Missionaries from black holes, if possible.

[Batman3]

Prwong said,"if you mean by 'charitable faith' charity which you get because you have faith, which is fine' and then '...spreading your faith as a kind of charity which is clearly useless.'.

IF your faith is TRUE and you KNOW it, that can be as usefull as teling people about lunar rills, for example. Certainly interesting. Lunar rills testify to the glory of the Creator. In other words they are cool and that coolness is evidence of a Creator.

IF your faith helps you have charity it makes sense to spread that charity, ie. by spreading your faith.

All 'faiths' are not true so you have to be carefull. So I agree. Merely spreading your docrine MERELY because it is your doctrine is clearly uselss except to the exten that it lets others see your position which might be interseting like lunar rills or a perspective on reality which you could not otherwise get. I.e. like a fantasy story gives a perspective.
It might be true though you don't know it.

Spreading a false-'faith' like Communism might actually be harmful. Certainly C'ism was/is. Spreading atheism, though, false and therefore harmful from my perspective, has to be tolerated by me because I need to see into the Atheitic mind to 'baptise' it through faith. But I have to admit that to be objective or even have faith wrt(With Respect To) it, I have to consider that 'I am wrong', if only to see atheistically, etc.

[wendy]

Communism is a subdivision of Socialism.

In practice, socialism has been a useful counterbalance for capitalism. Many of the standard safety reforms were a result of unions, which in turn derived from socialism.

Communism presupposes in addition to socialism, that while the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and that intervention is needed. Where communism was first supposed to spread (eg UK, US), the poor were getting richer too.

When it was clear that the revolution was not going to happen, and that the poor were quite happy to ride on the coat-tails of capitalism too, the revolution became a matter of creating opportunities in countries that were just having other revolutions.

For example, the popular revolt that ousted the tsar in russia, happened some time before the civil war between the white and red russians. The red russians ultimately won.

[wendy]

This whole notion of "right and wrong" is in many ways entirely misleading, and is more in line with people who wish to impose their faith on someone else.

The notion is similar to taking medicines. One takes this medicine or that, because it is appropriate to your condition. But to someone else, the same medicine may be dangerous or even lethal.

Some of the features of Christianity, for example, may have long outlived their usefulness. The "grow forth and multiply" idiom is appropriate in an underpopulated world, but we have now more people than the earth might take.

One should also remember that much of the islamic jahid terror is largely a response in the same vein as the right/wrong argument, as in "islam is right = non-islam is superlous" is the justification used to destroy the great library of alexandria.

People are on their own tracks. One can not suppose that because X helped you, then it is the opening for every single person. There are many different things on the offer, and one must use one's concious to guide whether this is right or that is wrong.

W

[Batman3]

Since Genesis says that God created the galaxies in this 3-space (I.e. the stuff inside the 3-space), is it possble to use Christian principles to create galaxies in 4-space?

Or are we intelligent enough to create stuff w/out God?

Maybe I am exaggerateing, but that is what I want to do with 4d -- fill it with a reality which is not just math'l but also real and colorful. (By color I don't mean frequencies but perceptions like Red, Orange, etc.). In this world colors coincide somewhat with frequencies, but they are not eqivalent in meaning. In another world, say tetraspace, there might be entirely different colors such as Roange or Orand; or there might be the same colors with a different relation to frequencies. I doubt if the colour system in 4d would be that of 3d.

Since at the fall of the Devil, eating(Division) to a finite extent has been an absolute necessity. Otherwise everyting would be absolutely divided in a total way and nothing would be not desolate. I think, something like that. So If we could find 4d-food to eat we might become aware of 4d-reality. We might not like it.

Furthermore, since the devil fell, the laws of the English system have always that a limited intrusion of gov't knowledge about private details. Otherwise it would get to 'know everyting' and have too much power and destroy the world. So we need to limit awareness of info.

[Batman3]

W., I agree that one cannot take anyones word for what is right and wrong. But When I look at most things in the Gospels, if they are not the 'Ultimate Good', my concsience sees them pointing to something better than I knew before reading the gospels. I suppose that is true of any good mYth but the gospels are more so. They are somewhat over-simplified but that is perhaps because you can only fit so much meaning into a 'few' words. The room I am sitting in has only so much meaning and it has only so much data.

The Bible does not give details on 'lunar rills', etc. and when I look at lunar rills I see something like the morality of the Bible in them. If you don't like the word 'morality', perhaps 'coolness' would do.

But then it also depends on how you look at the Bible or lunar rills. For example, there is a passage in Matthew warning or threatening about what will happen if you are cruel. But as I was reading it I found myself figureing how to use that info for to be cruel myself. So I have to not read that part. I also catch myself being dishonest as to how I interpret things. For example, if I start thinking about how wonderful I am for doing such-and-such a thing, I am probably not being object.

Someone might read the Bible and get the totally wrong drift. Aso that is what the Devil does.

[wendy]

It is fair to use the Gospels to guide one's concious. The role of religion is to regulate what nature does not. Laws exist also for this purpose.

