Alien Gurgey

Heh. Flaming letters.

LETTERS!

I'm with flaming letters == flaming letters.

The message I've seen thousands of times before. :huh:

was it the size?

Dhaeron

So-friggin-what? If he's indeed the god of the bible, i'll most probably and up in hell anyway, no matter what i do. (been eating too much shellfish lately :huh: ) Besides, he's omniscient and omnipotent. Thinking it's possible to bribe him with good behaviour is stupid.

King Rat

I'm pretty sure that the OP has been a National Enquirer headline at least once.

Doesn't Yahweh usually prefer to nuke a city or flood the entire globe? Flaming letters seems a little Las Vegas or Evel Kneivel?

How about if I opened a fortune cookie that said;

King Rat, I'm real and the mu-shu is on me.

-Yahweh

That would be cool.

Wallener

Was talking about a related matter with my partner this morning. I posited that perhaps all the increases in food technology had in fact increased the number of hungry people on this planet because - like all biological beings - we push our niche out to the edge of usability no matter where that edge lies. My hunch right now is that, as a species, having 6 Billion of us on the planet decreases our long term viability relative to having, say, 2 Billion of us (assuming the same level of geographic diffusion.)

In terms of categorizing actions as (im)moral my guideline goes roughly like this:

- increases both long and short term survivability -> moral
- decreases both long and short term survivability -> immoral
- increases one at the expense of the other -> gray area

Wallener

Hell is not a biblical construct. It is a Christian doctrinal construct that, in fact, contradicts the Hebrew texts.

That rule is for Jews - only. The rest of you can eat whatever you like.

Asha'man

Ya know, I really hate such blatant misrepresentations. Darwin essentially says "This is the way it happens" not "this is the way we'd like it to happen." Do you not see a difference? Natural does not equal good, it just equals real.

Most animals take a shit wherever they are standing. That makes it natural. This does not mean that humans should be encouraged to do things the way the rest of nature does, and abandon our convienient toilet facilities.

Sultanist

How does capital punishment fare in this litmus test of morality?

It decreases the long term survivability of killers.
It decreases the long term survivability of the wrongfully convicted.
It increases the long term survivability of potential murder victims (assuming it provides a deterent)

Would that make it a "gray area"?

Wallener

I understand fully. The problem is the feeling you just described is precisely what lies at the heart of Christianity and many other theologies. If one is to be fully rational, then one must deal with what is real - not with what one wishes were real. If you are allowed to construct a personal mythology based on what you believe is "good", then you cannot logically deny the same the right to theists, deists, and the full flora and fauna of supernaturalists.

Wallener

Firmly in gray area. Very difficult - probably impossible - to have capital punishment and avoid executing innocents.

Sultanist

I admit, Wallener, your Judaism thing does have it's good points. And then again so does the Jesus Christ deal.

But I'll go em both one better. I have a better religion than either. And Sultanism doesn't need no 500 page books to bore people to death. It's very simple and to the point. It can all fit on the back of a postcard.
It has only two commandments. And they are.

1. The Golden Rule
and
2. An eye for an eye