Thoughts from a Simple Man

[hortysir]

I'm not an anarchist or sociopath, lol. Just curious of stuff, is all.

Was bored and wanted to take 20 minutes to unclutter the mind.

That's cool enough.
Believe it or not I have took the time to type out the ramblings of this cluttered mind.

I really dig Fox's parable.
Your manifesto, of sorts, decries the sense of right and wrong while simultaneously seeking others' approval,,,,hence contradicting its self


There's a new (weird) country song entitled "Follow Your Arrow" wherever it points.
That's all we all ever do, so.......

 

[koshergrl]

Relativism.

Don't do it.

 

[Derideo_Te]

Relativism.

Don't do it.

Why not?

Not everyone needs to live in a binary world. Some people understand that as humans we live across a spectrum rather than at opposite poles.

Certainly you have every right to be an absolutist but you don't have the right to insist that others must do the same.

 

[whitehall]

The Founding Fathers struggled with similar philosophical issues and they decided that laws created by the people were far superior than anything so far in the history of humanity. We have the Constitution which is the greatest document ever created. Live it, love it and learn from it.

 

[freedombecki]

What are your thoughts, please?

Thanks for a thoughtful post, Wake. Unfortunately, what I believe was indentured into my mind at around age 9 when I memorized the Presbyterian catechism about the purpose of man being to love God through the teachings of his only son, Jesus Christ. I still believe it. Christ taught the 10 Commandments by summation when he was talking to a young lawyer to basically (1) Love and practice God's purposes and law and (2) Love one's neighbor as yourself.

We live in an imperfect world and have imperfect reactions to it. I believe in God's precepts for mankind and accept that I don't have to understand everything because love and trust fill in the gaps.

I also believe love is not always what we think it is. Sometimes love is a parent correcting an unruly child with a little flyswatter to the butt so he or she will not make an ass of him or herself again in the future. It doesn't get you love back, but it does make children think before they go head-straight into trouble once they learn respect for other people.

And that's what I've thought for years, although I think I may have been the only Presbyterian in my high school, because few of them thought so and acted accordingly. So I just learned to let the world go on by, tend to my own self-improvement, and when pinned down, tell my thoughts as honestly as I know how. I also learned that people with no beliefs are prone to tripping, and I spend a few minutes reviewing my day at night when my health permits to ask God to help them overcome the blindness that causes themselves and others pain.

Thanks for asking my opinion. I do not expect it would mean much to anyone else.

Like you, Becki, I also memorized bible verses at an early age. However the disparity between the written word and the actions of those who were supposed to be living by it was so immense that it made it all ring hollow. Having been on the receiving end of abuse as a child I swore to never inflict it on any child of my own and found far more effective ways to teach discipline and respect to them.

So while we might have started in similar places we arrived at different destinations. I will uphold your right to believe as you will with my life if needs be but I won't ever be convinced to share your beliefs. The Founding Fathers bestowed these rights upon both of us and in their honor we owe each other mutual respect.

Go in peace.
DT

Having been on the receiving end of abuse as a child I swore to never inflict it on any child of my own and found far more effective ways to teach discipline and respect to them.

The children in my family received severe abuse as well, Derideo, and no women were allowed to proceed to college in spite of being in the top 10% of my class. I married young and brought my children up as best I could, with no education, but miraculously, they were educational superstars and both went on into great careers.

Like you, they do not share Christian beliefs and follow their respective crowds. Their hedonism has caused them nothing but trouble, but I hold my peace, because you only have sway over your children until they are of the age of accountability, and until they are 18, even less when schools preach that one could reject bad parents, who were people who made you act nice, and that experimentism is all-good, how to leave home and do your own thing. I no longer support public schools as a consequence of this aberration from the norm public schools had when I was growing up to encourage family life rather than profligacies. Because of their educational prompting, both of them decided family was egregious, having children was purposeless, and the best thing for them to do was to quit the church of over 400 years standing in our family. I don't think people educated in radical ideas from 1950-present who preach atheism as law are smarter than Biblical thinkers from Adam to the present who realized certain behaviors get more grief than abstaining from them, and wrote them into the 10-commandment form.

