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Is recognition that Jews have the best ideology of the Abrahamic cults the reaso
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Greatest-I-am wrote:
Edan wrote:
Greatest-I-am wrote:
Silas Mercury wrote: Does it occur to you that ISIS, Al Shabab and Al Quaeda aren't Muslims ?? Muslims are kind, moral, charitable people. I know it may be hippocritical coming from me, but watch your tongue.
Sure, they have practiced a corrupted Islam but that does not take away from the fact that Islam and Sharia are the most immoral ideologies on the religious menu for us to choose from.
Regards
DL
In your opinion, but remember, we practice understanding and acceptance here and try not to make judgements about other people. Millions of Muslims who practice Islam do so peacefully, it is not the 'immorality' of Islam that creates extremists.
I live by these just as you likely do.
Proverbs 3:12 For whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.
1 Thessalonians 5:21 Test all things; hold fast what is good.
True that there are millions of good Muslims, but their ideology produces millions of evil Muslims as well.
Check the numbers and judge the ideology and if you cannot then you might wonder why you cannot. For evil to grow, all good people need do is not judge evil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pSPvnFDDQHk
Regards
DL
YouTube videos are evidence of nothing...
"Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult."
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Greatest-I-am wrote:
I live by these just as you likely do.
Proverbs 3:12 For whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.
1 Thessalonians 5:21 Test all things; hold fast what is good.
Silly Kaa, tricks are for kids. :laugh:
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Because you asked about why they hate Jews, not why they hate each other. As a neutral party, I would frankly also not find a lot of love for someone who plays the "they hate me because they're jealous" game, which I have seen even the least religious self-identifying Jews still happily engage in. Is it something other religions do, too? Sure, I suppose. I just focused on the goal post you set at first, not the one you now shifted it to for no reason.Greatest-I-am wrote:
Gisteron wrote: [
Maybe. It could also be that Jews and their ever so virtuous parrots keep insisting that they are the chosen people with the one true religion and that even at the best of times all they have to say to Christians is that the person most of them consider to be a literal incarnation of their common god is a mere mortal with silly ideas of the afterlife.quote="Greatest-I-am" post=265695]Is recognition that Jews have the best ideology of the Abrahamic cults the reason Muslims and Christians hate Jews?
You center out Jewry. Why, when both Christianity and Islam also say that they are the most virtuous ands true religions?
Since you already pulled the tu-quoque turd in the quote above, I'll just gently point out that the tradition of sacrificing animals to atone for the villagers' collective sins is something Christianity inherited directly from the Jewish traditions it arose from. On top of that, it replaced those rituals with a belief that a single sacrifice on behalf of all people yet to come has already been made and that no further sacrifices are necessary. But you are also wrong about Christianity depending on the notion that this is just or moral. You can believe that this is the case and that you are better off accepting the Nazarene's alleged sacrifice as atonement for mankind's collective sins, and still think of the system as unjust or immoral. Christianity commands to love God, but it does not command to agree with the system it claims he set up.Christianity depends on their notion that substitutionary atonement is somehow just and moral.
Islamic scriptures say on multiple occasions. You can still believe that Allah is the only true God and that Mohammed is his messenger without believing that men and women are or should be treated differently in court, or in Allah's eyes. It is not a central tenet of Islam any more than the moral excellency of substitutionary atonement is a central tenet of Christianity.Islam says that women are not equal to men before the law.
Well, Jewish scriptures are generally more vague about ideas of the afterlife, I'll grant that. The fact that Christianity has more concrete things to say about it means only that. Sure, it's as unfounded as anything in the Jewish texts was, and though I find it somewhat childish to say that "my shorter book of fairytales has fewer made up nonsense, so it's better than yours", I'll grant that the assessment is not necessarily flawed. Now what I wonder is why this is at all relevant? You never said that honesty was a measure of superiority.The Jews do not lie about a hell the way Christianity does. Which is more honest?
