Anti-Neocons

Just more typical Hegelian bull***t. Slaves are wrong period.

And the Jews had so many slaves they would abuse and torture it was idiotic and out of control, keep in mind this was in ancient times. So did the Christains.

They were no better, the Zionist Jews did just as many awful things.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com

As for the crap about slavery being accepted, it was only accepted in the Bible's passages. Slavery has never been accepted. In general its been rejected through-out history. To have slaves is to enslave and use for your own ends, there's nothing religious about it.


Which is why 70% of those Jewish Zionists who took up their own slaves, and even Christains, didn't believe in the Torah. They believed in nothing but self-serving pride, and the Talmud, which teaches the opposite of anything they ever wrote in the Torah.
http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com

Oh I see! So if someone pulls out a rifle and shoots someone's head off and claims they weren't' "concerned" about it at the time, does that make it perfectly okay to do it? Well look at hunting season! It shouldn't concern me since it happens all the time and it must be an accident.

Using that logic, I could just go out a murder 40 people for no reason because the thought never crossed my mind. Then I could state that logically, I needed psychiatric help & at the time it didn't concern me.

Wonderful.

Ry's position is clear and unassailable: adherents of the xtian (I like that contraction--looks kind of alien) religion are largely ignorant of the central authority of their belief system. Their bible is consulted rather selectively according to the prevailing purposes of the religion's leadership, especially political purposes. As Ry's personal experience has proven to him, when such ignorance is dispelled, there follows a change of heart and mind (and dollars) in a direction away from the religion, or, at least, the religion's leadership's agenda. He sees this as at least a partial solution to a variety of social ills. I cannot greatly disagree.

But the progress of the thread soon devolved into a pedestrian discussion of bible morality regarding slavery! What followed was a regurgitation of the self-serving interpretations of scripture usually proffered by church leadership to squelch the atypically erudite among its membership. Unlike Ry, I have cultivated a respect, even an affection, for Mythology that would be cumbersome, even if necessary, to explain; that brings me ever to "the leap in the divide" that is "faith", the "power of belief", conviction...choose your linguistic poison.

The psychological reality of conviction is the very currency of waking consciousness. If you are awake you are continuously recognizing what you believe to be real; recognition of the un-real is a virtual impossibility (like proving a negative). Perceptions of unfamiliar reality are vigorously conformed to the prevailing norm as much as possible to avoid the existential discomfort of cognitive dissonance and the radical distortion of the prevailing norm (i.e. world-view) in waking consciousness. This is simple self-preservation in action. It is unfortunate that the distractions of daily living mitigate against the natural inclination to complexify this action to allow a more deliberate conformance procedure--one that expands rather than constrains the evolving world-view.

This has always been the central problem: the insufficient appreciation of reality; that is, "error". Lacking the complete understanding of Nature, perceptual errors arise and multiply by reflection, contributing to insufficiencies of understanding and behavior. A certain class of such insufficiencies is relatively benign--you don't have to tell anyone you believe that a supernatural being created the universe by speaking a few words. It's a conviction which doesn't necessarily affect one's ability to avoid Nature's corrective measures. But if you believe you can run through a brick wall because you insufficiently understand the meaning of "matter is mostly empty space", Nature will provide you with a rather painful corrective experience.

Experience is the currency of Life. We do what we can precisely because we can for the experience. And we learn through a natural avoidance of pain AND pursuit of pleasure. So we are driven by pain and desire--severe taskmasters, both!...The two jaws of this cosmic vice that hold us to the purpose of Life. Given that all decisions we make must necessarily be short-sighted (due to imperfect appreciation of Nature), error, requiring correction, is unavoidable. The tragedy is that, by the exercise of cleverness, we may postpone correction, thereby confounding the learning process. We win the battle, but lose the war.

Whether god exists or not is a point rendered moot by the primacy of conviction as far as the individual is concerned. But as far as the collective, society, is concerned, the question of the existence of god is so divisive, emotional, and irrational as to represent a clear and present danger to our very existence, and that of the planet as well. The so-called "New Age movement" was an attempt at unifying all spiritual systems synergistically--and such a synergism remains the only path to a non-destructive public spirituality. But it'll take about a hundred years...

Oh, Larry, I was disappointed you denigrated semantics with the modifier, "just", especially since you exhibit in the style of your writing such great respect for grammar and syntax. Grammar and syntax are fine structural elements of language; but semantics enlivens it, makes it useful. I don't respect the popular conception that the finer gradations of meaning that distinguish "synonyms" are dispensable. Indeed, shades of meaning may absolutely lacerate meanings in translation.

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Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art. ~Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, 1926