The Law of Love

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  • is it necessary for christians to forgive the unrepentant

    one of the foundational aspects of forgiveness is repentence. or that someone ask for it to receive it. some traditional christians like some catholics say it’s not necessary to forgive everyone, or those who are unrepentent, cause God doesn’t either. if we look at the eastern concept of forgiveness, it also implies reconciliation. you can only forgive those you are reconciled with. it’s about establishing communion, and we can’t commune with someone closed off to us. 

    but Jesus does say ‘the measure you use will be measured to you’. which might indicate that the standard we use to forgive might be the standard God uses with us. at the end of John, he says ‘whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained’. catholics like to say this creates the idea of their confession, but protestants like to say this just means we have the power to save people through our preaching. neither of these ideas really fit that well, but both are compelling. we might say that if we dont forgive, they aren’t forgiven, their sin is retained. between the two of you. but we have to remember that our measure will be measured to us. 

    to incorporate NDE philsophy, everyone can acheive salvation. maybe of legal matters, we are all forgiven. but when it comes to the eastern concept of reconciliation, it is impossible to forgive someone we can’t commune with. 

    so, maybe in the sense that is most meaningful, we cant forgive if we can’t reconcile…. but we can always be open to reconcilation if they repent, or if it’s a matter of looking past brusised egos and letting bygones be bygones… or as saint paul said, ‘just let it slide’.

    but when it comes to legality, but we can forgive but maybe it is up to each person how they want to treat that. but i would think if we use legality against others, it could be used against us. ultimately i think it’s wisest to forgive everyone, not just cause that’s what we want when we are unrepentant, but because it’s the godliest thing to do. 

  • balanced budget amendment – spending as a percentage of GDP

    balanced budget. congress should set every item in the budget, except social security and health care, to be the same percent of GDP every year. like defense spending might be twenty percent of GDP, and it will stay that way every year even as our GDP rises.

    the exception, is that congress can always pass legislation on a case by case basis that deviates from this norm. by having this overall balanced budget approach, we will avoid the yearly debt ceiling fights that we see every year. those are risky, and they’re not sustainable. 

    of course, someone will complain that GDP shrinks during recessions. historically and practically, though, that’s not a big deal. as was said, congress can always pass legislation on a case by case basis to deficit spend even more so. but just as importantly, though, is the fact that GDP doesn’t shrink much during recessions, usually just a few percent. even during the great recession, GDP only shrunk 5 percent…. so, a 5 percent spending cut isn’t that big of a deal. of course, during the great depression GDP shrunk 30 percent… so congress would need to use its case by case power to deal with that sorta situation, cause there are no good options during those times other than to deficit spend to stimulate the economy but maybe not too much, it’s their judgment call. 

    the reason social security and health care are exempted, are because those are expected to change over time, given the government has been borrowing against medicare and SS and currently is trying to pay them back and demographics change over time. the thing is, with these debt ceiling fights, republicans are trying to cut say spending on say food stamps, in order to have enough money to pay social security back. that’s the way our accounting is structured. that choice shouldnt exist… social security should just do its own thing and rise and fall on its own merit. it shouldn’t come at the cost of other programs, such as food stamps. forcing a choice between paying seniors more and paying poor people less (or giving less food to hungry people) shouldn’t be a thing that politicians do. social security can be figured out on its own and congressmen will be forced to reckon given by 2033 the trust fund is going to run out of money and can only pay 80 percent of benefits. maybe taxes on the rich can go up on their payroll tax, benefits for the rich can be cut, retirement age can go up, maybe everyone can chip in a little more on their pay roll taxes. point, solutions are out there, but it shouldn’t be intermixed with other governemnt spending. one of the biggest mistakes ever congress made was borrowing against social security and medicare. and on that point, healthcare spending needs to be tackled on its own just like social security, for many of the same reasons.  

  • how to reconcile eternal punishment with God’s love

    the bible says Jesus said some people will experience eternal punishment. i do still think though that hell can be temporary for some people, or like purgatory. I would think God wouldn’t give eternal consequences for temporary misconduct, so I would think eternal punishment is only for those who eternally separate themselves from God. we do have free will, after all. or, if the possibility for eternal life for all is true, there will always be a stain on our lives for how we act, even if we are redeemed, a stain that could still be eternal even though we’re saved. 

    I also think God loves everyone unconditionally, but that there are natural consequences to our actions. like, you can’t just keep eating a bunch of cake and not expect to gain weight. except, the consequences are spiritual when it comes to the ways of God. if you have low vibrations and are sinful, you will experiences low vibrations and consequences to sin, and a less fulfilled life. 