Because maybe they don't think that his bidding is what you think his bidding is. Maybe they don't actually recognize that your world view is better than theirs and disagree with it out of mere spite, maybe they genuinely and honestly just think differently than you. And maybe you and your ilk trying to educate them on what they ought or ought not believe about their religious figures is what makes them dislike you so much. But maybe you should ask them, I'm sure they'd represent themselves much better than I could.Now, I'm neither a Christian nor a Jew nor a Muslim, I have no religion that would leave me wounded when condescended towards, but lines like these sure don't inspire any sympathy from me and I frankly can't see how a Muslim or a Christian is supposed to be any more appreciative.
I do not seek appreciation. I seek to have idol worshipers wonder why, when they say they respect Jesus, they do not do his bidding and seek God and not become idol worshipers.
I'm no expert on matters of moral philosophy, but from the two classes I took on the subject, it would seem that it is not the same. The positive form is instructive. It tells us what to do to others. The negative form is prohibitive. It tells us what not to do to them. It is trivially easy to follow one rule and break the other by one and the same action (or indeed inaction).The closest thing to it is a line in the Book of Tobit which is not a part of the Torah nor of a majority of the versions of the Christian Bible. If anything, the golden rule is at best expressed in a positive form, and in the New Testament at that, but Hillel is referring to Leviticus 19:18 which says almost nothing of the sort. In my humble opinion both versions of the rule are severely lacking both in principle and in practice, but even if they wouldn't be, there is no reason why anyone should consider them superior or follow them beyond their own intuitive agreement with them after they hear them.
Regardless of all that, reciprocity is reciprocity regardless of it being said in a positive way or a negative way. The result is the same.
And yet you say that this is someone who knows something about what kind of reading is correct or incorrect?Why?Please listen as to what is said about literal reading.
Because no one can know anything definitely about God and to think someone does shows two fools.
Irrelevant. You say Origen called it "absolutely impossible to take these texts literally". People do though. So either Origen was wrong about what is impossible to take literally or you are misrepresenting his position... Or both. You are about to quote me saying this, too, as if you read it and are now only pretending to not have understood. You also skipped over the part where I questioned why Origen felt like he had any knowledge of God's mind, so I shall in return skip over your misunderstanding what I just rephrased for your comprehension.If Origen said that (citation, please), he is wrong, because as a matter of fact people do take these texts literally and to varying extents."Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."
Yes and stupidly end in believing in real talking serpents and donkeys or a bunch of virgins waiting in heaven for them.
Do you think that that is a good way for intelligent people to think?
So how did these "the ancients" know that God was unknowable? And how do you know that they knew that? But even if I grand that they did, as I explained through an analogy you are about to quote, it is completely irrelevant what some people before a given time thought or knew. Nothing about their traditions being older implies anything about them being more appropriate or better by any other metric. If they were based on some sound reasoning or even evidence, we would talk about that reason instead of just that they are older.Again, so what?Muslims and Christians foolishly read their holy books literally, ignoring that none of the Abrahamic cults did in the past.
So the ancients knew that God could not be known and so did the other Abrahamic cults as they all say that God is unknowable and unfathomable, just before they start to lie about what they know and fathom.
Well yes, of course they are hypocritical. My point is that you sound exactly like them. I'm not saying that Islam has the "best ideology" or is "superior" to Jewry. You are saying that Jewry is superior to them. I'm just asking what makes your claim to superiority any more believable than theirs.According to Islam, Jews are idol worshippers every bit as much as Muslims are according to what ever source you think to be capital-T truth. And I for one don't know why it matters what some guy allegedly said about what we should or should not worship, but do feel free to enlighten me...This fact makes Muslims and Christians idol worshipers. All Muslim and Christian denominations ignore that the Jesus they all profess to respect preached that we should all be God seekers and never become idol worshipers the way Muslims and Christians have done.
Yes, according to Muslims Jews are idol worshipers yet they worship the same idol while saying they are not. Good grief. If you cannot see the hypocrisy and double standard at work then their is nothing I can say that will open your eyes.
