and my feelings, if anyone disagrees with any of it, thats up to them, but one thing we all can agree on, is that love is a very important, if not THE most important aspect of life, without it there is no life.
Thank you all for your time and putting up with my ramblings, but I had to say all of this.
One more time (Buster: 5/1/85-10/7/99) I will miss him terribly,
When I was 19, I got pregnant because my doctor put me on antibiotics while I was on the pill, without telling me that they would interact. My boyfriend and I talked for a LONG time before we made our decision to have an abortion. We considered putting the child up for adoption, but then thought about how hard it would be to carry it to term and then just give it away to a complete stranger. I don't see how anyone could do that. I know that people who give kids up for adoption get some satisfaction out of knowing that their child will be taken care of by someone that really wants a child, but I don't think I would ever be able to handle that. The inferiority complex that would ensue from the fact that someone else would be a better parent than me would drive me insane. As if I didn't have enough problems as it is. What really kind of wangles in my mind, however, is the fact that my insurance covered the entire cost of the abortion, but wouldn't pay for the contraceptive that I wanted to use (Norplant, which I'm on now). If I'd been able to get the Norplant when I wanted it, I would never have gotten pregnant in the first place.
Having an abortion doesn't make the person evil or unworthy of friendship, and I'm sure that people that have abortions don't laugh about it afterwards. I know I don't. But I don't regret my decision, either, no matter what people say or think about me. You can condemn me or judge me if you want to, but that doesn't matter to me. If you choose to dislike me and/or avoid me based on my actions and personal decisions, then do so, because it will be your loss. I am an interesting person who is worthy of being known.
(Does that answer your question about my personal politics and feelings about sensitive topics, Matthias?)
It's RU-486. And it's been around since at least the beginning of this decade, if I'm not mistaken. Supposed to be foolproof.
Odder to me, three, because I too am one of those who is adopted (the main reason why I'm personally "pro-life" even though I support the "pro-choice" movement).
Diane, who would like to exercise her right to choose to abort this massive headache she's had for the past three days
WOW what A tread I seem to have started :-) Humm must be more carefull what I prevoke the group into doing next time :-)
In article , [email] wrote:
"Lie back and think of England" (or wherever you come from) ?
Yeah I like this description have to remember that one !
This puts me in mind of something Adam Clayton (the bass player with U2 for those that don't know) once said when asked what the difference between having sex and making love was :- <PARAPHRASE> "The difference between having sex and making love, is that making love involves two people, having sex only involves one" </PARAPHRASE>
Humm makes you think.
Phill.
/----------------[ Courage is Grace Under Pressure. ]--------------------\
\--------[ I Want to look at life, In the Available Light ]--------------/
I have to admit that I'm one of those Yanks who thinks that a large portion of the time. I know I once reprimanded myself for thinking about kissing John Taylor (DD) one time when I was a sophomore in high school. *shrugs* And sometimes I do try to think if it's "all right with God" if I have these fantasies about my fiance, but with that I've come to the conclusion that God won't mind in that situation.
You know, it's funny...my political ideals are in a large way very liberal, and here I am leading this very conservative lifestyle. In fact I think Pat Robertson would approve of me if I was his granddaughter, if he didn't know what my political leanings were. "Isn't it ironic, don't you think?"
Diane (whose family's been a Yank family for approx 80 years)
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
On Wed, 22 Sep 1999 16:42:56 -0500, Hallucinating Elvis Lady wrote:
Hmm, will your guilt-complex allow you to look at my naked Daria picture and the naked Trent picture once I have them finished, because I would be especially interested in _your_ opinion as you seem to be the person with the most strict moral standards around.
