Love me or else (Part Two) (Where is it now?)

by dhw, Monday, December 31, 2012, 14:59 (4346 days ago) @ dhw

Part Two-Dhw: You say that love is not a feeling. Since Ancient Hebrew has no word for abstractions like love and fear, I'm surprised you haven't challenged this translation as well, but you have accepted it. If you think love means performing kind actions, and does not mean the emotion that leads people to perform kind actions, we shall have to agree to disagree.-TONY: I am always frustrated when I try to discuss this topic, because things I understand and take for granted do not translate well. I do not (did not) mean to imply that the emotions or feelings do not exists, but rather that the Hebrew language did not have a word for them as such.
-Don't be frustrated! Just don't make and then try to defend authoritative remarks like "Love is not a feeling. It is an action...It does not have to come from within."-Dhw: I do not dismiss human suffering on the grounds that there may be compensation in another life.
 
TONY I do not dismiss the suffering, either. I find it a tragic shame. The difference between you and I on this note is where the blame is assigned. Do you blame the judge for punishing the criminals, or do you blame the criminals for forcing the judge to judge them at all by committing crimes? -You keep talking about blame, judge, criminals, punishment, as if every person on earth deserved to be struck down by lightning, disease, hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, droughts, earthquakes. This pattern of suffering goes back to long before we arrived (I think our fellow animals can suffer too), and in terms of self-centredness (probably the main root of evil), that was already established when Nature introduced carnivores.-Dhw: I have throughout my life tried to be kind to people and not to do harmful things, and I worry if I feel I have hurt someone, but this is out of love and empathy for my fellow humans, and not out of love for God. -TONY: So.. your love demands action in the form of how you treat people? If it demands action in regards to others, than why not for God?-I don't know if there is a such a being as God, and if there is, I have no idea what he is like, since the only image I have ever been given is one of massive contradictions offered to me by a variety of humans who have no more access to the truth than I have. But if he does exist, I still see nothing wrong in loving my fellow humans for their own sake and not for his.
 
Dhw: Nevertheless, I have done wrong things, and if God exists I'm not going to blame him for my sins or for the sins of others (one of your more misanthropic arguments). .. there is no comfort to be had from religion.
 
TONY: So, you admit that you have done wrong in your life and that you accept responsibility for it, but you think there should be no consequences for that? You find no comfort in the fact that not just your actions, but the intent behind those actions is being judged? Would you find more comfort in a government that didn't punish those that broke the law?-I don't believe I've ever done any lasting harm to anyone with the wrongs I've committed, but as you so rightly say, God may have different standards from mine. For instance, if I don't have faith in Jesus, maybe I shall be denied everlasting life, or even worse I shall suffer everlasting damnation (as threatened in various parts of the bible according to some interpreters). So I most certainly find no comfort in the thought that my actions are being judged by a power who can arbitrarily do what he likes with me, especially when I don't feel that even my wrong actions merit being chucked in a lake of fire and brimstone.-BBella: Maybe creation has always been and always will be, and is made up of such a malleable fabric that evolution and What Is and has become, is a natural product of it.-This is very similar to the idea that I've been trying to articulate: a form of energy that is constantly changing ... not with self-awareness, but nevertheless with a creative intelligence, just like the unknown mechanism within the genome (David prefers "genome" to "cell"). I'm slightly ashamed to say that I have never delved into the Kabbalah (the spelling I'm used to), and am hugely impressed by Tony's initial description of Ein Sof as "nebulous, having no form, purpose, intelligence, personality, infinite and unknowable." That is surely the perfect description of an atheistic first cause. My own compromise would allow for intelligence but not for the "self-realization, awakening to awareness" that apparently follows. David's UI would presumably already have had purpose and intelligence AND self-realization from the start, though perhaps our panentheist could live with "an awakening to awareness".