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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Is General Goodness just a moral principle?
Message-ID: <1265@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 20-Jul-85 13:31:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1265
Posted: Sat Jul 20 13:31:10 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 22-Jul-85 06:30:19 EDT
References: <852@umcp-cs.UUCP> <360@utastro.UUCP> <879@umcp-cs.UUCP>, <1235@pyuxd.UUCP> <2134@pucc-h>
Organization: Whatever we're calling ourselves this week
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> I will look from a different perspective at the question wherewith I started
> this discussion:  If you are nothing but matter, how can there be a "you" in
> whose interest cooperation is?  Your model of human nature (100% biochemistry)
> seems inconsistent with the fact that we are having this discussion at all --
> or how do you think we happen to be alive, conscious, and intelligent?

By virtue of the make-up of that biochemistry that enables us to do that.
That biochemical make-up IS me.  By the way, wrong newsgroup for this:
net.philosophy is probably the place to continue such discussion, as it
has been going on there for some time.

> The idea that these somehow came/come out of inanimate matter (which you
> implicitly ASS-U-ME) is infinitely more implausible -- indeed, preposterous
> -- than the idea that they were put there by a Designer.

Only, of course, if you have assumed that there IS such a designer.
Preposterous?  Perhaps very unlikely and hugely complex.  But that's exactly
what the world happens to be.  Amongst the whole universe (or set of
universes), this one that we're in is the one where physical laws are as they
are and this small part of it that we're in is the one in which conditions
were such that life could exist.  Why are we here, in this spot?  Because if
this wasn't "here", there wouldn't be any "we", conditions wouldn't have allowed
it.  Does that imply some designer?  Not at all.  We are "here" because this
is the only place that had conditions to allow us to exist.  If conditions
were some other way, there might not have been any "us" to ask such questions!
Don't like that?  Want something more?  Well, you're free to want whatever
you like, but that don't have an effect on the real world (though you've
seemed in the past to think that it does).

>>Some people (apparently) won't accept what's logically clearly in their own
>>best interests (like mutual cooperation) unless a parent/authority figure
>>tells them they have to.  That's why they invent gods.

> As I've implied before, some people have, as a result of their past hurts, an
> idea of what seems to be in their own best interests which may be at variance
> with what is actually in their best interests.  What they need is not just
> logic, but healing.  Or, sometimes they may know what is in their best
> interests -- what they really want to do -- but these same hurts make them
> too fearful to do it, too fearful that the hurts will be repeated.  The Bible
> was written, among other things, to give us guidelines as to what is actually
> in our best interests, though we may not have discovered it yet.

Agreed.  Much of it was written with that purpose in mind.  But given that
there's no reason to believe it really was the "word of god" (assuming for
now that there is such a beast), when one sees some of the flaws in the
reasoning found in the book, some of the things it claims (and commands!)
are WRONG for everyone and should be punished, one should take the time to
stop and think.  Does this book, though it offers some brilliant philosophy,
offer the be all and end all?  Do I believe EVERYTHING I read in it regardless
of evidence to the contrary, or do I take from it what is good, what helps,
and take the rest as parable, fable, legend, or even the wild impositions of
some author of the time?

> God Himself
> is constantly at work healing us so that we lose our false wants and find out
> what we really want, then have the courage to go for it.

For instance, what are "false wants"?  I agree that some things one may want
are not in one's best interest, some things may be downright wrong.  But is
it a false want just because a book says so?

>  But until this
> healing is completed (or at least well along), those guidelines are there so
> that we don't mess ourselves up worse than we already are.

One can be better healed by better recognizing one's position in the real
world.  I shouldn't speak for those who simply cannot get along without
belief in a parent figure that runs it all despite the lack of evidence to
support that notion, but such cases strike me as very sad.

> Example:  This group had a discussion a while back on fornication.  Many
> fundamentalists look upon this as one of the star sins, i.e. something which
> renders those who commit it liable to judgment and ostracism.  But in actual
> fact, the reason not to do it is that it is a suboptimal satisfaction of a
> want -- the want for total (not just physical) intimacy with a MOTOS, which
> can't be achieved very well outside of marriage.

Oh?  Care to elaborate on why?  Seriously, beyond the words of a book, what
makes it WRONG?

>  Paul puts it even more
> strongly when he comments that someone who does indulge "sins against his
> own body" -- i.e. hurts himself.

In what way is sex (outside marriage or even outside "conventional" norms!!!)
hurting oneself?  PLEASE elaborate!!!!!

> It is my contention that starting from the basis that one is loved and
> accepted is a far more effective means of becoming free to reach one's fullest
> potential than merely sticking to dry rationalism.

Loved and accepted by what?  Feeling that way may make you feel better,
but if you're talking about love and acceptance from some mythical deity
your basis may be flawed, and that's no foundation worth standing on.
Human beings don't love and accept unconditionally, they offer such things
in response to good actions and a feeling of companionship stemming from
those actions.  To want this "unconditional love and acceptance" you've often
spoken of (from a deity) strikes me as a wish to fulfill that need without
interacting with humans to get it.  You may live on the illusion, but the
real thing is out here amongst us people.
-- 
Anything's possible, but only a few things actually happen.
					Rich Rosen    pyuxd!rlr