The Interview With God

[spatha]

Some psychologist nutter called Skinner would have emphaticaly agreed with bobby on this one, about how human values are all relative and can be shaped, molded and guided acording to conditioning, but I don't agree.

I don't think 'right and wrong' is set in stone, or exists as some unwritten rule of the universe. I think it has evolved with us as our species has evolved physicaly. All biological organisms are programmed to survive above all else, to ensure the success of the species, but humans aren't ruled by instinct as other creatures are. Because of our intelligence our instincts simply guide us, and I think this is where our sense of right and wrong comes from, an inherent desire for the survival of the species - a person is more likely to run into a burning building to save lives than they are to become an axe murderer.

Incidentaly, I think religous morality springs from these same instincts also (as well as fear of death, but thats another issue).

 

[Infinity]

Whew! What ARE you on about? You're looking far too deeply into something that is obvious. Right and wrong exsists. Accept it.

Morality is the humankind's invention to keep their law in existence and their society in order. Right and wrong, which mainly determine morality, do not necessarily exist as nature's laws. Such things as "good" and "evil" don't, according to Nietzsche and other philosophers, truly exist outside of humankind's laws. That is to say, the concept of "good" and "evil" is created only to keep up the society. Moreover, the humankind's consciousness has been influenced by the society to accept that murdering is morally wrong and helping a person to earn a good deed is morally right. Now reverse the society and believe that murdering is morally right and helping a person to earn a good deed is morall wrong. In conclusion, it's all dogmatic.

infinity, i liked it.

I'm very glad you liked it.

 

[sweetsymphony]

You:
a) have not given this statement much thought
b) are lying
c) are delirious

My gosh, st0gey, you are absolutely brilliant. I apparently didn't give my statement much thought, because I had no idea that someone would take such offense to the fact that someone can hold on to their beliefs yet still respect others' ideas. And I must be lying because I'm a Christian, right? (Wrong.) And I'm obviously delirious because I'm wasting my time replying to this.

Please don't attack my religion, and I won't attack your choice to not have a religion. It really is that simple.

 

[Infinity]

You:

a) have not given this statement much thought
b) are lying
c) are delirious

I still don't understand that how you can say that she has not given this statement much thought and that she is lying and that she is delirious. I think I don't quite follow you on this one. There's nothing in her statement that can be interpreted as lies or unthoughtful. And no, there's no delirium around.

 

[Wabbit]

Pay no attention to him Sweet Symphony!

StOgy please do not insult other members on this board. If you want to be a part of this forum then you will abide by it's rules and behave in a respectful manner.

 

[st0gey]

I'm sorry Sweetsymphony, I should have typed,

'you are either...a, b or c' instead of simply 'you...are a, b, c'. I didn't mean to imply that you are a thoughtless, delirious, liar. As a matter of fact, I just don't believe you gave your answer much thought. Either that or, you don't understand the meaning of the word 'respect'. Deference is central to the meaning of respect. I would not defer to your beliefs and, contrary to what you might say, I don't believe that you would defer to mine. I'm sure you don't find that insulting.

 

[novella]

In my experience, people who sell the god concept are evil. No good ever came out of that crud.

Anyone have any evidence to the contrary? Boston diocese anyone? Palestine? The Crusades? How about Billy Graham?

 

[Crystal]

God tells us to "Learn to forgive" but never tells us it's OK to hate.

There is no need to tell people that. Because, behind "Learn to forgive" is Love. And love is what God or whoever he is, always means to tell.

Hatred, envy, fear..etc are all perfectly natural human emotions.

Too many resort to this as the excuses for their imperfection.

However, I liked this:

I don't need to punish myself.

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Bobbyburns:

I found that you emphasize too much on conditioning thing, which sometimes seemed tobe irritating. Because it seemes like all the people who have been conditioned have to accept all that come to them, that there is the doom, destiny, that kind of thing. also it seems like that people can never be free from whatever they have done. anyway, it seems so pessimistic. Except this conditiong thing, I agreed with you on others. (Trust your understanding of me, so this is not meant to be offensive.)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the world we live in, the world we created, in our reality, there is good and evil. Denying good and evil would be like denying the world we live in.

