Project Reason is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. The foundation draws on the talents of prominent and creative thinkers in a wide range of disciplines to encourage critical thinking and erode the influence of dogmatism, superstition, and bigotry in our world.
Mr. Rong, you got this question from Hitchens. Didn’t realize that it was the Abraham story until I told you it was when you first asked me. You did deny that this story had anything to do with your asking it at that time. Then you brought up the Abraham story along with this question at a later date. At that time I called you a liar since you had claimed this story had nothing to do with this question before. Then I showed you how you ask this question from the complete lack of knowledge and understanding of God, and a mundane intellect stuck in the Old Testament and religion. Then I gave you a lesson on how Abraham was spared his child and given all the promises God offered him for his faith, since the Jewish people are his descendants in both belief and genealogy. Then I gave you a lesson on how God is “love”, and showed it through the sacrifice of HIS son, the lamb of God. Then I gave you a lesson on how this sacrifice changed the world.
Yet, after all this “revelation” that your question originated from someone else (a drunk and glutton), was supported by you in a dishonest (or confusing) way, is based upon a lack of knowledge and understanding, is stuck in the Old Testament, and ignores that the most profound thought on God is that he is “love”—after all this, you still ask this question as if you have found a rare pearl.
Now, I will ask you a question, for I have answered yours honestly and profoundly.
WHICH OF THESE TWO WOMEN ARE MOST GUILTY OF AN EVIL ACT?
A woman who drowns her children in a pond so she can have a life with a rich young boyfriend.
Or…
A woman who drowns her children in a bathtub because she claimed she heard a voice in her head telling her to.
The first woman had a healthy intellect and was sent to prison.
The second woman was diagnosed as insane and sent to a hospital..
What says you?
Now get busy and find another quote from Hitchens or someone else, for that is the extent of your wit.
If you ask your retarded question again, you reveal yourself to be closer to the second woman than the first. So, I guess, I should forgive you for it.
Chaos, your posts show perfectly the superficiality of the atheist mind posing as “knowledge”, not to mention the pride of said mind to recite trivia learned as a replacement of said “knowledge”.
Project Reason is filled with superficial and pride-filled intellects, incapable of profound thoughts. This is what happens when the spirit of God, the giver of all good gifts, is tossed to the curb for the limited intellect, the giver of opinion.
...
My story above was an allegory for every one of us being born nothing but the raw material for doing great things. We become great individuals by going out there and grabbing this greatness, or remaining great when everything stacks against us. Guessing at the personalities and personal lives of you people who claim to be “atheists” and “great thinkers”, I would have to say that I can fully understand why the likes of you people either read the story above and got nothing from it, skipped most of it, or only thought about the scientific details of it. The ignoring of it by Bruce, and his subsequent idiotic questioning of God, was the worse response of all.
Believe it or not, I knew exactly what you were trying to convey with this pithy tale of glurge. I don’t need some fantastical tale for me to think profoundly on in order to garner meaning from life. This little story is the same as the premise for most hero stories…normal person becomes an inadvertent hero, etc etc. Makes for good novels and movies, and may even happen in real life on occasion, but why not discuss the whys and how’s instead of focusing on the supernatural bullshit? Whether it was good luck, inner resolve, learned skills, something else or a combination thereof, we can try to learn how mundane people can do great things and learn from that, without trying to assign some divine hand to the story.
I chose to pick apart the technical details because that is how left-brained people think. If you want to tell a good story, you should appeal to both the emotional and rational sides of the brain. That way you can reach a wide audience and avoid turning off certain types of thinkers or feeling types due to laziness.
.WHICH OF THESE TWO WOMEN ARE MOST GUILTY OF AN EVIL ACT?
A woman who drowns her children in a pond so she can have a life with a rich young boyfriend.
Or…
A woman who drowns her children in a bathtub because she claimed she heard a voice in her head telling her to.
The first woman had a healthy intellect and was sent to prison.
The second woman was diagnosed as insane and sent to a hospital..
What says you?
This is actually an interesting question without an easy answer. I’m sure many here will quibble on the question: what is evil? I would say that both acts were evil, and would not assign a greater weighting of guilt to one or the other. I found the wording of the second case interesting - the woman “claimed” that she heard a voice in her head telling her to kill her children. I suppose if she was diagnosed correctly as being insane, then a secure hospital is the right place for her. I actually agree with both outcomes you presented here, but I don’t see how you can assign degrees of guilt or evil to the acts. Certainly, the first woman was being willfully selfish, but the second woman also displayed selfishness and an extreme appeal to authority to kill her children. Maybe she didn’t want her children at all, and this voice conveniently took care of the problem for her. She could then pass the blame onto this voice in her head and absolve herself of responsibility. Seems pretty evil to me as well. I guess there is insufficient information to provide a definitive answer, but the short answer is that neither is more guilty than the other of committing an evil act. My opinion only and not directly based on any method of applying morality (religious, philosophical or otherwise).
Chaos, you see reality and truth as, at best, a product of the collective minds of men.
This is your formulated “opinion” from your lack of experience of the living God and your corresponding lack of understanding of the spirit of God..
It is I who understand you, for I was once somewhat like you (though I was never ignorant or proud enough to deny God).
You do not have a chance in Hell in understanding me.
You are fooling yourself (again) in thinking so.
You are correct - I will never understand the bullshit supernatural aspects of what you spout here on a regular basis. I will also never have the experience of a living God or understand the spirit of God. I obviously wasn’t stating that I understand YOU as a person…I was stating that I understood the underlying message of your little story. I am obviously ignorant about a great many things, and it doesn’t bother me that this is so, even though I am constantly learning more every day. Unfortunately, your brand of knowledge holds very little interest or utility for me, so I choose to continue to wallow in my ignorance of your particular message. I’m OK with that decision.