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  • can infinity exist without infinite possibilities?

    what if the universe was infinite? there could be infinite planets and stars, or there could be a limited number and infinite space. 

    but that doesn’t necessarily imply infinite possibilities, does it? we might assume that if there’s infinite space and a whole lot of matter, that there must be infinite possibilities, but that is a big assumption. in an infinite possibility universe, i would be in better shape and get lots of models as girlfriends in some of those possibilities or alternate universe. but if there’s limited possibilities in an infinite universe, then that assumption is false. 

    what say you? 

  • can evidence exist for things that dont exist?

    can evidence exist for something that doesn’t exist? 

    what if you saw foot prints in the woods, and claimed that was evidence of big foot? and, we’ll assume big foot doesn’t exist. is it fair to call that evidence to begin with, then, if big foot doesn’t exist? 

    or we have more speculative things. we have lots of credible people like pilots who say they see flying objects doing things in the skies that aren’t possible to our understanding of physics. is that evidence of UFOs? would it be evidence if UFOs didn’t in fact exist?

    an atheist at this forum made a good point once… he said, we shouldn’t be so quick to call things ‘evidence’ if all it is is ‘consistent’ with a certain theory. 

    i know, to get more religious, a lot of philosophic arguments for God exist, but they could just as easily be called ‘merely consistent’ with the the God theory than ‘evidence for’ the God theory.  when it comes to these philospohic arguments, for everyone you can make, there is a at least plausible alternative non God argument that could be made. 

    then there’s more scientific arguments, less philosohical. i do think when we get into things that look like supernatural healings, and atheists becoming theists during NDEs, that those are more in the realm of evidence and less about merely consistent with the God theory. but, it would be possible to spin even those things, if you have a darkened heart and mind, into things that are merely ‘consistent’ with the God theory and not look at them as evidence. 

  • it’s plausible to think God doesn’t exist… it just lacks common sense

    an atheist here made a good point… sometimes things look more like they are ‘consistent’ with God theory, rather than ‘evidence for’ God theory. any time you see evdience for God, ask if it would be better or at least possible to not call it evidence but merely consistent with God theory. 

    there’s lots of philosophic arguements for God. id group those with things like casuality arguments and design arguments. the thing about these is that there’s at least plausible arguments that can be made that are counter those. so it’s easy to just call these consistent with God and not evidence. 

    then you get into more science type arguments. the most straight forward way of looking at these, is that they are in fact evdience for God. things that look like supernatural healing. atheists usually become theists during NDEs.  something impossible happening with healing it looks like, and we dont see that as far as we know coming from atheists, we dont see impossible looking healhings from atheists. and it’s almost never the case that theists become atheists during NDEs and NDEs are objectively evidence for the afterlife, so it’s at least realistic to say it’s also evidence for God. 

    with that said, if you have a dark heart and mind, an atheist could say there’s no evidence for God with these scientifc things. you could say we only have confirmation bias that healings that look supernatural happen, or that theists only assume those things only happen to theists and not atheists. they make a big assumpion that impossible looking things happen to atheists, but we’d have to admit it’s possible and just not reported. and, as far as NDEs, the conventional wisdom is that NDEs are subjective and influenced by the mind… so even if NDEs are objectively evidence for the afterlife, it’s also possible to say visions and thoughts of God are merely produced by our psychology and not signs of an objective reality 

    with all this said, even if they could plausibly say there’s no evidence for the God, atheism still lacks common sense.

    -i think there’s too much emphasis in NDE research on saying their experiences are based on psychology… it looks more like objective things happen, and any deviations are misinterprataions. for example, christian NDEs are common, but hindu NDEs are just the experiencers interpretation… at least there’s not enough deviant types of NDEs to say it’s all psychology based. 

    -when healings that look supernatural happen, it still looks like impossible things are occurring. you can try to rationalize it, but that’s what it looks like. 

    -to say humans are merely flesh robots is riduculous. it’s obvious we are more than robots. 

    -there’s no explanation that we know of that can explain how life started on earth, or how something as complicated as human consciousness occurrs. there’s theories, yes, but they are weak from atheists on the common sense level.

