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upg validator
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 41
| Posted 10/25/2003 5:37 PM (GMT -6) |   | | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 10/26/2003 4:51 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by upg validator
 Okay, so no respect for the dead or those they left behind, eh? (Nice perspective you got there!)  Also, you want to be so bold then as to tell me WHAT your definitives are for morality? What is black and white, and what are grey areas?
Let's try and answer the question, instead of slinging mud at someone who DID actually answer it, shall we? 
-Daughter of Aradia
Okay, maybe the word lousy was inappropriate, but it was solipstic.
I hold to moral realism. There are moral ideals that preexist us and by which our conduct is subject to judgment. Our understanding of them stems mostly from the ancient Hebrews. However, our understanding of them is somewhat fuzzy and in numerous ethical situations different ideals conflict some in the here and now and so there is a need to deliberate and make judgments about what is right conduct.
But morality is ultimately dismissing none of those ideals and the fact that we are responsible for our conduct and in need of checks against our sinful desires that will hurt others and ourselves and ultimately the God that set out the moral ideals in the first place and who has sought to call us back to himself.
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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Iconoclast
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1227
| Posted 10/26/2003 5:23 AM (GMT -6) | | upg validator
Well, my dad had the words of wisdom on this one:
He said, "Moral is what you feel good about after having done it; immoral is what you feel badly about after having done it."
Iconoclast
I really like this definition. I am, of course, strongly reading into it (and appropriately so, I think) the presupposition that this "feel good" or "feel badly" is the deep feeling of an individual after fully experiencing the consequences of their action. A full and honest experience without the blinders of ego or wishful thinking.
This "feeling" can easily be shown to be an objective phenomenon. All humans who fully and honestly experience what IS have similar feelings about that experience. Christopher Alexander has shown this very clearly in "The Nature of Order: The Phenomenon of Life".
Moreover this "feeling" deeply overcomes the myriad conflict when we seek to apply principles or law to the reality of the fullness of Life that confronts us. My suggestion is that this "feeling" is what Jesus always operated out of and is none other than the very will of God.
What I hear upg_validator's dad suggesting is that we can indeed know if we are doing God's will when we honestly, openly and fully experience (see) what we have actually done - what it is that we are creating and whether it is living or non-living.
Morality is nothing but doing God's will. And God's will is that we love. Love means to fully, openly and honestly see and experience what IS - the love and the life all around us - and then to seek continuing transformations that enhance that love and that life all around us in every step we take. Which is nothing but the process of creating life.
We are Imago Dei. We have the ability unlike Nature to choose NOT to create life all around us. We can, in fact, violate what IS and destroy the life that is all around us. We can cause transformations of what IS that are life destroying. Moreover, we can know when have done this - we only have to honestly look at what we have done and whether it has added to life or taken away from life. Our "knower" can know this as long as we do not let our ego or our Utopian wishes lie to it on our behalf.
Morality is to create more life in every step we take, in every transformation that we bring about.
thanks,
Iconoclast
"The benefit overran the merit the first day, and has overrun the merit ever since. The merit itself, so-called, I reckon part of the receiving." - Ralph Waldo Emerson | | Back to Top | | |
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Matthew Timothy Short
Huh?
Date Joined Apr 2002
Total Posts : 635
| Posted 10/26/2003 2:16 PM (GMT -6) | | Hery upg validator,
Morality is the quality of an action which renders it good and is a duty or obligation; relating to the practice, manners, or conduct of people as social beings in relationship to each other . . . | | Back to Top | | |
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timlings
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2002
Total Posts : 130
| Posted 10/29/2003 11:52 AM (GMT -6) | | Hi
My feelings/thoughts about the morality question is that it is very much linked in with conscience. If your conscience lets you do something, then it's not bad/sin, but if your conscience condemns you then it is bad/sin. Although perhaps only for you.
That does appear to allow a lot of relativism into the picture. I do think there are absolutes given in the bible, but their application in life is very subjective. However, it does only work on the basis that God has written his law on our hearts, and is continuing to do so. I think it also probably only works for Christians too. But hey.
Ethics wouldn't like that definition though, as it can't make up a whole load of rules and laws. But i have a sneaking suspicion that ethics is eating from the wrong tree...
love
timlings | | Back to Top | | |
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timlings
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2002
Total Posts : 130
| Posted 10/30/2003 9:10 AM (GMT -6) | | The whole conscience thing works in that it's God writing his law on our hearts. But I suppose it only works alongside God's revelation of his law in the Bible.