Trust me, God doesn't mind at all. I've had much more adventurous fantasies and still he has rescued me from drowning (see other message from me) and I got the feeling He likes me in general. And besides, the bible never mentions that having sexual fantasies is a bad thing (unless it's about your neighbour's wife. I'm so damn glad my neighbour and her friend are not married so I can covet her as much as I like :-). I'm not sure about what the Koran says (I haven't found the time to install it, yet but I have already bought an officially approved CDROM edition with Arabic speech output and even a pronounciation trainer for just $25)
p.s.: As I have decided to release both pictures at the same time, the release date is yet unknown. Since one picture takes me upwards of 50 hours straight working time and I'm very busy at the moment, it may take another month or more till I get Trent finished. And as I have already mentioned elsewhere I have decided to change the background of Daria's picture so that will take time, too.
i brought a Dal� book into art class once... after a male friend had a look through it, and noticed that most of his paintings have at least one naked woman in them, a small crowd of males gathered around this book.. lol.
On Wed, 22 Sep 1999 20:08:57 +0100, "endless, nameless" wrote:
Dal�? I thought he was that weird guy with the melting clocks. I've only seen 2 of his pictures and I wouldn't have thought he painted naked women. I guess I should check out the arts section in the public library. Speaking of libraries, do US libraries have an adult-only section for art books so that kids can't get to them? And what about sex ed books, do your libraries have those? BTW, I've recently found an old sex ed book in our basement (I have to ask my mother if and when she showed it to me, I can't remember so I guess it was long ago). Judged by the language it is aimed at kids about 10 years of age. It was written by a Swedish guy named Lennart Nilsson and is the most comprehensive I've ever seen. It has everything: photographs of embryos at different ages, a photo of an actual birth (yes, I mean a picture of a baby head sticking out of the vagina), a description of sexual intercourse (including an ejaculating-penis-in-vagina schematic) which also mentions that the whole thing is fun for the couple and everything else you need/want to know. Give your kid that book and you can savely let it alone with the Internet because it find anything disturbing anymore. Maybe teaching kids how to cope with what they see is the best protection anyway. But I guess there's no chance to see something like the above book on the American market anytime soon. MSB
You need to see more of his paintings, then. Considering titles like "Atmospheric Skull Sodomizing A Grand Piano" and "Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized By Her Own Chastity", I think it's safe to say that a lot of Dal�'s work is rife with sexual imagery. Magritte is another surrealist whose work features lots of nude female figures, lots of boobies. Check out "Threatening Weather", one I always thought was cool. You'll notice a lot of obsessiveness in the surrealist movement. With Dal� it's ants. With Magritte it's clouds. With Tanguy it's single-celled animals. With Tanning it's sunflowers. And so on...
MIKE (a.k.a. "Progbear")
make GEORYN disappear to reply
"'Thin Thighs For Your Man.' But I don't *like* men with thin thighs" --Daria
N.P.:"Du schaffst das nicht (LIVE)" - G r o b s c h n i t t / M e r r y - G o -
There are lots of books on sex now in the public libraries. Especially for girls but more and more for boys. They are quite comprehensive and cover just about every angle you can think of. Just handing a kid a book on the subject is not enough, though. I know, this is what my stepmother did to me. Parents have to read the same books as they give their children and initiate discussions on the material. It may be slightly uncomfortable or embarrassing but it is better than ending up an early grandparent or parent to a child who (worst case) dies from disease or (better case) does not understand their own bodies and needs and all the emotional and mental baggage that goes along with that. Unfortunately, the trend has been towards parents drawing further away from their children and letting the schools, churches, TV, internet, etc educate their children. These are the same parents that rail against these very things when things go wrong.
But knowledge alone does not insure that teens won't keep having sex before they're responsible enough or emotionally ready for it. Knowledge will help them become more responsible, usually, but they still have to act upon the framework built up by or with their parents and society at large.
Marie
"Life cannot defeat a writer who is in love with writing - for life itself is a writer's love until death." -Edna Ferber
Yes. They aren't willing to make up the effort to bring up their children themselves and then complain that their kids don't turn out the way they want them to.
What you're talking about then is "morals", or (as Dagny would have it) "ethics".
