Here's The Point

[Guest end3]

I wasn't intending for the concept to be hard to grasp PA, my writing usually makes it difficult to understand. All I am trying to express is without love, I think most people find it difficult to survive. I am advocating filling each person's cup, soul, body, whatever, to a level where they can survive, regardless of labels. Not sure the cup analogy works, but I will think on it.

[hereticzero]

Perhaps I am not aware of the rigid definition of humanism, but it seems more of a "me" type stance. Is this not accurate? If I allowed "me" to run loose, there you are, statements like I just made....the real truth. It dosen't seem to be hindering Rhia or White Raven from achieving permanent PMS....why should I, in my new selective me adventure, be what you expect me to be.

Humanism has no rigid belief or definition. Wikipedia describes it as 'a broad category of ethical philosophies that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appealing to universal human qualities, particularly rationality.[1][2] It is a component of a variety of more specific philosophical systems and is incorporated into several religious schools of thought. Humanism can be considered as a process by which truth and morality is sought through human investigation. In focusing on the capacity for self-determination, humanism rejects the validity of transcendental justifications, such as a dependence on belief without reason, the supernatural, or texts of allegedly divine origin. Humanists endorse universal morality based on the commonality of the human condition, suggesting that solutions to human social and cultural problems cannot be parochial.[3]'

 

Many people who have moved on from Christianity and its deplorable views of humanity, these former Christians have embraced Secular Humanism as a religion without impedance. Wikipedia also defines secular humanism as 'a humanist philosophy that upholds reason, ethics and justice, and specifically rejects the supernatural and the spiritual as the basis of moral reflection and decision-making. Like other types of humanism, secular humanism is a life stance that focuses on the way human beings can lead good, happy and functional lives.'

 

Love is not a Christian-only concept. Once does not have to have Jesus in one's life in order to have love for another human being. There is a principle that is in many cultures, the Golden Rule. It is the same concept of 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' This universal concept is how societies, no matter how large or small, live and interact. The Golden Rule is the moral code that everyone seems to know and follow, in one part or another. We know how to treat others without God and Jesus in our lives. Many of us knew compassion before being converted to the church and many of us continued that compassion after we left the church. There is no trading of love when we leave the church. We are putting away our self-importance, the church is all about 'me' and without the church we have time to focus on the needs of our neighbor since we no longer pay tithes. The church teaches what can you or I do for the church? I have seen many churches claim to teach family values but teach Democracy and the fables of the founding fathers as family values instead. They argue forever about whether George Washington or Abe Lincoln were Christians or Deists. Then they won't spend $5 for a sandwhich for someone who is hungry. Our humanity is our own responsibility. Love is what you make of it.

[Guest end3]

Perhaps I am not aware of the rigid definition of humanism, but it seems more of a "me" type stance. Is this not accurate? If I allowed "me" to run loose, there you are, statements like I just made....the real truth. It dosen't seem to be hindering Rhia or White Raven from achieving permanent PMS....why should I, in my new selective me adventure, be what you expect me to be.

Humanism has no rigid belief or definition. Wikipedia describes it as 'a broad category of ethical philosophies that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appealing to universal human qualities, particularly rationality.[1][2] It is a component of a variety of more specific philosophical systems and is incorporated into several religious schools of thought. Humanism can be considered as a process by which truth and morality is sought through human investigation. In focusing on the capacity for self-determination, humanism rejects the validity of transcendental justifications, such as a dependence on belief without reason, the supernatural, or texts of allegedly divine origin. Humanists endorse universal morality based on the commonality of the human condition, suggesting that solutions to human social and cultural problems cannot be parochial.[3]'

 

Many people who have moved on from Christianity and its deplorable views of humanity, these former Christians have embraced Secular Humanism as a religion without impedance. Wikipedia also defines secular humanism as 'a humanist philosophy that upholds reason, ethics and justice, and specifically rejects the supernatural and the spiritual as the basis of moral reflection and decision-making. Like other types of humanism, secular humanism is a life stance that focuses on the way human beings can lead good, happy and functional lives.'