So when you tell us who God isn't and who his prophets aren't, that is based on evidence, is it? Then why don't you just present the evidence instead of saying how silly the things other people believe are? I'm not defending Christianity or Islam, I'm just waiting to see why I wouldn't dismiss you with the same ease you dismiss them.That's funny, considering how you are trying to tell us who God isn't and who his prophets aren't, as if you knew any better than anyone else.Gnostic Christians like me were and are esoteric ecumenists. You might say that to the old Abrahamic cults of Muslims, Christians and Jews, we were the religious whores of those old days, thanks to the fact that our mystery schools would pick and choose the best tenets of all religions and work them into our Universalist creed. We would not tie ourselves down to becoming idol worshipers of imaginary demiurges the way Muslims and Christians did in ancient days and continue to do today. The fool says in his heart, I know who God is and who his prophets are.
It is a lot easier to know what is not real based on evidence than to prove what is assumed to be real based on faith which means nothing and the supernatural which is more stupid than bright.
Well, neither of those doctrines are crucially important to their respective religions, but even if I granted you that they were, and even if I personally thought of these things as highly immoral, what about that makes either religion inferior? What metric for superiority/inferiority are we using? So far you suggested honesty, age, and some unspecified form of morality. What does being superior mean?I'm sorry, I must have overlooked the part where you demonstrated the superiority of the Gnostic Christian or Jewish ideology or philosophy by some metric, or even so much as named the metric by which they are.Gnostic Christians and Jews, --- having a superior ideology and philosophy of seeking a good God, --- instead of becoming idol worshipers like Muslims and Christians, --- shared the hate and attempted genocide that Jews suffered thanks to Christians then Muslims.
I did above with substitutionary atonement for Christianity and with the institutionalized inequality for women in Islam. Good moral questions that I hope you answer.
I don't know of any law that declares what should or should not be any religion's first point of importance. Do you? Even if I grant you that they are liars, that tells us nothing about what they should or shouldn't do.What if they aren't?Should Muslims and Christians admit their ideological deficiencies and turn their hate to love. It should be quite easy for religions that say they are all about peace and love.
Then they show themselves to be liars who do not care about morality, which should be a religions first point of importance. Right?
You are assuming that admitting to an ideological deficiency and turning hate to love is a moral improvement. We have not established that yet.And if they are, why should it be easy to say?
Because they should by quite happy to have improved their moral sense.
I am not religious. I didn't grow up religious either. Now I'm not saying that I have any common sense or decency, but I also have no deep rooted lies that need overriding. I do not find it easy to like you or people who share your view. If anything, you are making it harder for me. My point here is that even if one frees oneself of religious lies and admits to all one's own flaws and faults, that doesn't make it easier to like a religious position like your own.And if it is easy to say, what about that makes it easy to implement?
If common sense and decency cannot override the lies given previously then that should show all the rest just how damaging religious lies are.
We have not established that immorality is a sign of ideological deficiency. We have not established that either homophobia or misogyny are immoral in as absolute a sense as would be required for your argument to stand. You have all of your work to demonstrating anything you said about the superiority of Jewry - or Gnostic Christianity for that matter - still ahead of you and until you bring some structure to your thought I'm afraid it will remain so.And what idological deficiencies are you talking about?
See those questions on morality above. Basically the homophobia and misogyny both Christianity and Islam preach. Jews as well in a few cases in how they view women and cleanliness. That would be the fundamentals more than the majority.
Yea, well, that's just like... your opinion, man. But, please, do feel free to also explain what you mean by that or why you think so. Its certainly no uncommon position, but so far I only ever heard it stated, never substantiated.I think it would be fitting for Muslims and Christians to start walking their talk and apologise to Jews and Gnostic Christians by giving them the recognition for excellence in religious matters.
Again, your own answers to the questions above, if you agree with my view, will show you that at least Gnostic Christianity is a better ideology and theology with Jewry a close second.[/quote]Well, I did. But I don't know why morality (or age or honesty) is a measure of "excellence in religious matters". And if it is morality I also don't understand why my own moral sensibilities should be applied and someone else's shouldn't. For instance, I find it morally objectionable to think of one's own religious position as vastly or inherently superior to someone else's, or to think that adherents to other religious groups owe one an apology for disagreeing. Are we allowed to test your religious position against the same standards we apply to the others?
