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Post by Brent on Mar 12, 2010 3:18:51 GMT -5
To love someone doesn't require you to know everything about them. But most likely you have a different definition/concept of love (if you have one at all). I'm saying you can never truly know somebody's intentions or thought processes.
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Post by Brent on Mar 12, 2010 3:37:16 GMT -5
Love does not work, you can never truly know another person because you can never read their mind. You could know someone your whole life and still not know them because thoughts are internal. No, you cannot read someone's mind, but you can get to know another person if you take the time to build trust, listen to the other person, and spend time with him or her. True, you cannot know everything about someone, but you can get to know who they are and what they are like, and they can get to know that about you. Sure, I know full well that it's difficult for some people, but it's worth it. If you believe love does not work, I pity you. I wasted about 5 years as a Christian, I could have learned so much more relevant things in that time and who knows how my life could have benefited. What was Christianity keeping you from learning? Love is fairytale non-sense. The media has butchered it as well. To say love is real is not something I can fathom because of how the brain functions. I am not an expert, but I'm pretty sure love is just a chemical reaction. Christianity wraps up all the answers in one book and is a detriment to learning. I cannot believe Christians still attempt to argue when I say all religion focuses on giving you answers. All your answers are in the "holy" book. God did this, god did that.
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Post by Jeremy on Mar 12, 2010 4:49:55 GMT -5
So it's nonsense when a parent feels love for their child and when the child feels loves their parent(s)? Man, that's rough.
(and yes I know this could be considered an appeal to emotion)
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Post by Brent on Mar 12, 2010 6:52:59 GMT -5
Love can be a mental attachment, yeah
a dependence....
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Post by behemoth on Mar 12, 2010 12:03:34 GMT -5
I could have learned so much more relevant things What was Christianity keeping you from learning? In answer to your question, subject-verb agreement.
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Post by behemoth on Mar 12, 2010 12:30:46 GMT -5
Love is fairytale non-sense. The media has butchered it as well. To say love is real is not something I can fathom because of how the brain functions. I am not an expert, but I'm pretty sure love is just a chemical reaction. Christianity wraps up all the answers in one book and is a detriment to learning. I cannot believe Christians still attempt to argue when I say all religion focuses on giving you answers. All your answers are in the "holy" book. God did this, god did that. Brent, if love is a chemical reaction within the brain, then technically love exists and worse yet is scientifically quantifiable. However, what you describe there is not love as we (society at large) call it, but rather the chemical reactions behind physical attraction which in Christian terms is referred to as lust. Part of the problem stems from inadequacies within the English language itself. We have one blanket term "love" that we stamp on things ranging from horniness to friendship and solidarity to a desire for companionship to willful self-sacrifice for another. Several other languages (classical and koine Greek for instance) distinguish the varying things we call love with several words. On to the second paragraph... Your argument only applies to the heavily stereotyped caste of the "angry fundamentalist" Christian. Unfortunately, this is common within the debate over God/religion/Christianity within pop literature (see Sam Harris, Dawkins, etc.) but has little to do with many who would label themselves Christians. Yes it is easiest to attack a mindset stemming from the splitting off of fundamentalist circles of Christianity from mainstream Evangelicalism proper during the first three decades of the 1900's that is still rooted in rural Post-Victorian Era ideologies. Yes, you can find people who argue that dinosaurs were on Noah's ark, and that protoceratops eats velociraptors because of the Fall (taken from an unfortunate kid's book). The point is not everyone argues that all of the answers to all questions in all fields are within the Bible. Heck, Job never gets a direct answer to his questioning of God. Another way of saying it is you're simply not beating the right horse to death.
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Post by behemoth on Mar 12, 2010 13:01:48 GMT -5
Also, directed at everyone:
For the love of all that is good in this world, emotion is not a bad thing. Damn it, I hate it when the flow of an argument forces me to be the postmodern wishy-washy turd; no person is exclusively rational, and no person is the idolized truly objective observer. That is quite simply an unattainable goal. Use your hyper-rationality and do a simple scan of the populous. The majority of people in society are F's if you want to put it into Myers-Briggs personality types, meaning feelers. No one avoids feelings and emotions altogether when making decisions, and most people in this postmodern timeset make the vast majority of their decisions based much more strongly on how they feel, than on what is the logical or rational choice to make.
Even if this was not true, we are all still limited by our own perspectives guided by our cultural upbringing, not to mention the limitations imparted on us by our own senses. Different people experience different things. Everyone makes choices based on personal experience. This is even glorified (much to my chagrin) in our cultural climate. "Be an individual! Go experience the world! Be your own person and make your own choices!" Why then the denigration of people who have or think they have had an "experience" with "God" or something similar? Your experiences differ. Well ba-dang! Those people must all be empirically wrong then...on something that empricisim by its very nature can say nothing about (that which if it exists is outside of the realm empirically observable).
If you haven't experienced God, of course it is logically silly to believe in such a being...but the damndest thing is that the idea of it FEELS silly too, and more often than not this is what leads people to their viewpoints. The world isn't comprised of the intellectual and scientific circles of the 18th and 19th centuries. Step into reality.
One cannot, of course, function in a truly and fully postmodern mindset because of the inextricable conclusion that one cannot know anything. This is why I generally opt for a modernistic mindset. Nonetheless, it would be wise to keep in mind some of postmodernity's criticisms of the modern lens for viewing the world. People function in and through their emotions, feelings, and experience in the process of decision making. No one avoids it completely.