 

Love is not a Christian-only concept. Once does not have to have Jesus in one's life in order to have love for another human being. There is a principle that is in many cultures, the Golden Rule. It is the same concept of 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' This universal concept is how societies, no matter how large or small, live and interact. The Golden Rule is the moral code that everyone seems to know and follow, in one part or another. We know how to treat others without God and Jesus in our lives. Many of us knew compassion before being converted to the church and many of us continued that compassion after we left the church. There is no trading of love when we leave the church. We are putting away our self-importance, the church is all about 'me' and without the church we have time to focus on the needs of our neighbor since we no longer pay tithes. The church teaches what can you or I do for the church? I have seen many churches claim to teach family values but teach Democracy and the fables of the founding fathers as family values instead. They argue forever about whether George Washington or Abe Lincoln were Christians or Deists. Then they won't spend $5 for a sandwhich for someone who is hungry. Our humanity is our own responsibility. Love is what you make of it.

 

I just can't make myself subscribe to love as evolved if it is an across the board constant....again, as AM pointed out, love didn't fail, and doesn't, but our methods appear to, regardless. How do we explain that? Is it just a coincedence that the contradictions in the bible are similar to judging a situation on its individual merits?

 

Edit: What pushed everything to behave in a symbiotic manner in the beginning? Chance?

[agnosticator]

regardless. How do we explain that? Is it just a coincedence that the contradictions in the bible are similar to judging a situation on its individual merits?

 

Regardless of what? How are contradictions similar to judging a situation on it's own merits? Please be more specific so I can understand what you are getting at. Thanks in advance.

[Deva]

I just can't make myself subscribe to love as evolved if it is an across the board constant....again, as AM pointed out, love didn't fail, and doesn't, but our methods appear to, regardless. How do we explain that? Is it just a coincedence that the contradictions in the bible are similar to judging a situation on its individual merits?

 

Edit: What pushed everything to behave in a symbiotic manner in the beginning? Chance?

 

End, this is really vague, even for you. "Our methods" as opposed to what -- God's methods?

 

How are contradictions in the Bible similar to judging a situation on its individual methods?

[chefranden]

Edit: What pushed everything to behave in a symbiotic manner in the beginning? Chance?

 

As usual trying to unpack your question is a bit of a chore.

 

I'm going to suppose that since the subject is love, this is what you mean.

 

The answer is socialism. However in an attempt not to be as enigmatic as thou...

 

We evolved as social animals and our emotions evolved to encourage us to be social. You got your positive emotions like love to enable cooperation and you got your negative emotions like anger to discourage cheating. Of course it is a bit more complicated than this, but I'm not going to write a book for you, there are plenty of them out there.

 

By the way evolution does not work by chance, in spite of what you've been taught. It works via selection of beneficial mutation through reproduction. If you are going to reject a science, at least reject the real science rather than a parody of it.

 

"The world is divided into things that look designed (like birds and airliners) and things that don't (rocks and mountains). Things that look designed are divided into those that really are designed (submarines and tin openers) and those that aren't (sharks and hedgehogs). The diagnostic of things that look (or are) designed is that their parts are assembled in ways that are statistically improbable in a functional direction. They do something well: for instance, fly.

 

Darwinian natural selection can produce an uncanny illusion of design. An engineer would be hard put to decide whether a bird or a plane was the more aerodynamically elegant.

 

So powerful is the illusion of design, it took humanity until the mid-19th century to realise that it is an illusion. In 1859, Charles Darwin announced one of the greatest ideas ever to occur to a human mind: cumulative evolution by natural selection. Living complexity is indeed orders of magnitude too improbable to have come about by chance. But only if we assume that all the luck has to come in one fell swoop. When cascades of small chance steps accumulate, you can reach prodigious heights of adaptive complexity. That cumulative build-up is evolution. Its guiding force is natural selection.

 

Every living creature has ancestors, but only a fraction have descendants. All inherit the genes of an unbroken sequence of successful ancestors, none of whom died young and none of whom failed to reproduce. Genes that program embryos to develop into adults who can successfully reproduce automatically survive in the gene pool, at the expense of genes that fail. This is natural selection at the gene level, and we notice its consequences at the organism level. There has to be an ultimate source of new genetic variation, and it is mutation. Copies of newly mutated genes are reshuffled through the gene pool by sexual reproduction, and selection removes them from the pool in a way that is non-random.