We can, if you like, but I think we first need to agree that it makes any difference to your central claim, namely that the Jews have the best ideology. Unless we agree that the morality of the religions is relevant to the topic at hand, discussing it is... well... off-topic.Now that these questions are out of our way, perhaps we can start to look at the actual ideologies of homophobia and misogyny in the Christian and Muslim religions that are not in mine and are less apparent and severe in Jewry.
Better to leave questions unanswered than answers unquestioned
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- OB1Shinobi
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the old cartoon version is nostalgic, but for perspective, id rather take a look at a more recent depiction of the Ka character
for my part, i consider your entire premise to be flawed on the grounds that you are no fit judge of wisdom
if you are deliberately trolling here i would consider that basic immaturity
it wouldnt necessarily mean that they system you follow isnt any good, but it does imply that you would be unlikely to have the depth of perspective to actually judge
much worse, if you really believe the things you say, and are honestly convinced that you are acting on a genuinely altruistic impulse, and really think THIS is the appropriate forum for the message youre putting forward, then theres no way you can convince me that the religious/philosophical system that you adhere to actually produces individuals of good judgement, maturity, or self awareness, because i judge that you yourself lack these qualities
certainly you are not demonstrating them here in this thread
so i wont bother picking apart your individual assertions for the reasons that 1 there are others here who will do as good or better a job of it and 2 youre not really worth it anyway; youre not here to learn, youre here to lecture, but youre attempting to lecture people who know better than you do, so, bleh
People are complicated.
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Edan wrote: [
YouTube videos are evidence of nothing...
Your reply is evidence of your intelligence level.
Regards
DL
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Silas Mercury wrote: Well that's rude. Your 'Regards, DL' is annoying. What does it stand for ?? D*ckheaded Liar ?? Somebody ban this troll. He's been here a day and caused more trouble than I have in my year of being here.
No
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Gisteron wrote: [
Some interesting points. Thanks.
Some I agree with others, well, just wow. Like the view that God would end sacrifice by having one last really big one for the gripper. So to speak.
I was surprised that you did not think homophobia and misogyny as immoral since you do know a bit about reciprocity and the Golden Rule.
You may be right that I would have to wait for a theist to engage but I did pull the following for a quick follow up.
"I'm no expert on matters of moral philosophy, but from the two classes I took on the subject, it would seem that it is not the same. The positive form is instructive. It tells us what to do to others. The negative form is prohibitive. It tells us what not to do to them. It is trivially easy to follow one rule and break the other by one and the same action (or indeed inaction)."
The positive form is instructive.
I think that if you know what to do to others, then you would automatically know what not to do to others.
The negative form is prohibitive.
I think that if you know what not to do to others, you should automatically what to do to them.
If you agree then you see that either form is identical to the other in terms of instruction which is what I originally stated in my reply.
Regards
DL
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Zenchi wrote:
Greatest-I-am wrote:
I live by these just as you likely do.
Proverbs 3:12 For whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.
1 Thessalonians 5:21 Test all things; hold fast what is good.
Silly Kaa, tricks are for kids. :laugh:
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. Eleanor Roosevelt
Regards
DL
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But with that, and in light of what OB said, too, I'd also remark that I do not think GIa is trolling.
However, given that he posted this also on an art sharing community , a drug harm reduction and self-help community (which, if I may be so opinionated, I find a rather distasteful choice of place to bring religion to), and a Total War gaming community independently and around the same time (though he has been a member of all three for years now, and mostly preaching much of the same, at least on DeviantArt), I am getting to doubt just how interested he is in discussing this as opposed to just spreading his message.
I do think Greatest-I-am/Gnostic Bishop is at least representing his genuine position, even if I wouldn't dare assume that he sincerely seeks to think about it or anyone else's, here or elsewhere.
