mererdog

I was speaking to the broader historical context of the forum as a whole, not this one topic. This is a recurring issue involving lots of people. My words were meant as a warning against going down the same dark path again. They were clearly only partially successful in that regard...

I actually thought you were making a distinction between people like myself and the people who call themselves a pacifist but have a laundry list of "last resorts" where they consider violence to be an acceptable response. I thought that because of old conversations we were both involved in where several people expressed varying ideas of what they meant when they called themselves pacifists. It is fascinating how the same words can lead different people to different conclusions...

The context where I said I was referring to "people" and where someone else was complaining about having words put in their mouth in the post just before mine? That is the context that made you assume it was all about you? That makes little to no sense, you know...

As an atheist, I have been conflicted about Christmas my entire adult life. The secularization of a people's holy day bothers me. Talking about taking God and Christ out of Christmas is like talking about taking civil rights and nonviolence out Martin Luther King Jr Day. I would expect a fairly negative reaction from a large number of people, you know? It is demeaning. Yet I have Christian family members who are, themselves, fully sold on the notion of a secular Christmas and therefore don't understand why I would not want to participate. I don't want to insult either group, and at the same time I resent being in the position in the first place. As a result, I tend to be more than slightly irritated during the season... and also more than slightly irritating to be around, or so I am told.

To call it dishonest speaks to motive, not method. You aren't simply talking about actions, you are making assumptions about motive. This is no different than assuming someone is a liar whenever they are factually incorrect. It is just bad reasoning. Incidentally, I just noticed what you said earlier about the quotation marks. You need to understand that quotation marks do not always indicate a direct quote. My earlier usage was what is known as dialog. The quotation marks do not indicate that someone is being quoted, but simply that the text is verbal. All that aside, even if I was directly quoting someone, why did you assume it was you?

You attacked him personally by asserting that his methods are motivated by dishonesty. This is the same accusation you repeatedly leveled at me, based on the same sort of proof. At the time, I was vacillating between taking you at face value and assuming you were just mad because you kept losing debates on points. I ended up giving you the same benefit of the doubt I am giving Dan.

There are things that cannot be communicated clearly. You can only allude to them and hope people pick up what you're putting down. There are other things that cannot be communicated to specific people. They simply will not pick up what you are putting down. Its partly about bias and partly about personal perspective. And partly about how we learn the meanings of words. Is it that we don't want to know, or that we are incapable of knowing? Or do those even mean different things? Does the tiger chase his tail or run from the mouth that bites at him?

As in, how many times can someone misunderstand things before you start to suspect that they aren't very good at understanding things? Fifty. If you want to get into the number of times you have accused me of saying something I never did, and all the horrible things about your personality I could be assuming as a result..... Incidentally, is it that the truth is a coward, or that we run when it gets too close? I still don't remember...

As an aside, it is a little disconcerting that people get so upset about someone misunderstanding them. "How dare you suggest that something I said cannot be perfectly understood by everyone! How dare you think I meant something other than what I did! The nerve!" Its just odd. I understand wanting to correct the error, but there is so much hostility some times....

Sorry, Dan, but your excuses do not make sense, in terms of broader Biblical context. "You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor[a] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." I noticed how you shifted from talking about hating people to talking about hating sin, as if the two are the same. They are not. And, for the record, atheists talk about the Bible too.

So, the Bible math seems fairly simple, Dan. You only hate if you fear. You only fear if you do not live in love. If you do not live in love you will not love your neighbor and cannot love God. And therefore one who claims to be a Christian yet hates his neighbor is a liar. See it now?

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

Well, no, it wouldn't mean that. You can arrive at the right answer with logic but you can also arrive there with fallacy. I believe the expression "right for the wrong reasons" paints the picture pretty well. The converse is also true, where logic leads to wrong answers when you have sound reasoning but incomplete facts. So sometimes we need reason to see where emotion led us astray, but sometimes we need a gut reaction to tell us something must be wrong with our reasoning. So, no, no one is completely irrational, anymore than anyone is completely rational. We all carry both sets of tools, and although individuals tend to favor one or the other, the species thrives by striking a sort of precarious balance between the extremes...

When we believe that we may be wrong, we respond by taking steps to limit the consequences of being wrong. This is hedging. It isn't a matter of being worried about being right over the truth, but of trying to align yourself as closely to the truth as possible when you cannot be completely certain what the truth is. Using "some" instead of all "all" in those situations becomes the verbal equivelant of bringing a sweater just in case the weather changes. You say " I speculate the answers, and choose the most logical one to me at the time. " I ask "How do you tell the difference between doing that and picking the answer that speaks most to your emotions? Because the answer I want to be true always seems logical, and we humans are really, really good at manufacturing logical-seeming yet completely fallacious excuses for why we should get what we want. You feel me?

Read John 4 lately Dan? It kinda looks like the Bible is calling you a liar...

Dan, you are right that loving your enemy can involve things like correcting them. Loving your enemy cannot, however, involve hating them. The goal of a hate-filled heart is to destroy the subject of the hatred. Nothing else. Hate doesn't try to save the lost sheep. It doesn't even know how to spell "grace". But it feels so good when you're all wrapped up in it, so who cares if it's bad for you, eh?

It is the same sort of question I have been asking. Limits of knowledge, how we know what we know, and whether we actually know what we think we know- these subjects are more easily approached by sidling up to them, rather than approaching them directly. The truth is a coward and runs away when he sees you coming, you see? Or is it that we run from the truth when it gets to close? One of those, definitely. But the key word in the question is "realize" not "perceive". That will probably sound like hair-splitting, but it is important. Anyway, you may not have realized it, but you are using fewer universal declarations in your faith statements. Less all and more some, you know? That makes it easier to be right regardless of the truth. A form of bet hedging, see?

Hate is a cultivated response, not an automatic one. In order to hate, you have to dwell in the negative. To live uncomforted by forgiveness. That is just not how I live. I see how hate can motivate a degree of positive change from time to time, but for the most part it just turns people into monsters who can't stop hating even when the source of their hate is long dead. Why be part of the problem? Did Jesus command that you are to hate your enemy? Or do you only listen to Jesus when he asks for easy stuff?

I can't think of a single person I hate. As for killing a terrorist, that is not the same as killing terror. You can kill every terrorist who has ever lived and there will still be terror and there will still be new terrorists. The same is true for any kind of crime. To live in this world that is full of crime requires that you tolerate crime to at least some degree. Otherwise you would (at the very least) spend your every waking moment loudly complaining, and that really does no one any good.

I am not convinced that virtue exists. Vice, on the other hand...

The question is whether you could figure it out if there was no one to tell you...

It is possible. I respect a lot of people that I don't like. I respect the military, but I don't like it. "no one should tolerate terror" This is like saying that no one should tolerate hurricanes. There are things beyond our control which have negative impacts on our lives. Unless you think you can magically make terror disappear, your only real choice is to either learn how to tolerate it or let it destroy you. Part of that involves learning ways to mitigate the damage it does to you. Part of that is learning how to mitigate the damage you cause when you react to it.

You can't prove that. To do so would involve proving that there are no differences between us that prevent some of us from dying. That would require counting to infinity. Here is evidence of one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle Quick question: If no human had ever had eyes, would any human ever realize that they couldn't see colors?

That is a strength, in my opinion. Tolerance is one of those skills that you can only get better at through practice, you know? And the people who never learn it have fairly miserable lives....