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Post by Maarten on Mar 12, 2010 13:33:06 GMT -5
Christianity wraps up all the answers in one book and is a detriment to learning. I cannot believe Christians still attempt to argue when I say all religion focuses on giving you answers. All your answers are in the "holy" book. God did this, god did that. Uhm...... what bible have you been reading? If you compare Christianity to various pagan religions you see that whereas pagan religions have all sorts of myths to explain various natural phenomena, like lightning is Thor being angry swinging his hammer (Norse/Germanic Mythology) or Africans are black because the extramarital son of Helios went joy-riding in Helios chariot, which is the sun and went too low and burned all the people in Africa (Greek Mythology). The bible doesn't explain why people are black and it doesn't explain what lightning is and why it happens. The bible focusess on how to live, it focusses on ethical issues. There might be a few narratives in the bible that could be interpreted more as explaining and awnsering, like the creation story, the tower of Babel and when God makes a rainbow for Noah after the flood, but really, that's not at all what the bible is about.
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Post by Brent on Mar 12, 2010 16:39:02 GMT -5
Love is fairytale non-sense. The media has butchered it as well. To say love is real is not something I can fathom because of how the brain functions. I am not an expert, but I'm pretty sure love is just a chemical reaction. Christianity wraps up all the answers in one book and is a detriment to learning. I cannot believe Christians still attempt to argue when I say all religion focuses on giving you answers. All your answers are in the "holy" book. God did this, god did that. Brent, if love is a chemical reaction within the brain, then technically love exists and worse yet is scientifically quantifiable. However, what you describe there is not love as we (society at large) call it, but rather the chemical reactions behind physical attraction which in Christian terms is referred to as lust. Part of the problem stems from inadequacies within the English language itself. We have one blanket term "love" that we stamp on things ranging from horniness to friendship and solidarity to a desire for companionship to willful self-sacrifice for another. Several other languages (classical and koine Greek for instance) distinguish the varying things we call love with several words. On to the second paragraph... Your argument only applies to the heavily stereotyped caste of the "angry fundamentalist" Christian. Unfortunately, this is common within the debate over God/religion/Christianity within pop literature (see Sam Harris, Dawkins, etc.) but has little to do with many who would label themselves Christians. Yes it is easiest to attack a mindset stemming from the splitting off of fundamentalist circles of Christianity from mainstream Evangelicalism proper during the first three decades of the 1900's that is still rooted in rural Post-Victorian Era ideologies. Yes, you can find people who argue that dinosaurs were on Noah's ark, and that protoceratops eats velociraptors because of the Fall (taken from an unfortunate kid's book). The point is not everyone argues that all of the answers to all questions in all fields are within the Bible. Heck, Job never gets a direct answer to his questioning of God. Another way of saying it is you're simply not beating the right horse to death. That's sort of my point, people say they love God, but when it comes down to it, love can be proven to exist via chemicals in the brain, pretty much every emotion can be described to exist, people say "God's love got me through this" and all that, but it is still faith because God cannot be verified. We're kind of getting into territory I'm not too knowledgeable about, but I would say love is not something you immediately feel toward something, but after a relationship overtime. This is true in other fields, such as marketing, building an initial trust with the customer and forming a relationship. Its pretty easy to build trust in a being which promises you eternal life if you just worship and try to follow its guidelines. I would say that there's one blanket term for love as far as I'm concerned, and physical attraction is a separate term. You can have one or the other, or both. Lust is non-sense, Adam and Eve too. You're either attracted or not. The majority of species are hetero-sexual, and sex matters to that majority, it is simple biology. I'm saying the Bible is the blueprint for living for Christians, you try to follow that guideline as best as possible and not deviate from it. What it says in the Bible goes, period. God is your authority, do what he says or be separated from him (either temporarily or eternally depending on the translation)
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Post by Maarten on Mar 12, 2010 18:51:29 GMT -5
do what he says or be separated from him (either temporarily or eternally depending on the translation) Ummm...... no? The base of Christianity is Jesus dying on the cross to give us grace and redemption from all our sins. We do not earn our place into heaven by living by the moral code, we are given it freely by God. If I don't do what he says, which I do all the time, I am not in any way seperated from Him, or punished, nor do I in any way suffer the consequenses of it, I am still redeemed by the blood of Jesus. A holy life and how to live and stuff like comes after that.
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Post by Josh on Mar 12, 2010 19:19:50 GMT -5
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Post by Brent on Mar 12, 2010 19:26:41 GMT -5
do what he says or be separated from him (either temporarily or eternally depending on the translation) Ummm...... no? The base of Christianity is Jesus dying on the cross to give us grace and redemption from all our sins. We do not earn our place into heaven by living by the moral code, we are given it freely by God. If I don't do what he says, which I do all the time, I am not in any way seperated from Him, or punished, nor do I in any way suffer the consequenses of it, I am still redeemed by the blood of Jesus. A holy life and how to live and stuff like comes after that. it seems that every time you bring this up you fail to realize the concept of original sin. Original sin completely contradicts what you're saying.
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Post by scribe on Mar 12, 2010 20:44:07 GMT -5
Every time anyone uses that argument, they fail to remember that original sin is washed away with baptism. The only residual effect is concupiscence.
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Post by Brent on Mar 12, 2010 20:50:49 GMT -5
I'd like a bible verse please
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Post by scribe on Mar 12, 2010 20:58:45 GMT -5
Christianity is based not only on the Bible but also on sacred tradition. But as you wish:
"Amen, amen, I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost he cannot enter into the kingdom of God."[John iii. 5.]
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