Better to leave questions unanswered than answers unquestioned
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OB1Shinobi wrote:
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. Eleanor Roosevelt
Regards
DL
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Sure, if I agreed, I'd agree. But I don't. If I tell you a number is not 19, that doesn't mean it is 76. Likewise, if I tell you a number is greater than 4 that doesn't mean that it isn't 9. An instruction to do one thing is not a prohibition against another. Likewise a prohibition to do one thing is not an instruction (or even permission) to do another. Now, if the Golden Rule said "Do everything to others that you would do to yourself, and do nothing else to them", or if it said "Do nothing to others what you wouldn't have done unto you, but do to them everything else", those two would be effectively equivalent. But the versions of the Golden Rule we know are neither, and I'd frankly think of them as even less moral if they were.Greatest-I-am wrote: The positive form is instructive.
I think that if you know what to do to others, then you would automatically know what not to do to others.
The negative form is prohibitive.
I think that if you know what not to do to others, you should automatically what to do to them.
If you agree then you see that either form is identical to the other in terms of instruction which is what I originally stated in my reply.
Better to leave questions unanswered than answers unquestioned
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Gisteron wrote: Eh, the "Dickheaded Liar" thing is no less rude by any means, if we are going to make rudeness important at all.
But with that, and in light of what OB said, too, I'd also remark that I do not think GIa is trolling.
However, given that he posted this also on an art sharing community , a drug harm reduction and self-help community (which, if I may be so opinionated, I find a rather distasteful choice of place to bring religion to), and a Total War gaming community independently and around the same time (though he has been a member of all three for years now, and mostly preaching much of the same, at least on DeviantArt), I am getting to doubt just how interested he is in discussing this as opposed to just spreading his message.
I do think Greatest-I-am/Gnostic Bishop is at least representing his genuine position, even if I wouldn't dare assume that he sincerely seeks to think about it or anyone else's, here or elsewhere.
My agenda first and foremost is to seek good minds so that I might lose an argument and actually learn something.
As you might know, like here, good minds are hard to find.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTN9Nx8VYtk&feature=youtu.be
My agenda, because I see religions as the cause of much evil, is to try to show people that respecting religions that do not deserve it is not the moral thing to do.
Both Christianity and Islam have grown their religions by the sword instead of good deeds and are homophobic and misogynous cults and are the main focus for my hate of evil religions.
If you do not know when and how to hate, you will not know when or how to love.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4ga_M5Zdn4
In short, I am here to learn, teach, and preach about Gnostic Christianity as it is the only worthy ideology that I have found to date.
Regards
DL
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Gisteron wrote:
Sure, if I agreed, I'd agree. But I don't. If I tell you a number is not 19, that doesn't mean it is 76. Likewise, if I tell you a number is greater than 4 that doesn't mean that it isn't 9. An instruction to do one thing is not a prohibition against another. Likewise a prohibition to do one thing is not an instruction (or even permission) to do another. Now, if the Golden Rule said "Do everything to others that you would do to yourself, and do nothing else to them", or if it said "Do nothing to others what you wouldn't have done unto you, but do to them everything else", those two would be effectively equivalent. But the versions of the Golden Rule we know are neither, and I'd frankly think of them as even less moral if they were.Greatest-I-am wrote: The positive form is instructive.
I think that if you know what to do to others, then you would automatically know what not to do to others.
The negative form is prohibitive.
I think that if you know what not to do to others, you should automatically what to do to them.
If you agree then you see that either form is identical to the other in terms of instruction which is what I originally stated in my reply.
We were not talking of issues with numbers but with reciprocity taught or learned from a positive or negative side.
You did not like the negative and preferred the positive.
If the issue at hand is, should I steal from someone, and the negatively given Golden Rule says --- That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. --- it tells me since I would hate to have my goods stolen, that I should not do it because it is hateful to me.
If the issue at hand is, should I steal from someone, and the positively given Golden Rule says --- Do unto others what you want done to you. --- it tells me, since I know that I would hate to have my goods stolen, that I should not do it because it is hateful to me or what I would not want done to me.