Comment like this always tend to send me to thought-confusion, and reminds me of the novel Idiot. (by Fyodor Dostoevsky,which is one of my favorites)

 

[st0gey]

I don't believe in God so, the word 'Evil' is redundant. I just really hate the way Christianity encourages people to consider life as being inferior to the afterlife. Guess that's why Nietzsche calls Christians "Despisers of life"...

"I beg of you my brothers, remain true to the earth, and believe not those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so away with them!"
Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Zararthustra's prologue

http://www.praxeology.net/zara.htm



I'm certain that we'd be much better off without Christianity, Islam, Hinduism...etc


http://members.tripod.com/ColoradoWeb/links.htm

 

[novella]

Exercise on conditioning views of good and evil

View any of these from the protagonist's point of view. Where does the primary actor locate good and evil?:

1. Religious book banner/burner
2. Creationist teacher
3. Islamic jihadi
4. Michael Jackson
5. Fireman who sets fires so that he can be the hero
6. Parent who spanks kids, harder for worse offenses
7. PETA adherent who releases sick animals into the streets
8. Capital punishment advocate


Does any one of these people believe they are doing something evil? Of course it's all conditioned!

 

[Crystal]

It is not the conditioning or programming thing that I found hard to accept or that I repulsed against.

What I found difficult to make peace with it was that we cannot attribute all to that and put too much stresses on that.(or maybe this is also something that I have been conditioned and trained to come up with.) It seemed that it's just another pigeonholed opinion.

Aren't there any room for us humanbeings to breakthrough the conditioning thing? Isn't there any hope for us humanbeings at all?

 

[novella]

It is not the conditioning or programming thing that I found hard to accept or that I repulsed against.


Aren't there any room for us humanbeings to breakthrough the conditioning thing? Isn't there any hope for us humanbeings at all?

Doubt and inquiry are the beginning of getting free of conditioning.

But . . . can you imagine taking anyone from the list below and asking them to consider a contrary point of view as a preferable choice? Wars are fought over such matters.

Some of these conditioned beliefs are so ingrained, that some people will never find their way out of blind adherence.

Further, there are those who think that inquiry and doubt are evil in their own right.

 

[bobbyburns]

I couldn't agree with you more, novella.

watercrystal, all you have to do is be aware that you are not in control of your own behavior. in that sense you become free from it; your actions are no longer predetermined. conditioning is like a combination lock waiting to be cracked. sometimes only a little piece comes off, other times it all gets smashed to pieces at once, but usually it's piece by piece. as a kid you might be conditioned to think that santa claus exists, so your dummy response would be to write letters to him every christmas. even if someone tells you that he isn't real, you'll still keep on writing, because it's what you prefer to do. when you realize on your own that it's all just an illusion, that's when the understanding clicks in and you stop writing. there's no choice involved, you've just seen how the whole system operates and that's that. you're finished. it wasn't real to begin with.

Aren't there any room for us humanbeings to breakthrough the conditioning thing? Isn't there any hope for us humanbeings at all?

 

[Geenh]

Yes, conditioning exists, BUT there is still an element of good and evil in society. Maybe it is because we're humans. That's one of the things that separates us from the animals, that we have morality.

For instance Jefferey Dahmer, he was bad, period.

Mother Theresa, she was good, period.

I don't think either chose to be the way they were. It was innate. They're the extremes whereas most of us hover somewhere safely in the middle. I believe people are inherently good but there are bad people.

 

[novella]

Yes, conditioning exists, BUT there is still an element of good and evil in society. Maybe it is because we're humans. That's one of the things that separates us from the animals, that we have morality.

For instance Jefferey Dahmer, he was bad, period.

Mother Theresa, she was good, period.

I don't think either chose to be the way they were. It was innate. They're the extremes whereas most of us hover somewhere safely in the middle. I believe people are inherently good but there are bad people.