But to supplement the Bible over nature, is to replace god's existance by some message, presumably inspired from God, but over time progressively edited to meet changing idioms.

But for those whose history is such that one is torn to the three corners of christianity, one is the left with trying to understand which suttle frills of religion are correct. Even the christian religion is so many forms that we can not say that Catholism is better then Methodists, or that these are better or worse than the Heresies banished by the Nicesene Decree.

One must understand that these Heresies are perfectly legitimately based on the bible, as it becomes read to people, but are for one end or another, not part of the christian faith.

If the hand of God is such that it follows this pattern, then it is perfectly sure that prehaps what is written in the bible is largely a track from whatever was believed to what should be.

Take, for example, reincarnation. It may, or may not be true.

Reincarnation, in form, overcomes many of the apparent unfairnesses of life: some are born to the rich and some to the poor. In practice we live out all parts of the play, as we might take lessons to go through school.

One goes through a cycle of lives to achieve enlightenment. The role of khama to some extent affects your conditions, but the more things you do, the more kharma you get (good and bad), which in turn affects your skill levels in later levels. It's kind of like being able to buy better bits for the next round.

These are relatively easy understood Buddhist ideas.

In order to make reincarnation work, one must have an understanding or need of the "greater glory", and that present miseries are not so much a fait of eternity, but something like iron in a furnace: the final product is tempered by the experiences.

Many people are not really up to the mental fortitude or ideals that make the reincarnation idea work. For example, because one knows there is a second round, one might seek to terminate ones own life, or regard other lives cheaply.

In order to counter this, one has to make careful decisions about the relevance of reincarnation. Prehaps it is better to hide it as in the Christian idea. By hiding it, one is given a reason to strive hard in the current life.

The new covernant laid down by Jesus, says that devotion is not about acts but motives. That is, it is not so much what you do but what you think, that lies therein the sin. Because the means is not in your hand, it does not mean the motive does not exist. Jesus also speaks of proportions of excess (eg the parable of the two pennies), where the giving is seen by God in terms of what is affordable, not the final amount recieved.

All of these, the changes from the old testement (eye for eye + godliness in the act) to the new (compensation + godliness in the motive), is a change of direction that is not easy to balance. But the Old and New testiments speak to different people separated by hundreds of years, and a world of differences.

W

[PWrong]

IF your faith is TRUE and you KNOW it

All 'faiths' are not true so you have to be carefull.

It might be true though you don't know it.

Obviously a member of any religion or political ideology could make these claims. What's so special about yours? Have you ever heard anyone say "My faith is true but I don't know it", or "I know that my faith is true, but it's not really"?

IF your faith helps you have charity it makes sense to spread that charity, ie. by spreading your faith.

Does the faith itself really help you have charity? Why then, did Jesus bother telling us to be charitable as well as faithful? Why are there people who may be charitable but not faithful (like me and many other atheists)?
Finally, if missionaries are so charitable, why do they go around spreading their faith, when they could be spreading food like real charity organisations?

Merely spreading your docrine MERELY because it is your doctrine is clearly uselss except to the exten that it lets others see your position which might be interseting like lunar rills or a perspective on reality which you could not otherwise get. I.e. like a fantasy story gives a perspective.

So did God create Islam and Buddhism for the same reason as lunar rills(whatever they are)?

The new covernant laid down by Jesus, says that devotion is not about acts but motives. That is, it is not so much what you do but what you think, that lies therein the sin. Because the means is not in your hand, it does not mean the motive does not exist. Jesus also speaks of proportions of excess (eg the parable of the two pennies), where the giving is seen by God in terms of what is affordable, not the final amount recieved.

That's an interesting point Wendy. That's the sort of thing I think Jesus should be remembered for, not the whole "son of god" thing. If he was the son of god, he certainly didn't come to earth just to become famous, he came to teach us things. And if he wasn't, his philosophy was good anyway.

Incidently, I've just finished reading a book on philosophy, and it surprises me that Jesus wasn't included as one of the great philosophers. I've also discovered that I'm very Utilitarian, although being an amatuer mathematician, I prefer a more specific goal than "the greatest happiness for the greatest number". I'd love to somehow rewrite the Felicific calculusas a set of integral equations. I'm not making a point here, I just think it would be cool.

[Batman3]

Note, Pwrong, the use of the little word, 'IF'.

I think Jesus didn't come on the scene to be a great moral teacher(Confucious and Moses did that.) but so that we could 'hang out with Him, if we want' or 'not, if we don't want.'

THAT is Christmas, for me.

[miseleigh]

Batman3: Honestly, have you even read any of the book you seem to take your religion from? Jesus was sent to Earth to save us from our sins, not so we could 'hang out' with him. Most of the 'saving from our sins' part comes through moral teachings, specifically through lots and lots of parables. With morals. I may not be Christian, but at least I know something about the religion.

The Bible also doesn't say that we can just choose to not accept (hang out with?) Christ. Although we have that choice, there are supposedly consequences to it....