    -even if there are counter arguents for the philosophic arguments for God, they are at least formidable and strong, and help explain the God theory, at least if the God theory is in fact true. eg, causality or the argument from design 

  • grounds for divorce in the bible- what about abuse and abandonment?

    jesus said getting remarried after divorce is adultery, except in cases involving sexual immorality. st paul has some other exceptions such as believers being married to unbelievers. 

    so what if a wife is victim of domestic physical abuse? she can’t get divorced and remarried if there’s no sexual immorality in the marriage. literalists would say the most she can do is separate from her husband and never remarry. Some say an abuser is so far removed from God, that they must actually be treated as an unbeliever, but this is somewhat fancy foot work to justify divorce from a purported christian by claiming they aren’t actually christians.

    i think this is a case of maybe the bible isn’t inerrant afterall, or being too literal about what it says. maybe jesus meant ‘generally’ only sexual immorality is the only exception? this is running loose with interpretation. i’d take that stance, but i’m not a bible is inerrant kinda guy. 

    i know there aren’t many fundamentalist christians left on this site, but, what say ya’ll? can a victim of domestic abuse with no sexual immorality involved get divorced and remarried? 

  • what do skeptics think really happened with the apostles of Jesus?

    the consensus of historicans is that jesus existed. his apostles are recorded to have spread the faith and to have died for their faith. historicans have record of when jesus’ brother was martyred, the local communities were aghast. st paul one of the leading writers of the bible, is a historical fact that he existed and spread the faith, and to have then died for it. he said he had a vision of jesus at his conversion. 

    so what do skeptics think happened? if you dont think jesus existed, why do you deny scholar consensus? why do you think the apostles died for their faith? i know it doesn’t prove the things they said were true, but why do you think they died for it? do you think st paul was a schizophrenic who happened to otherwise be sane, and to become of the leading figures of christainity? were the apostles and st paul deluded, was it a conspiracy of group delusion? why would they lie if they weren’t deluded? does trying to rationalize and minimize the historical nature of all this stuff seem prudent, when there’s the possibility that they weren’t just deluded? 

  • how seriously should christians take the old testament?

    on one of the most fundamental levels, the old testament teaches an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. the new testament teaches turn the other cheek. how can such a fundamental difference be something that a christian must accept both as infallible truth? does truth change? how?

    but it’s more than that core theological difference. the old testament has God killing people over and over again, or commanding them to die. see the story of noah where he killed the whole earth, or the time he turned a woman to stone for questioning where she was headed and looking back to her old lifei understand that it’s plausible that the consequences of sin is death, which even the bible says and is as true a statement as they come. but it seems to again be in stark contrast to the God of the new testament. what’s with this bipolar God of the new testament and the hippie God of the new testament? i realize even Jesus pointed out that the commandment and consequence of disrespecting ones parents is death, but how can such a difference be fundamentally compatible with each other? (i often wonder if jesus was being literal that that’s the way the world is, or if he was saying ‘even by this standard, the pharisees weren’t being consistent with mercy’)

    but it’s more than these broader frictions. the old testament says unclean food is ungodly, yet the new testament says nothing God has made clean is unclean. how should we accept that Jesus’ death change something unclean to something clean? or the old testament says men with deformed penis’ can’t enter into the assembly of the lord, which sounds like they can’t enter heaven. how did jesus’ death make deformed penis’ acceptable? and the context doesn’t indicate this old testament verse was against self mutilation, but that any deformed penis was too much, even from a disability or injury. the best i can surmise, if these old testament verses are true… is that these are ceremonial laws, and ceremonial laws can change with a covenant change, assuming the covenant change was legit to begin with. it’s kinda like how often cultural differences are legit changes in the bible, (why it says women can’t lead or wear hats in church, even in the new testament, but everyone now accept as just cultural norms being changed) and not infallible differences being changed arbitrarily. ceremony and culture are both legit and reasonable ways of differentiating, but the theology for why the rules were the way they were to begin with, or how they can change, can still seem arbitrary and capricious, to use legal jargon.  

    we also have things that dont make sense theologically.

    -the bible looks literal of the story of noah in the old testament, and the new testament treats the story literal too. i dont have time to list all the scientific discrepancies of that story, such as how there’s a constant lineage of cultures everywhere and constant archeological evidence of no flood everywhere, yet supposedly God destroyed it all… and hid or changed the evidence? to me, when God performs a miracle like he does with phsyical healings even in this day and age, he supports the miracle with evidence and truth. (such as the congregation of the causes of the saints with the catholic church) the story of noah isn’t supported by evidence, but contradicts it. maybe it wasn’t meant to be taken literally or was a local event? 

    -i’ll add more examples in the future.