Not that simple at all. See previous post, Exercise on Conditioning Good and Evil. Add Jefferey to the list. What, from his point of view, was good or evil?

Would Mother Theresa think JD was evil? Or was he insane? Can insane people be viewed as evil?

"Evil" is your judgment of a person, not a trait inherent in them. It's an idea that you lay on their behavior, because you see it as morally corrupt. But what if they see it differently?


I've read many lives of the saints (the Oxford Encyclopedia of Saints is a GREAT book), and most of them, IMO, were insane. St. Simeon Stylites, for instance, lived on top of a pillar, naken, starving, and self-flaggelating. That's why he was named a saint. St. Lucy blinded herself so that she wouldn't have to marry an old fart, that's why she's a saint. Where do we locate good in those lives? And yet they were canonized.

 

[Motokid]

If Jeffery Dahmer and Mother Teresa were born on the same day, at the same hospital and were accidentally switched at birth would the outcome at the end of their lives have been the same?

I don't think it's possible for a person to be born "evil" or "good". Those traits are learned.

I hate the christian idea that all babies are born with sin. That to me is rediculous.

 

[Geenh]

I guess I am taking the stand that 'evil' isn't always made. There are many, many people who have had horrific childhoods and yet are now model citizens. Why? because they're inherently good.

Take Dave Pelzer. If anyone deserved to become a deviant, he did. Instead, he's a functioning strong kind man who survived hell and lived to talk about it. He is 'good'.

There's a lot of proof that nature has as much to do with 'evil' or 'good' as nurture.

Jeffrey was more than insane.

 

[bobbyburns]

geenh, I don't know if that's true. of course, some people had shitty childhoods and then turned out normal, but they were still acting out of insecurity. the really cutthroat guys, like jeffrey dahmer, who kill people might have had the same experiences, it's just that their way of dealing with the insecurity is different. it all comes from the same place. both perceived something to be a threat, and they acted out of fear. the conditional differences in their environment are the reason why they went in different directions. that doesn't mean everyone is a slave to conditioning, though.

in the world of the five senses, you can compare dave pelzer to someone like gandhi or krishnamurti and say that both acted out compassion. the truth is, though, you'd be feeding yourself a lie, because the pleasure of doing good deeds and compassion come from two entirely separate places. unlike compassion, pleasure sees a result or an end in everything. war can be considered a good deed because, in the end, it might bring peace. it's like when you look at a map, you see where you're coming from and where you want to get to, and hope somehow that it all works out. compassion is awareness of everything that's in between. in that state, thought ceases to calculate how much "goodness" it can extract from a situation, because it sees that everything is equal. if you think about it, we're all made up the same energy, so what is there to fight against? why do we kill each other? it's not because some people are intrisically evil, it's because we think we're separate from each other. imagine if the cells in your body thought that way, if they had little egos, do you think you would survive? I doubt it. the only hope there is to ending violence, and all the other things we see as "wrong", is through oneness.

 

[honeydevil]

Whew! What ARE you on about? You're looking far too deeply into something that is obvious. Right and wrong exsists. Accept it.

maybe it exists, but only somebody created it!! someone made it up, to give his worries a rest and other people follow this stuff, this is what society is about, it gives people what they want to hear, so they shut up!!
what about the electric chair?? is it fair to kill somebody because he killed somebody else?? isn't it still murder?? but why should an sorry excuse for a human being living when somebodies best friend, husband, father or lover died because of him??
give it a thought and come back to me!!

 

[honeydevil]

i think a lot of factors who make us to the person we are or we want to be!! (sorry i just thought about this stuff and maybe you're interested to keep my mind company)
I think the DNA cocktail our creators gave us, is one of them!! our childhood has influence and society too!! i think society gives us some screwed up views about life!! about us, how we should be, how we should look, how we should live and how we should think, but if you always follow the rules, aren't you just living somebody elses life?? aren't you just somebody who tries to please people they're long gone??