God and Unconditional Love


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Greg:

I hope you realize you are using an argument to try to show why arguments are not necessary for a belief in God, but, that aside, I have two serious questions--and I don't mean them to come across as dismissive:

1. Do you know of any other person (let's exclude your wife here) who has come to a belief in God by way of the path you are describing?

2. Is there an actual Christian denomination that holds the theological views you have described here on OL?

1. No. I know a lot of people who all come to God by different paths... and our common bond is our moral values.

2. The closest would be Evangelical Christian because they are more experiential than intellectual. I'm well regarded by people from a whole wide range of religious faiths because I'm an inclusive behaviorist and not an exclusionary dogmatist. My In-Laws are Daoists. Everyone who does what's morally right is my friend. :smile:

I hope you understand that you could go into any church and ask each individual congregant to describe their own personal experience of God, and you would get s just as many completely different stories. It would be foolish to regard collective institutional dogmatic consensus as any indicator of truth.

God isn't what you ~think~ He is... :wink:

Greg

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I'm just not following you on the subject of moral values, especially as it relates to a belief in God.

The suicide bomber has moral values. So does the atheist next door, so to speak. In my firm, probably half the people believe gay marriage is a good idea, and the other half don't. They are smart people, each of them. Their beliefs are driven by their moral values.

In case you haven't picked up on this already, I happen to believe in God. I sincerely do. The fact that I have moral values would probably qualify as being very near the bottom of the list as to why I hold that belief. I think the concept of "moral values" as the basis for a belief in God waters the concept down into nothingness.

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(Hey Michael... When the HTML button disappeared from my posting options, I got another browser to use just for this forum. There's a way around everything. :wink: )



I'm just not following you on the subject of moral values, especially as it relates to a belief in God.

I noticed, David.

It's because whenever I'm referencing my own experience, it's not belief in God, it's knowing God. So naturally I see belief in God from a different perspective.

The suicide bomber has moral values.

The suicide bomber lacks moral values. He has rotten values.

Viktor Frankel has it right:

"There are only two races... the decent... and the indecent."

So does the atheist next door, so to speak.

You can tell a good atheist from a bad one by their behavior... not by their belief in no God.

In my firm, probably half the people believe gay marriage is a good idea, and the other half don't.

The ones who do also believe that sticking their private part into someone else's fecal matter is also a good idea.

They are smart people, each of them.

There is NO causal relationship between intelligence and decency. Equating the two is a common popular fallacy.

Their beliefs are driven by their moral values.

Beliefs are irrelevant.

Only behavior matters.

In case you haven't picked up on this already, I happen to believe in God. I sincerely do.

I'm just as ok with your belief in God as I would be if you believed in no God. If you're basically a decent person, and I believe that you are, it's all good to me. :smile:

The fact that I have moral values would probably qualify as being very near the bottom of the list as to why I hold that belief. I think the concept of "moral values" as the basis for a belief in God waters the concept down into nothingness.

That's because what we do is MORE important than what we believe.

Greg

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Homosexuality isn't optional for all homosexuals. We can posit it is for so-called bisexuals.

Not all homosexuals engage in sex or if they do, anal sex. Lots of heterosexuals engage in anal sex, btw.

There doesn't have to be fecal matter in a person's rectum and there's the option of using a condom.

Animadversion on homosexuality by denigrating real and imagined sexual practices of gays is no more valid than doing that for heterosexuals. Shall we talk about the possible presence of fecal matter in oral sex by straights?

Equating a sexual orientation with shit is 1000 times more disgusting than shit.

--Brant

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Brant,

I agree that no sexual orientation inherently involves fecal matter unless the orientation is some kind of fetish based on it (or people are careless).

I also happen to think that mixing fecal matter (and urine for that matter) with sex is not a good idea for hygiene purposes.

But wait! There's more!

:smile:

Sex inherently engenders the inception of life whether it is used for that purpose or not. The material produced by the body during sex (sperm and eggs) are material to create new life. The reproduction characteristic is simply there in the sex organs because humans come that way. Fecal matter is trash to be discarded, stuff that life has used up and needs to get rid of.