But of course, my background which I accepted makes me lean that way.

Not one single one of my 4 siblings accepted Christian beliefs except for me, and my children also rejected true Christian teachings that are universal in the faith, whether Catholic, Protestant, or other true believers.

A lot of men will not date women who attend church regularly and give the Creator honor along with our fellow man. And many who develop beliefs fall away from them when friends pull their sleeve and tell them how evil God is for letting people be poor.

If you have rejected your faith, you are not the first to do so after considering other philosophies. I'm not the judge of other people. That is what the book I read a little from each night says. It could be because God hasn't finished with those who are still alive yet.

However, if I had to do it again, my children would never see the inside of a public school building, which are now training grounds for alternative lifestyles.

 

[Foxfyre]

Well add me to the list of battered children, physically, verbally, and emotionally. And, once freed from those shackles, one who did her damndest to chuck her Christian faith. I spent more than a decade in intensive study of all the world's great religions and more than a few more obscure ones, and pondered the concepts of Atheism, but in the end, the spiritual relationship I have via God's grace won out. I am loyal to no Christian doctrine or denomination, but I nevertheless arrived at truth I could neither explain away or deny. So I remain Christian and feel myself blessed because of it. And lest it be thought I am boasting, I am one who is least worthy to be called Christian. And I believe the blessings I enjoy are available to all who want them.

So of course I believe my sense of right and wrong, justice and injustice, righteousness and unrighteousness comes from my relationship with God. And because of a miserable childhood, it comes from what I now perceive rather than from anything I was taught.

But only the sociopath, incapable of love or any other positive emotion, has no guilt, no sense of right or wrong. All the rest of us do have it however we came by it.

 

[Derideo_Te]

What are your thoughts, please?

Thanks for a thoughtful post, Wake. Unfortunately, what I believe was indentured into my mind at around age 9 when I memorized the Presbyterian catechism about the purpose of man being to love God through the teachings of his only son, Jesus Christ. I still believe it. Christ taught the 10 Commandments by summation when he was talking to a young lawyer to basically (1) Love and practice God's purposes and law and (2) Love one's neighbor as yourself.

We live in an imperfect world and have imperfect reactions to it. I believe in God's precepts for mankind and accept that I don't have to understand everything because love and trust fill in the gaps.

I also believe love is not always what we think it is. Sometimes love is a parent correcting an unruly child with a little flyswatter to the butt so he or she will not make an ass of him or herself again in the future. It doesn't get you love back, but it does make children think before they go head-straight into trouble once they learn respect for other people.

And that's what I've thought for years, although I think I may have been the only Presbyterian in my high school, because few of them thought so and acted accordingly. So I just learned to let the world go on by, tend to my own self-improvement, and when pinned down, tell my thoughts as honestly as I know how. I also learned that people with no beliefs are prone to tripping, and I spend a few minutes reviewing my day at night when my health permits to ask God to help them overcome the blindness that causes themselves and others pain.

Thanks for asking my opinion. I do not expect it would mean much to anyone else.

Like you, Becki, I also memorized bible verses at an early age. However the disparity between the written word and the actions of those who were supposed to be living by it was so immense that it made it all ring hollow. Having been on the receiving end of abuse as a child I swore to never inflict it on any child of my own and found far more effective ways to teach discipline and respect to them.

So while we might have started in similar places we arrived at different destinations. I will uphold your right to believe as you will with my life if needs be but I won't ever be convinced to share your beliefs. The Founding Fathers bestowed these rights upon both of us and in their honor we owe each other mutual respect.

Go in peace.
DT

Having been on the receiving end of abuse as a child I swore to never inflict it on any child of my own and found far more effective ways to teach discipline and respect to them.

The children in my family received severe abuse as well, Derideo, and no women were allowed to proceed to college in spite of being in the top 10% of my class. I married young and brought my children up as best I could, with no education, but miraculously, they were educational superstars and both went on into great careers.