 

What makes for success in the business of life varies from species to species. Some swim, some walk, some fly, some climb, some root themselves into the soil and tilt green solar panels toward the sun. All this diversity stems from successive branchings, starting from a single bacterium-like ancestor, which lived between 3 and 4 billion years ago. Each branching event is called a speciation: a breeding population splits into two, and they go their separately evolving ways. Among sexually reproducing species, speciation is said to have occurred when the two gene pools have separated so far that they can no longer interbreed. Speciation begins by accident. When separation has reached the stage where there is no interbreeding even without a geographical barrier, we have the origin of a new species.

 

Natural selection is quintessentially non-random, yet it is lamentably often miscalled random. This one mistake underlies much of the sceptical backlash against evolution. Chance cannot explain life. Design is as bad an explanation as chance because it raises bigger questions than it answers. Evolution by natural selection is the only workable theory ever proposed that is capable of explaining life, and it does so brilliantly.

"(r. dawkins)

[Guest end3]

Regardless of what?

 

Practiced belief systems, etc....in the end we all get screwed and screw others along the way.

 

How are contradictions similar to judging a situation on it's own merits? Please be more specific so I can understand what you are getting at. Thanks in advance.

 

IMHO, the seeming contradictions in the Bible lead a person to believe that a response to a given situation leans towards the freedom given to us by Christ, that is, with love and regard for your neighbor being the primary objective......i.e. healing on the Sabbath.

[Guest end3]

As usual trying to unpack your question is a bit of a chore.

 

It's a gifting....

 

 

By the way evolution does not work by chance, in spite of what you've been taught.

 

I will confess ignorance, but I don't know that a description of evolution gives me conclusive understanding of "the beginning". Call me thick, not wanting to think,.......but, scientists are always looking to historical evidence and sub-atomic levels of "stuff" to give us a better understanding of the/an origin.

 

I personally am waiting for atom smasher results or death, whichever occurs first.

 

Looked at your website Chef...cool pictures....the one with your head in your hands...what period of life was that for you, the restaurant time period?

[chefranden]

1. will confess ignorance, but I don't know that a description of evolution gives me conclusive understanding of "the beginning". Call me thick, not wanting to think,.......but, scientists are always looking to historical evidence and sub-atomic levels of "stuff" to give us a better understanding of the/an origin.

 

2.Looked at your website Chef...cool pictures....the one with your head in your hands...what period of life was that for you, the restaurant time period?

 

1. I would say that at this point science is a lot closer to conclusive than the bible.

 

2. Thanks That period of life was the 1st summer of retirement. Even that seems a long time back. That particular place was at the snack bar at Devil's Lake State park in Wisconsin. I just tell you that so you know the kind of places I hang out.

[PiracyOfTheHead]

End, I don't disagree that humans require love...but before they require love, they also require food, water, clothing, and shelter. Love is higher up on the scale. Certain needs must be fulfilled first.

 

You also cannot expect every human being to be in love with you. That is not realistic. Find someone who actually *does* love you, which happens over time and usually not on a web site.

 

Yes, Amethyst...exactly correct.....

 

End3, I thought I had written it to you but I dont see it......LOOK UP MASLOW'S PYRAMID, it further explains what Ammy is talking about, we have a hierarchy of necessities and when the survival ones are threatened we slide on down the pyramid with our minds on alert for fresh water or some food, or to get out of the line of fire....then there are other needs and so on...

 

Only AFTER certain needs are met do we begin to formulate this necessity for love, and it intertwines waxing and waning depending on the levels of the rest being met or how they are met and so on.

 

I think you're trying to express something that has been very well documented and presented, please google Maslow's pyramid of human needs or you can go on YOUTUBE and type in PSYCHETRUTH and go to the playlist about HUMAN NEEDS and watch it, it goes into detail about this.

[Kuroikaze]

I will confess ignorance, but I don't know that a description of evolution gives me conclusive understanding of "the beginning".

 

I would actually agree with you to a certain extent, but two questions.