Aesthetically, I don't like mixing these two metaphysical intentions (to coin a phrase :smile: ). They are different energies if you want to go New Age. At least they work as very good different metaphorical energies.

Michael

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Men and women are biologically meant for each other, Michael--psychologically and biologically. That's why the species goes on and on. Why heterosexuals want to dump on people who don't reproduce instead of thanking them for not reproducing can only come out of dehumanization and introspective fear, assuming no contributing childhood trauma like molestation.

--Brant

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Brant,

Gays rock.

:smile:

For some reason I have always had gay people around me as good friends. My deceased friend, poet Vicente Cechelero once misinterpreted my friendship for something more and started making overtures.

I was transferring some of his poems to a computer at the time with a hand scanner and OCR--this was when personal computers were just starting to be used (DOS system), and he, in a fit of depression, wanted to destroy his unpublished work. I convinced him to rethink and get this on a computer before he spiraled down again. We were at my place. I sucked at hand scanning, so this was taking a long time.

After the cat and mouse routine, which wasn't helping at all with that damn scanning, I finally stopped what I was doing and told him I was extremely flattered by his attention, but I don't play on that team. He looked at me intensely for about two minutes in silence, then said, "You are very intelligent."

I looked back and said, "Whew."

Then I got back to work.

:smile:

Frankly, I am very uncomfortable here in the USA with all the hostility and mind games surrounding the homosexual world. It's an issue lots of Americans treat with intense hatred, rationalizations and power struggles. This is on on all sides and I don't share any of these feelings, neither pro nor anti-gay.

I love my friends, I always have and I always will. I can't relate that to what I see going on here.

Michael

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I'm going off on a tangent about Vicente, but I miss him.

Here is something I wrote about him on SoloHQ in 2005:

I had a close Brazilian friend, Vicente Cechelero, now deceased, who I believe was a woman born into a man's body. (I have always had very talented and intelligent gay people around me all my life, although I am not gay.) He was a brilliant poet. His first book of poetry (Só Matéria do Mundo) won every prestigious prize that Brazil offers its artists, including the Olavo Bilac prize of the Brazilian Academy of Literature. In Brazil, this is more or less equivalent to winning the Pulitzer prize.

One poem I liked so much that he dedicated it to me (among several others), Deitei-me na Casa de Prometeu (I Laid Down in the House of Prometheus). Another poem, Está Morrendo uma Língua (A Language is Dying), starts with the dying of the language human beings use use to communicate, then with the act of communication itself between human beings, then with communication between humans and the very reality they live in, illustrating massive destruction by the image of a phallic mushroom cloud from an atomic bomb ripping open the anus of God. Despite the almost comical aspect of this image stated in this context, in the poem it was extremely powerful, conveying the horror of what happens when man abandons the world to those who would kill his spirit. Now who but a male homosexual could come up with an image like that?

I never did get him into the works of Ayn Rand, though I tried. He was always more interested in Brazilian and Portuguese authors. He was more intimate with the Portuguese language than any other Brazilian I knew.

Vicente was always troubled about his homosexual nature and told me several stories about his infancy. His father's name was Delírio, which in Portuguese means something more akin to "ecstasy" than "delirium." Nonetheless, that is one hell of a name for anyone's father, even in Brazil.

One day, when he was six years old, his father was sleeping on a hammock in the country. Vicente had been thinking about breasts from watching his mother breast-feed one of his siblings. Then he saw his father sleeping. His rationale was that if you put you mouth on your mother's breast as a baby, what about your father, from where life itself springs? (Most learn the birds and the bees very early in Brazil.) So, while his father was sleeping, he unzipped his father's pants and started fooling around with his penis. His father, coming out of sleep to that kind of pleasure, looked down and saw to his horror that it was his son. There was no discussion. He went and got his revolver and took out after Vicente, who's mother had to hide him to keep him from being shot - literally. Other family members had to take him in because his own father would have nothing to do with him for years after that.