The two Golden Rules impart the same information so if you are going to say that one is better than the other, you will have to come up with a better argument delivered in about the same way.
Pick your issue and do not gum it up with, like your numbers, a thousand of variables as then the message gets lost.
Regards
DL
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I may not enjoy a community of people using the same label to describe themselves, and I am perhaps the kind of person who can just get by alone for a while, to some extent. At any rate, what I gain by this... solitude, for lack of a better term, is that I never get to be misrepresented by someone claiming to be like me. I also never get to represent anyone who isn't me. I never get to take shortcuts in thinking or in judgement, because I have no dogma that would take those burdens away from me. I am never wrong because an ideology commanded me to be, rather all my mistakes are my own to bear, and my own to correct. This responsibility is something I think central to the human condition and I cannot help but think less of anyone who recognizing this still chooses instead the easy path of having something else make the decisions for them.
So with this short insight into where I'm coming from...
What about Gnostic Christianity makes it "worthy" an ideology, and worthy of what at that? I'm not asking for another sermon on its superiority to Christianity or Islam and I'm frankly not comfortable being pushed to defend either of those. Without comparing your ideology to anything else, what about it itself is any good? By what standard is having it better than not having it?
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- Carlos.Martinez3
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Greatest-I-am wrote: My agenda, because I see religions as the cause of much evil, is to try to show people that respecting religions that do not deserve it is not the moral thing to do.
Both Christianity and Islam have grown their religions by the sword instead of good deeds and are homophobic and misogynous cults and are the main focus for my hate of evil religions.
If you do not know when and how to hate, you will not know when or how to love.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4ga_M.dn4
In short, I am here to learn, teach, and preach about Gnostic Christianity as it is the only worthy ideology that I have found to date.
Regards
DL
Say I bite, say everyone here who's active agrees with what your attempting to sell, what then?
You have stated that your purpose here was to find intelligent individuals who might prove you wrong. I find that a little difficult to digest and believe, pardon me for being a bit of a skeptic, but I don't think you'll settle for anything other than people agreeing with you, and even thats up for question.
It's sad, that "this" is your focus here, and by the sound if it from what I'm reading in Gisterons post, your life outside the TOTJO as well. Life is short, find something that gives you purpose, and run with it. I hope you decide to stay, you appear decent at providing an arguement, perhaps you'll find something here that resonates within you...
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I shall refrain from using analogies for illustrative purposes in the future, seeing as you seem unable to understand them.Greatest-I-am wrote:
Gisteron wrote:
Sure, if I agreed, I'd agree. But I don't. If I tell you a number is not 19, that doesn't mean it is 76. Likewise, if I tell you a number is greater than 4 that doesn't mean that it isn't 9. An instruction to do one thing is not a prohibition against another. Likewise a prohibition to do one thing is not an instruction (or even permission) to do another. Now, if the Golden Rule said "Do everything to others that you would do to yourself, and do nothing else to them", or if it said "Do nothing to others what you wouldn't have done unto you, but do to them everything else", those two would be effectively equivalent. But the versions of the Golden Rule we know are neither, and I'd frankly think of them as even less moral if they were.Greatest-I-am wrote: The positive form is instructive.
I think that if you know what to do to others, then you would automatically know what not to do to others.
The negative form is prohibitive.
I think that if you know what not to do to others, you should automatically what to do to them.
If you agree then you see that either form is identical to the other in terms of instruction which is what I originally stated in my reply.
We were not talking of issues with numbers but with reciprocity taught or learned from a positive or negative side.
You did not like the negative and preferred the positive.
If the issue at hand is, should I steal from someone, and the negatively given Golden Rule says --- That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. --- it tells me since I would hate to have my goods stolen, that I should not do it because it is hateful to me.
If the issue at hand is, should I steal from someone, and the positively given Golden Rule says --- Do unto others what you want done to you. --- it tells me, since I know that I would hate to have my goods stolen, that I should not do it because it is hateful to me or what I would not want done to me.