Like you, they do not share Christian beliefs and follow their respective crowds. Their hedonism has caused them nothing but trouble, but I hold my peace, because you only have sway over your children until they are of the age of accountability, and until they are 18, even less when schools preach that one could reject bad parents, who were people who made you act nice, and that experimentism is all-good, how to leave home and do your own thing. I no longer support public schools as a consequence of this aberration from the norm public schools had when I was growing up to encourage family life rather than profligacies. Because of their educational prompting, both of them decided family was egregious, having children was purposeless, and the best thing for them to do was to quit the church of over 400 years standing in our family. I don't think people educated in radical ideas from 1950-present who preach atheism as law are smarter than Biblical thinkers from Adam to the present who realized certain behaviors get more grief than abstaining from them, and wrote them into the 10-commandment form.

But of course, my background which I accepted makes me lean that way.

Not one single one of my 4 siblings accepted Christian beliefs except for me, and my children also rejected true Christian teachings that are universal in the faith, whether Catholic, Protestant, or other true believers.

A lot of men will not date women who attend church regularly and give the Creator honor along with our fellow man. And many who develop beliefs fall away from them when friends pull their sleeve and tell them how evil God is for letting people be poor.

Thank you for sharing, Becki. No doubt you are aware that the greatest love is giving your children their freedom. of course they will make mistakes just like we did at their age. Do not judge them and do not compel them to believe as you do. Simply be there for them if they need you. That is the role of a loving parent who trusts their own children.

 

[Foxfyre]

The Founding Fathers struggled with similar philosophical issues and they decided that laws created by the people were far superior than anything so far in the history of humanity. We have the Constitution which is the greatest document ever created. Live it, love it and learn from it.

Yes. They gave us a nation, essentially unique among nations then and now, in which the people would assign powers to the government that was to secure their God given/natural rights and then leave them alone to live their lives and form whatever sort of society they wished to have.

Some practiced little theocracies that the Founders saw as morally wrong, but they did not interfere as to do so would undermine the principle of a free people allowed to govern themselves. Some established mostly lawless town in their hellfire days, and the Founders deplored that, but again they did not interfere. And because there was a sense of right and wrong, productive and unproductive, justice and injustice, the people themselves came to choose to dissolve those little theocracies and those hellfire towns tamed themselves with families, churches, and schools.

How did they know to do that? I think because there is a cosmic intelligence that informs us when we take time to listen. Those cruel and savage dictators and societies that have existed and/or still exist can, I believe, do so only by closing their minds to that cosmic intelligence. Or perhaps they listen to a different one from a different realm?

 

[MaryL]

Swimming through hot garbage rather than shake hands with us swill sucking swine. OK, do it. Just a little hyperbole? No? Aren't you just as bad as the rest of us scum sucking demons? Your ego is bigger. Screw you. Typical.

 

[Ropey]

Right - Wrong (Moral Concept)
Positive - Negative (Electric Concept)

There is a point of null in the Electro-Magnetic concept. Between the points of + and -. Some say that the points are positive and not positive with a point in between (null) to differentiate the direction.

So, given that possibility, the moral concept may follow the same pattern. No right and wrong. Just right and not right. With a point in between where the choice is made.

I see both concepts and compare them to a light switch. One is figurative and one is literal and both need impetus and the impetus seems to be choice.

I choose to turn the light switch and the moral switch. One I'm sure matters and the other I'm not so certain.

 

[Solaris]

Mary doesn't seem ta know who Dick Roman the leviathan is! Hahaha!

Oh and we need right and wrong to survive. It changes but it's important. Bad stuff is bad because it's bad.

 

[freedombecki]

Like you, Becki, I also memorized bible verses at an early age. However the disparity between the written word and the actions of those who were supposed to be living by it was so immense that it made it all ring hollow. Having been on the receiving end of abuse as a child I swore to never inflict it on any child of my own and found far more effective ways to teach discipline and respect to them.

So while we might have started in similar places we arrived at different destinations. I will uphold your right to believe as you will with my life if needs be but I won't ever be convinced to share your beliefs. The Founding Fathers bestowed these rights upon both of us and in their honor we owe each other mutual respect.

Go in peace.
DT

Having been on the receiving end of abuse as a child I swore to never inflict it on any child of my own and found far more effective ways to teach discipline and respect to them.