Oh, by the way, Chaos, First, I knew about the needed “carbon”. That is why I had the blacksmith do the job. Second, I would think a resourceful man could lift a lump of iron ore about the size of a small child into a wagon and drag it into his house. Third, some fireplaces are huge. And, fourth, I did debate whether or not I should have had the man stay up all night stoking the fire.
So, fifth, please, save your (baseless) literary critique for when your agenda doesn’t get spread over it like jam.
Even the resident theist, Bruce, is cut from this cloth. He is more guilty than all of you. For him to think that humanity will stand up straight before the face of God and demand answers is about the least spiritual thing I ever heard. Your resident theist is nothing but an opinionated old man with a mundane life and a mundane intellect and mundane faith.
I think you are missing Bruce’s point. He doesn’t say that “humanity will stand up straight before the face of God and demand answers,” what he said was that he has faith that at some point answers will be given (presumably as a matter of grace). I find it interesting that you miss this distinction.
Oh, by the way, Chaos, First, I knew about the needed “carbon”. . . .
I’d always understood that iron was harder than steel (though not nearly as strong or tough, since it’s so brittle), and the following article confused me at first, because I know from experience that aluminum is softer than iron. But it’s only a technical softness, in the sense that the smelting process adds all kinds of carbon.
Pure iron is soft (softer than aluminium), but is unobtainable by smelting. . . . A certain proportion of carbon (between 0.2% and 2.1%) produces steel, which may be up to 1000 times harder than pure iron. Crude iron metal is produced in blast furnaces, where ore is reduced by coke to cast iron, which has a high carbon content. Further refinement with oxygen reduces the carbon content to the correct proportion to make steel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron
So Mario, you seem to be correct about iron only in a highly theoretical (perhaps imaginary?) way. In the practical sense, you’re mistaken. What a surprise.
Chaos, the selfish girl was more guilty. The healthy intellect wielded by the self-serving person was more guilty.
Your problem in seeing this is your disdain for religion or spiritual matters.
You seem to be posting calmly and methodically. But I can easily see the agenda and emotion oozing out between the cracks.
Gotta go. Bye.
You just changed the goal post, Mario. You didn’t ask which person was more guilty, you asked which of the two acts was more evil (an external evaluation, where as guilt is an internal aspect of a person’s consciousness). That may be a subtle distinction, but it does make a difference. The fact that the second woman was judged insane and sent to an asylum, legally means that she was found “not guilty by reason of insanity.” In other words, her internal state was judged as not capable of knowing that her act was evil whereas the first woman was capable of such knowledge, but probably covered it up with all sorts of justifications.
BTW, is it only through misogyny that you made these women rather than men committing equivalent acts?
Oh, by the way, Chaos, First, I knew about the needed “carbon”. . . .
I’d always understood that iron was harder than steel (though not nearly as strong or tough, since it’s so brittle), and the following article confused me at first, because I know from experience that aluminum is softer than iron. But it’s only a technical softness, in the sense that the smelting process adds all kinds of carbon.
Pure iron is soft (softer than aluminium), but is unobtainable by smelting. . . . A certain proportion of carbon (between 0.2% and 2.1%) produces steel, which may be up to 1000 times harder than pure iron. Crude iron metal is produced in blast furnaces, where ore is reduced by coke to cast iron, which has a high carbon content. Further refinement with oxygen reduces the carbon content to the correct proportion to make steel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron
So Mario, you seem to be correct about iron only in a highly theoretical (perhaps imaginary?) way. In the practical sense, you’re mistaken. What a surprise.
Actually, I enjoyed the story (I was willing to overlook the technical detail, but it did bother me slightly), it illustrates a variety of human qualities. I suspect that Mario sees himself as the sword to be wielded against us barbarian hoards, though.
Even the resident theist, Bruce, is cut from this cloth. He is more guilty than all of you. For him to think that humanity will stand up straight before the face of God and demand answers is about the least spiritual thing I ever heard. Your resident theist is nothing but an opinionated old man with a mundane life and a mundane intellect and mundane faith.
I think you are missing Bruce’s point. He doesn’t say that “humanity will stand up straight before the face of God and demand answers,” what he said was that he has faith that at some point answers will be given (presumably as a matter of grace). I find it interesting that you miss this distinction.
Oh, by the way, Chaos, First, I knew about the needed “carbon”. . . .
I’d always understood that iron was harder than steel (though not nearly as strong or tough, since it’s so brittle), and the following article confused me at first, because I know from experience that aluminum is softer than iron. But it’s only a technical softness, in the sense that the smelting process adds all kinds of carbon.
Pure iron is soft (softer than aluminium), but is unobtainable by smelting. . . . A certain proportion of carbon (between 0.2% and 2.1%) produces steel, which may be up to 1000 times harder than pure iron. Crude iron metal is produced in blast furnaces, where ore is reduced by coke to cast iron, which has a high carbon content. Further refinement with oxygen reduces the carbon content to the correct proportion to make steel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron
So Mario, you seem to be correct about iron only in a highly theoretical (perhaps imaginary?) way. In the practical sense, you’re mistaken. What a surprise.
Actually, I enjoyed the story (I was willing to overlook the technical detail, but it did bother me slightly), it illustrates a variety of human qualities. I suspect that Mario sees himself as the sword to be wielded against us barbarian hoards, though.
I was trying to get Mario to lighten up and smile. The story made no sense to me, but I’ll reread it based on your saying you enjoyed it, Burt.