Now how on earth is a six year old going to rationally choose something like what Vicente did?

In the end, after a tortured life of constant doubts and guilt and some brilliant poetry, Vicente died because of his inner conflict about his homosexuality. He was never effeminate. He dressed like a normal hetero man. But he was a woman inside. This manifested itself in his need to seduce mostly married men and he was strictly passive.

He once told me that he had introduced making love to men to somewhere about 800 married men after I, rather tastelessly in my own fashion, asked him how many cherries he had popped. (Incidentally, that included about 7 or 8 Protestant preachers.) I believed him because I saw him change boyfriends constantly. Most were first-time married men I presume, because the ones he introduced me to were somewhat embarrassed to be talking to me in his presence and they did not behave as normal Brazilian gay men do.

Finally, trying to get the female inside him out onto his body, he started taking hormone injections to increase his butt size and grow female-size breasts. His heart did not withstand the strain and he died of a heart attack while still in his forties.

(Note to the curious. Actually Vicente told me much of this - and more - trying to get into my own pants. I believe that for a long time he was in love with me. But I loved him like a brother and I wasn't going for it anyway. He always used to brag to his friends that I was his "healthy" friendship side.)


Michael

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Homosexuality isn't optional for all homosexuals.

That's true. Little children didn't choose to be sexually molested.

We can posit it is for so-called bisexuals. Not all homosexuals engage in sex or if they do, anal sex.
I have nothing to add, and will defer to your expertise.
Lots of heterosexuals engage in anal sex, btw.
I'll take your word for that... and can only add that it would be perfectly logical for practitioners of anal sex to regard homosexual marriage as a good idea.

There doesn't have to be fecal matter in a person's rectum and there's the option of using a condom.

Ok. Again, I'll defer to your expertise.

Animadversion on homosexuality by denigrating real and imagined sexual practices of gays is no more valid than doing that for heterosexuals.

We each have different views:

In your view there is no difference between homosexuality and heterosexuality.

While in my view there is.

Shall we talk about the possible presence of fecal matter in oral sex by straights?

Sodomy includes a wide range of unsanitary sexual perversions... of which the just and deserved consequences include an "all you can eat buffet" of sexually transmitted diseases including aids.. Bon appetite.

Equating a sexual orientation with shit is 1000 times more disgusting than shit.

Sorry, Brant... I didn't mean to personally offend you because of your lifestyle. I'm only stating my opinion. I hope you can understand that living in this world means that not everyone lives by the same moral standard of behavior that you do.

Greg

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Homosexuality isn't optional for all homosexuals.

That's true. Little children didn't choose to be sexually molested.

We can posit it is for so-called bisexuals. Not all homosexuals engage in sex or if they do, anal sex.
I have nothing to add, and will defer to your expertise.
Lots of heterosexuals engage in anal sex, btw.
I'll take your word for that... and can only add that it would be perfectly logical for practitioners of anal sex to regard homosexual marriage as a good idea.
There doesn't have to be fecal matter in a person's rectum and there's the option of using a condom.

Ok. Again, I'll defer to your expertise.

Animadversion on homosexuality by denigrating real and imagined sexual practices of gays is no more valid than doing that for heterosexuals.

We each have different views:

In your view there is no difference between homosexuality and heterosexuality.

While in my view there is.

Shall we talk about the possible presence of fecal matter in oral sex by straights?

Sodomy includes a wide range of unsanitary sexual perversions... of which the just and deserved consequences include an "all you can eat buffet" of sexually transmitted diseases including aids.. Bon appetite.

Equating a sexual orientation with shit is 1000 times more disgusting than shit.

Sorry, Brant... I didn't mean to personally offend you because of your lifestyle. I'm only stating my opinion. I hope you can understand that living in this world means that not everyone lives by the same moral standard of behavior that you do.

