Have you ever asked yourself this question?

Discussion in 'Questions?' started by Tiffy, Aug 20, 2018.

  1. Tiffy

    Tiffy Well-Known Member

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    Q. If it could be proved beyond doubt that Jesus never existed and the Bible is entirely a work of fiction, The Holy Spirit of no avail, would you still continue to:

    "Love your neighbor as yourself, bless and not curse, forgive and not seek revenge, not murder, steal or lie, etc."

    What would be your answer to yourself, and why?
     
  2. Peteprint

    Peteprint Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Yes, since the major religions and religious philosophies contain similar teachings. They have elements of the truth, the truth which is revealed in its fullness in Christ.

    e.g., Confucius taught the Golden Rule as well: “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others." The Analects

    Love of our fellow men, having compassion on others, and living in peace are universal values. C.S. Lewis considered them part of a universal and natural law instilled in all men: "conscience reveals to us a moral law whose source cannot be found in the natural world, thus pointing to a supernatural Lawgiver."

    And the scriptures teach:

    "when Gentiles, who do not have the Law, do by nature what the Law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the Law, since they show that the work of the Law is written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts either accusing or defending them." Rom. 2: 14-15

    The RCC recognizes that other religions contain some elements of the truth as well, so I would find those truths as having value:

    "The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men." Nostra Aetate
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2018
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  3. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    To be honest, I can't say that I could.

    On the one hand @Peterprint raises a good point that you could find virtuous teachings in non-Christian writings. However here is the key difference: they have no divine sanction. What you have there is people's personal claims to what they feel is right. When uttered by Confucius, it is no more valid than some saying from Lao Tzu about the non-existence of reality, or some such. What claims does either one have to be right? None, really. The same goes for every other human philosopher, no matter how great: without ultimate validation, their views are mere opinion.

    Even if I personally adopted the precept of loving my neighbor, I could never claim that that precept was correct. If someone told me that he could hate his neighbor just as validly as I would love mine, I'd have no response, and no defense.

    The only thing that would have an ultimate validation, in case of the mortality of our Blessed Lord, and the nonexistence of God, is the brute nihilism of the visible world: the rule of raw nature, and the law of the jungle. Live as the rest of the animals live, kill or be killed; for that is how all animals get ahead, so why shouldn't we? That is how one makes sure he flourishes in a world where everyone is trying to get ahead on everyone else's corpse.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2018
  4. JoeLaughon

    JoeLaughon Well-Known Member Anglican

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    I can say that I would try. One does not have to be Christian to arrive at some kind of Golden Rule maxim. However I cannot say I would succeed as much as I would like if I thought the Bible was merely a book of magical nonsense, and there was no sanctification.
     
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  5. Magistos

    Magistos Active Member Anglican

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    This is my feeling as well.
     
  6. Religious Fanatic

    Religious Fanatic Well-Known Member

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    The following post will seem disturbing to some, but it's truly and sincerely how I feel.

    I would not even bother with trying to do any of this if it was all a myth. I have been jealous of LaVeyan Satanism, Crowley's occultism, and other demoniac, violent and radical left-hand path religions because giving judgement over to the hands of God and not killing people has been a tremendous struggle for me all my life. I admire the communists and the theistic and humanist Satanists (including Rand, who inspired the Satanic Bible) for consistently accepting the conclusions of atheism and Darwinist morality. The majority of atheists have failed to succeed at producing the level of cultural morality as Christianity, so I am not trusting them to be saviors in any regard. In theistic Satanism, the Darwinist, cut-throat moral law and the spiritual world/karma are one and the same, and what is right based on self-righteous right-hand faiths as Wicca and its repugnant neo-pagan cousins is considered a waste. You can believe that the universe has spirituality and a creator but it is a distant, cold-hearted kind. If animals can kill their offspring or mates for practical purposes then it becomes difficult to define by natural law what is or isn't a functional aspect of the universe. The book about kabbalah, called "God is a Verb", has a passage that says, "Evil cannot be eradicated even if we wanted it to, for it serves a functional role in creation." I do not believe in reincarnation because even in spite of claims of past life experiences, most of them never go into detail enough to prove which moral system of reincarnation is correct. In the theistic Satanists view, the Darwinist survival of the fittest model is perfectly applicable to reincarnating into higher ranks. Theistic Satanism also sees all the adversaries, not just Satan, but Loki, Rakshasa, Seth, and other religious adversaries as either in the same league or the same being under different names. The idea of there being spirit beings and dimensions while at the same time humans having no soul of purpose except as objects for the higher ups, is a concept entertained in some views of occultism. Basically it is Spiritual Darwinism. Most reincarnation is also unpractical because of the common belief that most people do not know from what life they are suffering for, as very few ever learn or discover anything related to past-lives, and it is difficult to give sympathy to people who are paying rightly for what they've done, which is what the caste system does. Advocates who say that the forces of nature compel other individuals to reward them with human sympathies or punishments negate free will in the process and that falsifies responsibility. Humanistic Satanism sees the adversaries as myths representing our carnal selves and can be explained with evolution, but rather for opt for an idealistic, sentimental philanthropic view, it considers the carnal self worthy of acceptance and practice for those who are fit for it.