The two Golden Rules impart the same information so if you are going to say that one is better than the other, you will have to come up with a better argument delivered in about the same way.
Pick your issue and do not gum it up with, like your numbers, a thousand of variables as then the message gets lost.
The positive form of the Golden rule says:
"If you want something done to you, then do it unto others."
The negative form states:
"If you don't want something done to you, then do not do it unto others."
Now, we can abstract this to use a natural calculus of logic. Let P be "you want something done unto you" and let Q be "do that thing unto others." Let furthermore !x mean "not x".
The statements are thus
A = P -> Q for the positive form, and
B = !P -> !Q for the negative.
The arrow denotes a logical implication. x -> y is equivalent to !x OR y where OR is a logical function of two variables that returns FALSE only if both inputs are FALSE. Thus the implication returns FALSE if and only if the antecedent is TRUE and the consequent is FALSE.
Now, in order to not have to introduce deductive rules, I'll illustrate the inequity of the two forms of the Golden Rule using a truth table:
| P | Q | A | B |
|
Code:
FALSE
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Code:
FALSE
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Code:
TRUE
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Code:
TRUE
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Code:
FALSE
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Code:
TRUE
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Code:
TRUE
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Code:
FALSE
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Code:
TRUE
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Code:
FALSE
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Code:
FALSE
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Code:
TRUE
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Code:
TRUE
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Code:
TRUE
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Code:
TRUE
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Code:
TRUE
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Incidentally, B is called the converse of A in this case, and to conclude it from A is a formal logical fallacy called "converse error" or - if we apply De Morgan's Law - "affirming the consequent". That's right. The mistake you are making is so ancient and so common, it has its own name. As you can see by the values for A and B not being equal in every line, they are not equivalent and definitions alone are enough to prove it.
Now, this is just elementary propositional logic. I have taken a class on modal logic, too, where operators like "it is permitted" and "it is obligatory" are introduced and where you learn that a prohibition against an action is not a permission of another and a command to an action is not a prohibition of another. So if you want, we can go down that road, too. These things are logical theorems. They are some of the very few statements we can and do know with full, unabridged certainty. They are no matter of debate or of opinion... Frankly, you aren't doing yourself any favours challenging them with nothing but your own intuition, much less while simultaneously making snarky borderline condescending assessments of other people's intelligence here...
Better to leave questions unanswered than answers unquestioned
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Gisteron wrote: So I'm myself one of those who feels like aside from some primitive tribal urges there is no reason why one would have to commit oneself to an ideology in the first place. The creating an in-group and an out-group never doesn't grow into a complex where you think the in-group is superior to the out-group by some unspecified metric. It doesn't stay healthy for long.
I may not enjoy a community of people using the same label to describe themselves, and I am perhaps the kind of person who can just get by alone for a while, to some extent. At any rate, what I gain by this... solitude, for lack of a better term, is that I never get to be misrepresented by someone claiming to be like me. I also never get to represent anyone who isn't me. I never get to take shortcuts in thinking or in judgement, because I have no dogma that would take those burdens away from me. I am never wrong because an ideology commanded me to be, rather all my mistakes are my own to bear, and my own to correct. This responsibility is something I think central to the human condition and I cannot help but think less of anyone who recognizing this still chooses instead the easy path of having something else make the decisions for them.
So with this short insight into where I'm coming from...
What about Gnostic Christianity makes it "worthy" an ideology, and worthy of what at that? I'm not asking for another sermon on its superiority to Christianity or Islam and I'm frankly not comfortable being pushed to defend either of those. Without comparing your ideology to anything else, what about it itself is any good? By what standard is having it better than not having it?
You seem to recognize that, as I say it, we are all in this together, alone.
That is what is expressed by the Gnostic Christian Jesus, and what I believe was his good news message, as a sage, and not a miracle working God, but as a true man who had attained Gnosis.
Matthew 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.
Romans 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alRNbesfXXw&feature=player_embedded
Regards
DL
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