The children in my family received severe abuse as well, Derideo, and no women were allowed to proceed to college in spite of being in the top 10% of my class. I married young and brought my children up as best I could, with no education, but miraculously, they were educational superstars and both went on into great careers.

Like you, they do not share Christian beliefs and follow their respective crowds. Their hedonism has caused them nothing but trouble, but I hold my peace, because you only have sway over your children until they are of the age of accountability, and until they are 18, even less when schools preach that one could reject bad parents, who were people who made you act nice, and that experimentism is all-good, how to leave home and do your own thing. I no longer support public schools as a consequence of this aberration from the norm public schools had when I was growing up to encourage family life rather than profligacies. Because of their educational prompting, both of them decided family was egregious, having children was purposeless, and the best thing for them to do was to quit the church of over 400 years standing in our family. I don't think people educated in radical ideas from 1950-present who preach atheism as law are smarter than Biblical thinkers from Adam to the present who realized certain behaviors get more grief than abstaining from them, and wrote them into the 10-commandment form.

But of course, my background which I accepted makes me lean that way.

Not one single one of my 4 siblings accepted Christian beliefs except for me, and my children also rejected true Christian teachings that are universal in the faith, whether Catholic, Protestant, or other true believers.

A lot of men will not date women who attend church regularly and give the Creator honor along with our fellow man. And many who develop beliefs fall away from them when friends pull their sleeve and tell them how evil God is for letting people be poor.

Thank you for sharing, Becki. No doubt you are aware that the greatest love is giving your children their freedom. of course they will make mistakes just like we did at their age. Do not judge them and do not compel them to believe as you do. Simply be there for them if they need you. That is the role of a loving parent who trusts their own children.

Sorry, my trust is in the Lord. I fought for and loved my children with all I had in me. I lost them to the delusion of thinking happiness can be had only by making someone else miserable, which is what the public education system now proffers in place of respect for elders. Their fight against God's righteous precepts is always in my prayers, but at the end of the day, it's their dice roll with experimentalism they embraced when they rejected the faith of their fathers. I have not disinherited my children. And I have not judged them. But I do mourn their absence which has been so long and sad I just try to not think about it.

 

[Annie]

I too am a Christian (S. Baptist). I am also of a scientific background in biology etc. It seems to me that with a lot of this you have to address who or what created us and our world. That can be argued ad nauseum, but I believe in God the creator. When I used to be an agnostic over 40 years ago, I asked "who created God," so you can go around and around with these things. It gets down to logic and faith to me.

I too grappled with agnosticism 40 years or so ago, early to mid-teens. Then the more I studied science, the more I saw a Creator. I'm not Baptist, but Roman Catholic. I believe that evolution is the best known explanation for how living beings have come into their present states on this planet. I tend towards the Big Bang theory on beginning of planet earth as viable source of living beings. Neither evolution or the Big Bang though, account for what came before. That to me, is where a divine creator comes in.

I've no doubt on the earth beginning way before where creationists would like to believe, though their insistence doesn't derail my faith in the divine.

 

[Gracie]

Okay, Wake....

Seriously.

You obviously took a lot of time and effort in your OP.
You also took the time to multi-PM some of us to get our thoughts.

So, I guess, I owe you the same courtesy of time.
This is a really long-winded reply for me when I'm not c/p-ing.

But, WADR, your views of right and wrong worry me as they tend to fit the definition of a sociopath

Not sociopathic but the age old murky world of the moral relativist. Wake is arguing that there are no objective moral principles. And yet I would lay odds that his own behavior betrays his own assertion.

Somewhere I read the story of the college student who wrote an eloquently expressed paper on moral relativism arguing, as Wake has, that there is no right and wrong. By all academic standards, the paper, impeccably structured and encased in a new blue cover, merited an A. But when the student received his paper back, he saw a large red F and the professor's notation: I don't like blue covers. The student stormed into the professor's office and demanded an explanation. The professor asked, "Isn't yours the paper that argued that there or no objective moral principles such as fairness and justice?" "Yes," said the student. "Well," said the professor, I don't like blue covers, so the grade is an F." And the student thereby realized his error.