Greg

My lifestyle? I haven't had sex with anyone in over a decade and you don't know if it was with a guy or a gal. Also, I did not say there was equivalence. Overall, homosexuality is inferior to heterosexuality, unless you are a homosexual. As for child molestation leading to homosexuality, I'll defer to your expertise as that's the first I've heard of that. Severe psychological problems, yes, and it was so wide-spread in the late 19th C. that Freud couldn't believe how many of his women patients had been fucked as little girls by heterosexual men.

I didn't know until now that you were a moral narcissist.

--Brant

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My lifestyle? I haven't had sex with anyone in over a decade and you don't know if it was with a guy or a gal.

Nor do I care, Brant... I'm only noting that we each have two different standards of behavior and this world will always be that way.

Greg

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My lifestyle? I haven't had sex with anyone in over a decade and you don't know if it was with a guy or a gal.

Nor do I care, Brant... I'm only noting that we each have two different standards of behavior and this world will always be that way.

Greg

My standard is deeper than your standard. :smile:

--Brant

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Greg

What about buggering homos that don't get the aids? When do they get what they justly deserve?

If you could remove the attitude from your remark, It might be worth a response. :wink:

Greg

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I think Tad was just attempting to ascribe that attitude to me, rather than expressing it as his own.

Impersonally observing the process of causality that links peoples' behavior to what happens to them because of it is completely different from becoming emotionally involved in hating them.

Greg

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I think Tad was just attempting to ascribe that attitude to me, rather than expressing it as his own.

Greg,

I got that from the get-go. It's an accusation of bigotry, not a statement supporting it.

I still don't want that level of spite on OL. You know why?

Because framing an accusation of bigotry that way actually does make it a statement supporting bigotry--a person trying to say vile stuff to see if he can get away with it.

Michael

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I think Tad was just attempting to ascribe that attitude to me, rather than expressing it as his own.

Greg,

I got that from the get-go. It's an accusation of bigotry, not a statement supporting it.

I still don't want that level of spite on OL. You know why?

Because framing an accusation of bigotry that way actually does make it a statement supporting bigotry--a person trying to say vile stuff to see if he can get away with it.

Gee, thanks. What am I going to do now?

--Brant

naked to mine enemies

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I find Greg's Old Testament deserved-ism to be rather vulgar. I believe Greg intelligent enough to understand blood born pathogens and medical science. So how , other than through bigotry and hatred, can someone even attempt to make an argument that human sexuality is the moral cause of disease?

Ps ltds leave aside the use of 'moral cause', even it would go to a wider discussion of the use of the concept, ie can it be applied to cause, moral is a normative term or at least the way I use it

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I think Tad was just attempting to ascribe that attitude to me, rather than expressing it as his own.

Greg,

I got that from the get-go. It's an accusation of bigotry, not a statement supporting it.

I still don't want that level of spite on OL. You know why?

Because framing an accusation of bigotry that way actually does make it a statement supporting bigotry--a person trying to say vile stuff to see if he can get away with it.

Michael

Your point is well taken. What are your thoughts on either deleting the post and references to it, or letting it stand as as, and moving on past it?

Greg

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I find Greg's Old Testament deserved-ism to be rather vulgar. I believe Greg intelligent enough to understand blood born pathogens and medical science. So how , other than through bigotry and hatred, can someone even attempt to make an argument that human sexuality is the moral cause of disease?

Ps ltds leave aside the use of 'moral cause', even it would go to a wider discussion of the use of the concept, ie can it be applied to cause, moral is a normative term or at least the way I use it

Tad,

Take this shit elsewhere. You know exactly what you are doing and I don't want it on OL. This is a philosophy forum.

You have the entire Internet to promote your spite. I don't care what you say out there.

Michael

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I believe Greg intelligent enough to understand blood born pathogens and medical science.

I do. I see it as a logical literal consequence at the end of a logical chain of causal behavior.

Objective reality is what happens as a result of what we do.

Greg

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Grey: "Objective reality is what happens [to us] as a result of what we do."

That's all you've ever said here. This leaves open the question of evaluating the nature of reality respecting human actions. This moves you generally from 100% right to less than 100% right, the latter is you being fallible just like everybody else.

--Brant

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