What do you REALLY believe?

[Pariah]

snip~Every action of good has an bad effect and every evil, a good.

i don't think this is true.

a bunch of us on the cellar kicked in a bought a car for a guy that needed one.  the guy that sold it to me needed to sell it.  we all felt really good about the whole thing. 

can you show me the bad effect in that? 

Pollution

[hooplala]

snip~Every action of good has an bad effect and every evil, a good.

i don't think this is true.

a bunch of us on the cellar kicked in a bought a car for a guy that needed one.  the guy that sold it to me needed to sell it.  we all felt really good about the whole thing. 

can you show me the bad effect in that? 

Perhaps the next time he needs something he will be looking to others to get it for him, rather than doing it himself?

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

snip~Every action of good has an bad effect and every evil, a good.

i don't think this is true.

a bunch of us on the cellar kicked in a bought a car for a guy that needed one.  the guy that sold it to me needed to sell it.  we all felt really good about the whole thing. 

can you show me the bad effect in that? 

THE CO2 WILL MELT THE ICE CAPS AND KILL THE POLAR BEARS!!!

WHY DID YOU KILL THE POLAR BEARS?

[Pariah]

snip~Every action of good has an bad effect and every evil, a good.

i don't think this is true.

a bunch of us on the cellar kicked in a bought a car for a guy that needed one.  the guy that sold it to me needed to sell it.  we all felt really good about the whole thing. 

can you show me the bad effect in that? 

Pollution

Pollution would be a negative effect of him driving the car, not of his receiving it.  the possibility of his depending more on charity is a potential negative, i guess....but it's only a potential.  there also exists the potential that he will endeavor never to need it again, and ....also, may pay it forward.

But him driving the car would not be possible without the recieving of the car

[Cramulus]

semantics

in the tangled web of causality, I'm sure you can find a "good" or "bad" side effect to anything. That doesn't mean it's a cosmic law.

[hooplala]

semantics

in the tangled web of causality, I'm sure you can find a "good" or "bad" side effect to anything. That doesn't mean it's a cosmic law.

Damn you and your Law of Fives!

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Yes, causality seems like a very limited view of labels and categories. How often is something simply "Cause->Effect"? It seems far more often to be something like:

Causes->Effects/Causes->Effects/Causes->Effects/Causes->Effects/Causes->Effects/Causes->Effects
     |              \            |             /  \           |              |              \            |             /  \           |            |               \
Effects->Causes\Effects->Effects->Causes\Effects->Causes\Effects->Effects->Causes\Effects->Causes

which is all the better I'm gonna model this in ASCII

[the last yatto]

aww it wasnt a segway angle

[Pariah]

semantics

in the tangled web of causality, I'm sure you can find a "good" or "bad" side effect to anything. That doesn't mean it's a cosmic law.

So why even have those words. Even thing falls in the moral gray area anyways. No matter what the intention is.

[Bu🤠ns]

semantics

in the tangled web of causality, I'm sure you can find a "good" or "bad" side effect to anything. That doesn't mean it's a cosmic law.

So why even have those words. Even thing falls in the moral gray area anyways. No matter what the intention is.

Perhaps you may try to substitue all uses of the word 'good' with the 'useful' and all uses of the word 'bad' with 'useless' for at least a week.

[Golden Applesauce]

I didn't write this, but I got it off some random webpage on meditation, from the kids section. Deep.

http://meditation.org.au/class1.asp

----------------------------------

Sometimes things aren't what we expect.

Sometimes it is hard to understand exactly what people mean, and sometimes for the biggest questions in life everyone has a different answer.

When people talk about God and what we are doing here on earth, for example, you'll find that most people don't agree on very much at all.

If you have heard of the word religion, you might know that there are many different beliefs about who God is or whether he or she exists at all.

Atheists don't believe in God. They say that there is no scientific proof for God's existence. Other people believe in a God that is like a really nice person who loves us all, or that God is just another name for the universe and existence - it just IS.

But do you know what? We think every one is right. How can that be?

Have you ever thought about all the names that water has? We know the liquid is called 'water', it is wet and it is easy for us to see. Then there is 'ice' – it is frozen water and it is so hard it can be like a rock. Then if you heat water up it becomes a 'vapour' or 'steam' and is practically invisible.

Lets think about God like water for a minute. Sometimes he (or she, or it) is invisible like a vapour but if you were to stop and look really closely you would be able to see tiny water droplets in the vapour. Other times, God is like a liquid, that you can swim in and other times God is so real, it is like a block of ice right in front of you.

Sometimes you can't actually see the water, but it still exists. Everything on earth needs water for life. Plants need it, animals need it.

We are all like that too, we all need love for our lives too. To be simple, love is another name for God. So some people say that they don't believe in God, but they still believe in love. So they experience God that is very hard to see, like vapour.

Then there are others that say they can see God like an energy, swim in him, like a liquid. For them God is just as real as drinking water.

Then there are still others that believe that God is as real as a block of ice. If you ran into a block of ice you would crash into it. For some people, God is like that, so real you can't miss her.

Then there other names for God. I might call God - 'love', but someone else says no is he is a person like you and me and his name is 'God', or 'Supreme', or 'Allah', or 'Rama' and others say that God is not a male or a female, that God is more like a 'force' or 'energy'. Do you see what i mean about all the different names for water? ...and all the different ways people think of God?

I don't see what's so "deep" about this - they just postulate a Something which satisfies different contradictory definitions of "God" to different people, and assert that the concept doesn't contradict anything.  Monotheism is not a subset of pantheism!

This set of statements in particular annoys me:

To be simple, love is another name for God.

Some people have made this assertion.  But if by God you mean a 'person' in the sense that he is capable of willful action and emotions, like loving people, forgiving people, wanting people to be happy, desiring that people follow his rules, etc. then Love is not another name for the thing you're talking about; Love as an abstraction/emotion/psychosis/state of mind or whatever the hell it is can't do any of those things. 

So some people say that they don't believe in God, but they still believe in love.

Sometime last year I ran across the argument that being agnostic with respect to God because you've never personally experienced him is just as ridiculous as a child being agnostic with respect to passionate love just because he hasn't experienced that yet, either.  I agree with him completely. I've observed and experienced attraction, fixation, sympathy, and all sorts of desires - but love?  Jury's still out on that one.

So they experience God that is very hard to see, like vapour.

There is a very big difference between something that doesn't reflect a great deal of visible light and something that doesn't exist.

[Kai]

I still think god is an impersonal universal creative metaforce that gave way to Life and The Process of Sustaining.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I still think god is an impersonal universal creative metaforce that gave way to Life and The Process of Sustaining.

That sounds a lot like the Apache concept of Usen, which Western anthropologists continue to insist on personifying.

[Requia ☣]

Nigel: Can I has more knowledge of this Usen?

Just in case it ever chance to put an anthropologist in their place.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It's always good to be able to knock an anthropologist down a peg or two.

Usen is the overarching force of existence, the uninvolved force that drives... well, everything. It is neither male nor female, it is "everything". I mean, it's pretty vague.

Most anthropologists translate Usen as "God", but to call it a god is a little naive. It's just what IS. It's what started everything. It doesn't have a personality. It doesn't care about anyone personally. Usen is what set the universe into motion. It is linguistically categorized as "he" but is neither male nor female... it couldn't be, as it exists on a level on which male and female are totally irrelevant. "Usen" is probably best translated as "The world" or "The universe".