Whether it is a sense of the Divine or somethng simply inate in the human species, it seems that we all are born with some sense of right and wrong, virtue and guilt, justice and injustice. When cultural lines are crossed, we don't always agree on what is right and wrong, but we all have a sense of it just the same.

I just love you Foxfyre.

 

[jwoodie]

At least within our current state of knowledge, human beings are unique in our ability to conceptualize morality. There seems to be two schools of thought about morality: One argues that it is god given, while the other argues that it is a collection of practical social rules. Ironically, the former may represent a greater degree of personal self interest in that most religions are based on a reward system which promises benefits to those who obey their rules.

As to the question of whether god created man or vice versa, both answers may be correct. On one hand, we are obviously limited by our intellectual capabilities to conceptualize an intelligence greater than our own; on the other hand, the idea that we are the highest form of intelligence in the universe is a depressing thought...

 

[Foxfyre]

Right - Wrong (Moral Concept)
Positive - Negative (Electric Concept)

There is a point of null in the Electro-Magnetic concept. Between the points of + and -. Some say that the points are positive and not positive with a point in between (null) to differentiate the direction.

So, given that possibility, the moral concept may follow the same pattern. No right and wrong. Just right and not right. With a point in between where the choice is made.

I see both concepts and compare them to a light switch. One is figurative and one is literal and both need impetus and the impetus seems to be choice.

I choose to turn the light switch and the moral switch. One I'm sure matters and the other I'm not so certain.

But do you really choose? Or is your perception a part of who you are? The person beating another may feel no remorse for the other while I, the observor, is emotionally and even physically affected by what I am witnessing along with an impulse to turn away in discomfort at what I am seeing and/or, if I have the power to do so, to stop the beating. Why? Because the beating is wrong and I cannot bear to see another in pain and being damaged.

Is that a choice? Or is that part of who I am--a reaction I did not conciously select for myself but that simply exists?

 

[Ropey]

Right - Wrong (Moral Concept)
Positive - Negative (Electric Concept)

There is a point of null in the Electro-Magnetic concept. Between the points of + and -. Some say that the points are positive and not positive with a point in between (null) to differentiate the direction.

So, given that possibility, the moral concept may follow the same pattern. No right and wrong. Just right and not right. With a point in between where the choice is made.

I see both concepts and compare them to a light switch. One is figurative and one is literal and both need impetus and the impetus seems to be choice.

I choose to turn the light switch and the moral switch. One I'm sure matters and the other I'm not so certain.

But do you really choose? Or is your perception a part of who you are? The person beating another may feel no remorse for the other while I, the observor, is emotionally and even physically affected by what I am witnessing along with an impulse to turn away in discomfort at what I am seeing and/or, if I have the power to do so, to stop the beating. Why? Because the beating is wrong and I cannot bear to see another in pain and being damaged.

Is that a choice? Or is that part of who I am--a reaction I did not conciously select for myself but that simply exists?

Do I really choose?

I do know that I chose to answer you this way.

Deep inside each and every (undamaged) one of us may well be an innate understanding of right and wrong.

 

[Ropey]

To clarify.

I know what I find to be right and wrong and I follow my own way.

If someone talks behind my back, I do it back to them in spades. If someone bullies my friends because they don't like me, I don't easily stop in such cases. When someone goes to other forums I am at and attempts to use those other forum accounts against this account, then I do the same back to them.

I draw the line at killing killers, raping rapists, etc. but I also know that my line is a personal choice and many don't like it. I don't think these choices are from external controls. I think I make them. If there is a grand schematic and controller, then I don't think that controller made these choices. I don't think they are very controller like.

 

[Wake]

I'm grateful for everyone's thoughts on this matter. Thanks for that; it's a lot to consider. Though we disagree on some things I'll respond as best I can. ;-)

 

[Ropey]

I'm grateful for everyone's thoughts on this matter. Thanks for that; it's a lot to consider. Though we disagree on some things I'll respond as best I can. ;-)

I wanna know where I went wrong.