Sincerely Yours, Jordan
"Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; but he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction." (Dean William R. Inge)
It's "Der Spiegel" ("the Mirror") and it is an archconservative news magazine. The most boring magazine you'll probably find in Germany. I think they still print in black and white. I saw the first nude girl when I was somewhat around 4 years old at the baby pool. I guess Americans would go crazy at the thought of having girls and boys bathing together naked even at that young age. I've heard that in Kindergarten Americans treat it as sexual abuse if a boy touches a girl. What a crazy thought. When I was in Kindergarten I had no sexual interest (or knowledge) whatsoever.
On a related note: I was horrified when I saw a report yesterday that mentioned that 90% of all boys are circumcised in the US. In my eyes that's mutilating a defenseless child. I have only one explanation for this. When forced to decide between teaching their son proper body hygiene or getting him sliced up US parents opt for the latter because the former would not only mean telling him to wash his penis every day but would also include telling him to pull back the foreskin for washing (a move which religious fanatics regard as a sin, be it for washing or not). Because their puritanical attitude won't allow them to say a thing like that but they still want to avoid genital infections they simply ignore the human rights of the baby and the negative side effects (partial loss of sensivity, probable need for moisturising creme later, reduction of sexual pleasure) and get him circumcised as if he was a member of some tribe of desert nomads who only get to wash themselves once every year. It's barbaric. Soon Americans will introduce female circumcision to reduce the number of teen pregnancies by taking the fun out of sex for girls. MSB
I'm sorry but I have to vehemently disagree. For one thing, it's a tradition and custom among Jews and Muslims, and it does not have anything to do with health reasons, but with religious belief. I don't know anything about how the Jews do it, but Muslims generally don't circumcize the child until they're about 6 or 7 and are old enough to understand. My boyfriend who's a Muslim had his circumcized when he was about 17 because his parents simply didn't get around to it until late in life. Generally most Muslims I know don't view of having a foreskin as a sin at all, but just perform it as religious custom. It's the same principle behind their reasoning for not eating pork and not having tattoos. They don't ostracize anyone else who wants to eat pork or have tattoos, it's just that they don't because of their religion beliefs.
We could argue that their customs are silly because pork is healthy and clean, and having tattoos isn't a big deal. But we have to respect their culture and their way of life. Fasting for a month may seem barbaric to some folks, but that is also part of their religion. I am not a religious person by far, and neither is my boyfriend (he still eats pork when he can), but we still respect those who believe in the religion.
I could add that I know a few people who have circumcized for NON religious reasons. According to this one man I know, he did it for health reasons and also because he says it increases his sexual pleasure. He did not have any disease or any other health concerns that existed before his circumcision. He did it just because he felt like he wanted to do it.
It is NOT a US thing that you're talking about here. It's a worldwide thing. Wherever there is Judaism and Islam practiced, there will be some amount of male circumcision. I am not an advocate of circumcision, but I don't see anything wrong with it mainly because I have many Muslim friends, and none of them have complained. Maybe I'm being misinformed, maybe I'm rather naive about the whole thing, but I do know that we have to get all the facts and other viewpoints into consideration when making a judgement call. If you want to blame circumcision on someone, don't blame the US, blame the world too.
Nicole Lee Also known as LadyKender on IRC and ICQ. The Darianite Revolution at http://members.xoom.com/nlsy/daria.htm Kendermore at http://members.xoom.com/nlsy/
Daria Code: A D T3 Ws Q+ FN^Fr O- OH+Oo+Od m- c+++ MV C5X F:111,213,313 BB- FCD +DT q fN
And the Lord raised His mighty voice and His eternal wisdom permeated the air for all men to hear. But the fallen angel was jealous of man for hearing the words of the Lord and so he spoiled man's ear because he did not want man to receive the wisdom of the Lord. And thus man's ear was spoiled not to perceive the wisdom of the Lord. And man could not hear the eternal wisdom of the Lord because of 'dogma' for it was 'dogma' that the fallen angel had summoned from the netherworld and put into man's ear to spoil the words of the Lord. And thus man's ear was spoiled to turn into 'dogma' the words of the Lord and the words of the Lord were turned into 'dogma'. And the fallen angel rejoiced at his deed and the armies of darkness frolicked. MSB
I see you changed your .sig again. Probably going to be the longest .sig ever created. Hey...anyone wanna call up the Guinness World Records people? Let's see how many Alli quotes Kyle can fit into one .sig.... ;)
Homemade salsa? Yum! Although I do prefer homemade pico de gallo with really good tortilla chips, homemade salsa is also a good treat. (salivating at the mouth) I do seem to be doing quite a lot of drooling now (heh heh)....
