I divorced one. I didn't have to take "vengeance" on her, she was a ____ and I went on without her.
Maksutov with all due respect this is one of the problems with our post religion ethics. Divorce and serial monogamy really stinks for children. I'm not saying your divorce wasn't justified. I'm just saying that people generally suck. You don't really get to choose who you marry or who that person may become nor can you even know. You don't get to choose how they treat you. Without religion, I probably would never have gotten married much less stayed married. I needed better reasons to take up that cross than abstract ethics.
And when the confederates saw Jackson standing fearless as a stone wall the army of Northern Virginia took courage and drove the federal army off their land.
ajax18 wrote:For me absolute self interest can be the highest of moralities when one has an eternal perspective. But I'd agree that if there were no afterlife, self interest remains unsatisfied and the victim is basically cheated.
Here's the neat thing. if the moral thing to do is behave in your self-interest (the technical term for this position is ethical egoism) then this is true regardless of what best advances your self-interest. So afterlife or no, you are free to leave the moral life just by engaging in rational self-interest. This, of course, doesn't tell you why you should behave to advance your own interest, so it doesn't solve the issue of moral motivation, but it does leave you in no better a position than the non-believer.
What you probably have in mind is your religion acting as a "fudge factor" where your high-minded sense of what is right is made to coincide with what advances your personal interest. But that's irrelevant if you just think whatever advances your self-interest is right. It's also a tell that you probably don't think that. You think moral life is something else and you're looking to overcome a temptation to behave selfishly when you believe it to be wrong.
"The only thing keeping me from being consumed with vengeance is an abstract belief in an afterlife consequences" is a fairly sociopathic thing to say Ajax. I mean that literally. You are describing someone who lacks moral conscience and is kept from doing harm to others by being convinced it's against their interest to do so. That's what a sociopath is.
I won't speculate in your case, but usually when people say this they don't really believe it. They're just trying to score cheap points against non-believers and talked themselves into abhorrent views if they thought about it for a second.
I think it can be in each individual's ultimate self interest to live morally. I don't consider this high minded or selfish. I'm just grateful to have this faith and would genuinely like to share it with others. But for me it doesn't work if our existence ends at death.
And when the confederates saw Jackson standing fearless as a stone wall the army of Northern Virginia took courage and drove the federal army off their land.
ajax18 wrote:I think it can be in each individual's ultimate self interest to live morally. I don't consider this high minded or selfish. I'm just grateful to have this faith and would genuinely like to share it with others. But for me it doesn't work if our existence ends at death.
I became an agnostic at an early age. I can't imagine what a radical restructuring of life would be like if it happened much later. So I have some sympathy for some religionists. I'm an accommodationist, not a "religion poisons everything" guy. I just can't extend special privileges to religion when I see so many bad actors. I think too much of it is toxic and exploitive and simply a waste. But that was my experience of it. It really didn't meet my needs, solve my problems, answer my questions, show me a better way, better people. I found a few great people and a lot of disillusionment.
Perfume on my Mind wrote:Shame is a very useful societal tool. It gets people to excel. It forces many to act better than they would otherwise. Shame is a good thing. Shameless is bad.
Should people be shamed for using foul language?
I'm sorry, but people need to know: if they voted for Trump, they made a moronic ____ choice, no matter what their stated reason is for doing so. They did a dumb ____ thing and they should own it for the mistake it was.
I know most won't, but I'll keep telling them anyway. ____ the morons.
"Finally, for your rather strange idea that miracles are somehow linked to the amount of gay sexual gratification that is taking place would require that primitive Christianity was launched by gay sex, would it not?"
Perfume on my Mind wrote:Shame is a very useful societal tool. It gets people to excel. It forces many to act better than they would otherwise. Shame is a good thing. Shameless is bad.
Should people be shamed for using foul language?
Foul language is in the ear of the belistener.
This just brought to mind a funny story my oldest brother told me. He was the only one of us 7 children that went on a mission. He was also the only one that held our parent's conservative views and never left the church.
Anyways, he was coming home from his mission in Germany and spent a couple of days in Scotland. He happened to be there on a Sunday and went to one of their services. During the priesthood meeting the bishop started off by complaining about home teachers failing in their duties. He (according to my brother) told the men that "the home teaching isn't gettin f____ done and it better get f____ done or there'll be f____ h___ to pay!"
Apparently Scottish people swear in church.
As soon as you concern yourself with the 'good' and 'bad' of your fellows, you create an opening in your heart for maliciousness to enter. Testing, competing with, and criticizing others weaken and defeat you. - O'Sensei
honorentheos wrote:If Schmo wants people to care about his opinion enough to have it affect their behavior, they have to care about his opinion as the first condition. Telling them he thinks they are stupid "F"s is probably working against his stated aim.
It's not really about what I personally think or do; it's what we all do in the aggregate. My opinion, like everyone else's, is barely worth squat. It's when many people begin to share a particular opinion that culture starts to move.
Homophobic comments about gay people were a regular thing when I was a kid. Nobody thought twice about it. Over time, more and more people said, "quit being homophobic" in those situations, and now the society views homophobia in a totally different way, on average. That is a product of shame.
God belief is for people who don't want to live life on the universe's terms.