 

1. Is there ANYTHING that can give us a conclusive understanding of "the beginning?"

 

2. Would your life be improved in any practical way by having such an understanding?

[Ouroboros]

By the way evolution does not work by chance, in spite of what you've been taught.

 

I will confess ignorance, but I don't know that a description of evolution gives me conclusive understanding of "the beginning". Call me thick, not wanting to think,.......but, scientists are always looking to historical evidence and sub-atomic levels of "stuff" to give us a better understanding of the/an origin.

 

I personally am waiting for atom smasher results or death, whichever occurs first.

Do you understand God? Do you fully comprehend God's greatness, vastness, infinity, and eternal nature? No? Then, how can you think believing in God is any better than having a fair understanding of Big Bang, Astronomy and/or Evolution? Think about it. If your rejection of Evolution is because you're having a hard time understanding it, no one can explain biogenesis, or you can't dig into cosmology, then I don't see why believing in a God--you don't understand either--would make any difference?

[Guest end3]

1. Is there ANYTHING that can give us a conclusive understanding of \"the beginning?\"

 

To my knowledge, nothing that we can define physically...and I know most discount Spiritual evidence, so I will not venture there.

 

2. Would your life be improved in any practical way by having such an understanding?

 

I would think it would depend on what the understanding was. I try and often fail, but try to live for Heaven, (not wait for Heaven), and that periodically keeps me from choosing a path I would otherwise take. Perhaps society might be totally different, like killing folks without much thought...that kind of thing.

[Kuroikaze]

To my knowledge, nothing that we can define physically...and I know most discount Spiritual evidence, so I will not venture there.

 

Hmmm... My impression of the term "spiritual evidence" is that it is circular in nature. The term "spiritual" generally referrers to that which exists outside of the natural world. So too use "spiritual evidence" as proof of spiritual things, you must assume spiritual things exist, thus you are assuming the conclusion in your premise.

 

That, in a nut shell, is why I discount spiritual evidence.

 

I would think it would depend on what the understanding was. I try and often fail, but try to live for Heaven, (not wait for Heaven), and that periodically keeps me from choosing a path I would otherwise take. Perhaps society might be totally different, like killing folks without much thought...that kind of thing.

 

I guess I just don't think you are correct here. I mean, I don't claim to have an understanding of the beginning and yet I've never killed someone.

 

Plenty of people who thought they DID know exactly how the universe began, did in fact kill people without much thought. The Spanish Inquisition comes to mind.

 

It seems to me if you want convince people it is wrong to kill people you need to teach them to value human life.

I suppose you are correct in that some understandings of the origins of the universe might logically lead to such a value, but other understandings could lead to the opposite. Since there is no way for us to verify which is correct then we come to an impasse when attempting to derive values in this way.

 

However, I think that one can conclude that human life is valuable without discussing origins at all. If that is the case discussing origins just adds unnecessary information to such a discussion.

[Guest end3]

However, I think that one can conclude that human life is valuable without discussing origins at all.

 

Sure, we can now....

 

If that is the case discussing origins just adds unnecessary information to such a discussion.

 

I am afraid I do not know enough about history to give an opinion on why we are moving to a more civilized society....education perhaps, fear of God for some....

 

thanks for the conversation.

[chefranden]

I would think it would depend on what the understanding was. I try and often fail, but try to live for Heaven, (not wait for Heaven), and that periodically keeps me from choosing a path I would otherwise take. Perhaps society might be totally different, like killing folks without much thought...that kind of thing.

 

Violence among humans has decreased as governmental monopoly on violence has tightened over the years. For example as a male you had a 20% chance of dying at the hands of another male in the middle ages, where as now the chance is about 1% in Western nations. It is this monopoly of violence that keeps people on the straight and narrow. So it is probably the same with you except you expect heaven as consolation prize for not getting the pleasure of offing the bastard.

 

I would like to pat myself on the back for self-restraint on killing, but I'm not so sure that my attitude is not the result of not having to worry about whether you are gunning for me or not. When I was in a kill or maybe be killed situation, I killed. I didn't wait to see if the other guy had peaceful intentions or not.