    I was called psychopathic by my self-righteous atheist psychiatrist because I said that I can perform better and do good under the pretense and protection of religion than atheism because I know the truth of what it produces on a larger scale in the long term. He said atheists were more loving than Christians if that's all they do good for is to avoid hell, but it is much more complicated to an 'irrationally rational' type such as himself. It has to do with chaos theory on why things predicted to go one way turn out so drastically different in practice when just one minor thing is adjusted or gets in the way. I can and do feel happiness and love when being aided by Christian convictions and beliefs that are not just solely out of fear of going to hell. My doctor was trying to deprogram me because he said you either can love without God or your a psychopath with no feelings, but that minor change can cause such a tremendous reaction and break in my universal harmony that it would not be the same, but I am no psychopath, just someone with a disposition to aggressive thoughts and behaviors, desires for revenge, and we all have weaknesses that a bit of the fear of God helps keep in check. I have given God the responsibility for the way that doctor treated me, to punish him as he sees fit, but if I do lose my faith before he dies, I am going to hunt him down and that man is going to be taking a dirt nap. He asked why, if I wanted to continue living to do anything that brought me pleasure, would I want to do things that cause misery since they already worked before. I said, since the doctor was an atheopath fundamentalist who believed in determinism, that it comes down to whether someone prefers blue or red. There may be dispositions to things that can be dealt with in reason, but at the very base of it, one will always prefer one over the other. My dream and fantasy in getting revenge and freeing the world from the curse of purposeless chaos is to create a Satanist movement that will encourage suicide, start violent rebellions in foreign countries, and refute human rights activists who try to romanticize atheism in favor of the radical left-hand teachings. I will do this purely with argumentation and literature, so as to avoid direct responsibility for killings but rather cause them through inspiration to those with a disposition to do so. My intention is not the idea that it will become a mainstream belief at all, but simply exploiting the hypocrisy of the world in how people talk about 'one person can change the world', then we see school shooters killing many people, and the sympathy always goes only to the victims. The bullying and torments of the shooters has not stopped regardless of how many romantic professions have been made of aspirations for world peace, love, and unity. Biological determinism denies the reality of morals and responsibility. Also, using literature and written or artistic works (even left-hand novels) would help circumvent accusations of hate speech and criminal incentive in the name of artistic expression, and if challenged and successfully altered, would bring further destruction by opening the door to compromises in free speech. After I was done with my campaign, I would commit suicide and hope that it would influence a generation from hell that would put the world at rest. HR Giger, who was known for his morbid and disturbing artwork, who also contributed to Poltergeist and the Aliens movies with his gruesome imagery, had a girlfriend who committed suicide via gunshot at a young age. People say she was probably being affected and disturbed by how morbid and bleak Giger's work was, since she modeled for his exhibits, and lastly, some say she wanted to live a life that was merely short and intense and meant it to be that way.

    Some would argue that my case for going through the trouble to do all this at all would mean that I could do better things with my talents and help make the world better, but this drive that consumes me, that I have fought tooth and nail to keep from realizing through the grace of and reverence for God, would take over my mind and soul as it nearly had before during extreme periods of doubt, and I have never found secular views of existence and morality to be very compelling. HP Lovecraft's work is cited by the Church of Satan as powerful examples of Satanist literature, not because the man was in fact a Satanist, but because he had views which Satanists like in terms of the idea of how the universe works. Lovecraft's view that such an elaborate and seemingly purposeful universe can exist without God because what we consider to be logic and reason is not what we think it is, and the cosmos is basically like the Twilight Zone.

    The Lord has kept me muzzled from committing more serious sins even though I am hardly a saint and still am working on following the path of sanctification.