He complained when I hit him. All my friends do. Wusses.
i hate dolphins. they aren't remotely cute. and i bet the only reason they aren't covered in shit like pigs are, is because they live in the sea and the water washes it off.
hahahaha, "characters"? i found them completely unbelievable. you have all these *good* poor people and these *bad* rich people, but there are two or three *good* rich people, and one of the *good* poor people runs off with one of the *good* rich people, but then there's this horrible tragedy and the *good* poor bloke dies. they might as well have given them black and white hats, to make it even easier for the idiotic hordes of Leonardo di caprio fans to distinguish between the *good* people and the *bad* people.
On 27 Sep 1999 00:34:59 GMT, [email] (Howling Lunatic) wrote:
What is "stuff like this"? _I_ certainly did not agree to stay away from religious topics. And in case you misread my messages. I'm NOT arguing against religion (in fact, I am very religious) in general or certain religions in particular, I'm arguing against practicing religion (ANY religion) in a dogmatic and unreflected way. And BTW, I stayed out of the abortion discussion so I think I still got a coupon for one controversial discussion. MSB
No, I wasn't complaining about your post. It was totally fine. But I was asking if it would be a good idea for the general health of the group if I replied to it with my argument for Christianity's relevance today, when it's generally been agreed that religous debates are better left un-posted. Heck, I'd even claim that religion was partially responsible for my orderly self-removal (for lack of a better term) from #Daria+, although there were other factors.
Kyle
He complained when I hit him. All my friends do. Wusses.
i hate dolphins. they aren't remotely cute. and i bet the only reason they aren't covered in shit like pigs are, is because they live in the sea and the water washes it off.
hahahaha, "characters"? i found them completely unbelievable. you have all these *good* poor people and these *bad* rich people, but there are two or three *good* rich people, and one of the *good* poor people runs off with one of the *good* rich people, but then there's this horrible tragedy and the *good* poor bloke dies. they might as well have given them black and white hats, to make it even easier for the idiotic hordes of Leonardo di caprio fans to distinguish between the *good* people and the *bad* people.
That depends whether you want an argument on your hands. The frightening thing is, I'd probably back you up... sort of...
Dagny
http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made... and the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence" Paul Simon
Y'know, when I take the purposely juxtaposed letters and rearrange them to their normal state, the message makes me hungry. Extremely so. Hm, wonder if it'd be possible for me to request such a thing for dinner.... :)
Still floored. Seriously floored. Thank you dear. Much obliged. :)
People can do what they want. You have the right to ignore Daria/Trent stories if you want, but you don't have the right to tell people not to write them. As to the child porn laws, Usenet and the WWW have no boundaries. I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think you can apply Canadian law to someone posting from the USA, and vice versa.
On 27 Sep 1999 13:36:15 GMT, [email] (KTrick45) wrote:
That was my FAVORITE animal house scene. Well, there were so many good ones, but that's the one I'm thinking of at the moment so it's my favorite.
Kyle
He complained when I hit him. All my friends do. Wusses.
i hate dolphins. they aren't remotely cute. and i bet the only reason they aren't covered in shit like pigs are, is because they live in the sea and the water washes it off.
hahahaha, "characters"? i found them completely unbelievable. you have all these *good* poor people and these *bad* rich people, but there are two or three *good* rich people, and one of the *good* poor people runs off with one of the *good* rich people, but then there's this horrible tragedy and the *good* poor bloke dies. they might as well have given them black and white hats, to make it even easier for the idiotic hordes of Leonardo di caprio fans to distinguish between the *good* people and the *bad* people.