Subject:
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Re: Worthlessness
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 16 Sep 2004 16:38:26 GMT
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Viewed:
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1726 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, David Koudys wrote:
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I don’t go “I’m contributing to this charity *because* I’m a Christian!”
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You should, or else Dave! is correct.
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or “I’m
helping this little old lady across the street *because* of my Christian
values!”
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You should, or else Dave! is correct.
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I don’t agree at all. It’s this ‘do right ‘cause you’re a Christian’ that
disenfranchises others from seeing what is, I believe, true Christianity.
I try to do good works because it is the right thing to do (more later).
Whether that comes from my Christian beliefs is besides the point to the guy
laying beaten up in the gutter--that fact that I do them is the point. My
Christianity is between me and God, no one else needs to be involved with that.
That’s one of the points that Jesus made with his parable, and we sit there
‘shocked! shocked I say to find that Samaritans have value’. It’s like saying,
“Hey! That guy over there also has a nose!!” Sometimes, though, you need a
kick in the pants to open your eyes to the greater picture. Lincoln knew that.
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Much like, I suppose, you don’t go around saying, “Look at all the good
works I’m doing and I’m doing it without the burden of that Christianity
stuff...”
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Not at all the same. I still don’t have a satisfactory answer from atheists
to the question “why do good?” (from a personal standpoint rather than some
overall societal efficiency explanation)
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For example (as a self contained unit), if everyone quit smoking, our medical
expenses would decrease--quit smoking decreases monetary output for bad health.
It doesn’t matter why people choose to quit smoking, what’s important is that
they *do* quit smoking.
As stated earlier, the orphan sitting in Ethiopia doesn’t care why you gave
money to the charity that’s trying to give him a sustainable life, it matters to
him that you *do* it.
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We try to contribute to the betterness of the world around us. I don’t
‘invoke God’ when I do it, nor I would imagine, you don’t invoke ‘non-God’
when you do it.
It just ‘is the right thing to do.’
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That is an Absolute Morality-type argument, which involves God...
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Again no. If no one had a deity in their lives, the fact of the matter still
remains that, in the long term, being good to your fellow person and they in
turn being good to you leads to a greater good for everyone and to successive
generations. If we were to all ‘screw your neighbour’ then, like the game
Monopoly, one person may come out on top, but the rest would be reduced to
nothing. Anyway, that’s just a cursory look from me.
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Some Christians would say your choices to support your fellow person are
‘Gods laws written on your heart’ even if you don’t believe in Him. Eh,
whatever...
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Again, if that were the case, what is the point of believing in Him?
JOHN
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I believe in Him because there’s the question ‘why?’. Moreover, I believe that
the whole is greater than the sum of the parts--reductionism (to bring that back
into o.t-d from a long way back) is what science does--reduces the universe to
‘less than it is’. Science, by its very nature as a man-generated thought
process, cannot go above and beyond ‘human scope’ It has a fixed upper limit
due to its very nature. There is no man-made or even universe made infinite,
seeing as how man is finite and so is the universe. Is there something over and
above that? I believe yes. But that’s reopening that can o’ worms... so I stop
now.
Dave K
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Worthlessness
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| (...) You should, or else Dave! is correct. (...) You should, or else Dave! is correct. (...) Not at all the same. I still don't have a satisfactory answer from atheists to the question "why do good?" (from a personal standpoint rather than some (...) (20 years ago, 16-Sep-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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