Just a thought though
timlings | | Back to Top | | |
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John Earp
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1715
| Posted 11/1/2003 8:31 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by upg validator
Well, my dad had the words of wisdom on this one:
He said, "Moral is what you feel good about after having done it; immoral is what you feel badly about after having done it."
Okay, so if I feel good after murdering someone, does that make murder moral in that instance? What if I feel badly after doing something I may not have wanted to do, but morally I felt obligated to do?
With all due respect, I think the problem with the definition your father gave is that it does not include a preventing sense of right and wrong, only an after-the-fact gauge, and an extremely subjective one at that.
What is morality? Disinterested (unselfish) benevolence (goodwill) towards the universe of moral creatures. (Which of course includes action on one's willing the good). Anything less than disinterested benevolence is not acting in accordance with the inherent moral law of God by which He governs the moral actions of his moral creatures. That is immorality. Otherwise known of as sin.
"The Discovery of new truth will modify old views and opinions, and there is perhaps no end to this process with finite minds in any world." Charles G. Finney, Systematic Theology.
revivaltheology.net
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upg validator
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 41
| Posted Yesterday 1:27 PM (GMT -6) | | I was *wondering* when someone was going to point this out. I guess I am referring to the Ten Commandments, which, if *od were all-knowing, and all-great (even given OVT), why would *e design humans to be flawed, and then have to give laws to repress those flaws? This is really a Recon/Pagan/Heathen 101 question that we ask of all "believers." I'm sure you've run across it before, but, just in case you haven't, here is an example:
"Thou shalt not commit adultery."
Okay, I am polyamorous (many loves). If I am married someday again in the future, and my partner and I have an open marriage, where we both consent to outside sexualloves, does this also in fact, constitute "adultery?" I have a pretty good feeling what you are going to say, but, hey, maybe you'll prove me wrong...(After all, many Jewish noblemen had more than one wife or else one wife and several concubines).
-Mena the Polytheist
Filomena Sophia | | Back to Top | | |
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John Earp
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1715
| Posted Yesterday 6:45 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by upg validator
I was *wondering* when someone was going to point this out. I guess I am referring to the Ten Commandments, which, if *od were all-knowing, and all-great (even given OVT), why would *e design humans to be flawed, and then have to give laws to repress those flaws?
Well, I simply disagree with the classic Augustinian view of Man, Sin, and God. God never commands man to perform that which is impossible. God told the people of Israel, through Moses, that the law was not too hard to keep, but was within their ability "that you may perform it."
Deut 30:11 ¶ "For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach.
12 "It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will go up to heaven for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?'
13 "Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will cross the sea for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?'
14 "But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may observe it.
15 ¶ "See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity;
16 in that I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the LORD your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it.
Going back even farther, God told Cain (after the sin of Adam and Eve) :
Gen 4:6 Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." (NIV)
Repeatedly throughout Scripture God calls mankind to live righteously, and never is the idea expressed that God expects more of man than man can give. (Though of course, in order to truly live righteously, sinful man needs the power of the Holy Spirit - cf. Rom. 8:1-14 vs. Rom. 7)
As to your description of an "open marriage" it is certainly a contradiction in terms to speak of a marriage bond apart from marital fidelity. Apart from the Bible, the overwhelming majority of human societies throughout history have viewed marriage as including faithfulness to one's spouse. And having more than one wife is a very different thing from not being faithful to even one partner, much less multiple partners.
"The Discovery of new truth will modify old views and opinions, and there is perhaps no end to this process with finite minds in any world." Charles G. Finney, Systematic Theology.
revivaltheology.net
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Tigress
Registered Member
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1252
| Posted 11/10/2003 8:58 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by streetpreacher
quote:
Originally posted by upg validator
Tigress:
Believe what you want, but Adam and Eve (IF they existed at all) were the original Semitic couple/people. The rest of us were descended from somewhere else. However, scientifically, the theory holds that the original people were from the land we now call Africa. So, yes, in a sense we ARE all related--just not the way you think.
-Buona Zuru,
Aite Sec
Where in Scripture are we told that Adam and Eve were Semitic. Paul tells us the ALL are either in Adam or in Christ. Jewish ancestry starts with Abraham, not Adam.
The Semitic people descended from Noah's son, Shem. The different people who lived throughout Africa were descended from Noah's son, Ham, and the rest of the world were descended from Noah's son, Japheth. Adam and Eve were the ancestors of Noah, and therefore of all of the people after him. The Semitic people didn't officially become recognized as such until Abraham and Sarah had Isaac though right? 
Tigress 
"Name a shrub after me. Preferably one that's prickly and difficult to eradicate."
-Captain Jack Aubrey
"Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" | | Back to Top | | |
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