Animals murder each other all the time, My dads cat eats other cats from time to time, they fight, animals do everything a human does, just without technology. Torture and everything.
My point is that the violence in Starcraft is far enough removed from reality that no real danger of actual sin comes into play - at least for me. It depends on the person though... if you're easily swayed by the kind of violence portrayed in Starcraft then you probably shouldn't be playing it. Extremely violent and realistic games like Grand Theft Auto I tend to stay away from (ok, maybe not so much realistic, but going around killing people in a city not unlike Miami is a bit closer to home then Tarsonis.) It's really about prudence... if doing anything causes you to sin, you should probably stop doing that thing.
Pornography, even animated pornography, obviously has the effect of causing a person to sin quite easily and gravely... so I don't go anywhere near that stuff.
Fun fact: The Papacy bears the diplomatic equivalent of a kingdom. World governments seem to acknowledge the Pope as the "ruler of Christianity."
I'm just being a smart-ass, of course :P
As to Pope Pius XII supporting Hitler, you may want to do some fact checking. While there is some dispute on the matter, it seems pretty evident that he wasn't going around torching Jews to appease Hitler. You should also consider the climate of the environment at the time. The Vatican has no effective army, and Hitler's God-State mentality gave him pretty much no reservations against rolling defenseless nations (since Hitler's state was pretty much "always right in everything.") That's not to say the good Pope was a coward - he just wasn't stupid enough to start throwing pebbles at Nazi soldiers.
As far as Jesus being in the room with me, I'm not sure what He would think about the game itself, but I don't think He would disapprove of me socializing with people online, treating them like human beings worthy of His love, and engaging in discussions such as this where I have the opportunity to be a real witness to my faith. You do make a good point though. We should always be conscious of what we are doing and whether that is pleasing to God.
Ehm, actually no. There's a distinction between murder and killing. Murder can only be done to a person, and I don't care how much you love Fido, animals are not people.
I'm just saying we should maintain consistency in the terms we decide to use. Here are several definitions for the word "murder" which I found scattered around the internets:
I disagree. A dog killing a child is a behavioral response, not an act of the will. Murder must be an act of the will - since animals lack any will whatsoever, they are therefore incapable of committing murder...
Not that this has anything to do with the topic. I'm just obsessed with precision...
ha, how does it feel to agree with me? sucks dont it, LAWL, i love arguments like this, keeps these forums interesting. lol
Edit: Yall do realize, that I just join in all these arguments for fun dont you? I am a christian, but half the shit I say I dont believe, I believe in the bible, what it teaches, and what I understand from it, not what some idiot wearing a funny hat tells me it means.(Pope)
I think animals murder but it's not evil or good to them. They don't have stupid morale values. If you want to compare animal actions and human actions you must remove the morale value otherwise you will be biased. Morales are just stupid asinine reasons to give us a reason to excuse ourselves from something. People think murder in war time is ok, yet it's still the same thing as murder in non war time.
Animals don't discriminate. If they feel their home is threatened or anything they will defend it, that's how they see it. They don't see it as murder because they don't care what it is it's self preservation. Humans just labeled it as murder and something to look down on. Some cultures believe sexual relations should be kept secretive and stay within the household, yet it's a natural occurring event.
So Bashar is wrong. Murder is just a term humans use, it's just killing with some other associations human put up, so technically it's killing plain and simple. Animals don't murder though, they don't see it as that.
Although I can't explain the reasoning behind the animals who eat their own kind at birth and stuff like that.
And now the thread is oficially off topic. But trying for a brief moment to go back to Rodrigo's points, I do agree its necessary to go "down the road" in order to get wiser and then happier and not everybody can get there. But I also believe very "stupid" people (and animals) can go pretty high on the happiness axis so maybe the correlation isn't straight, it's more like an inverted parabole.
Although I can't explain the reasoning behind the animals who eat their own kind at birth and stuff like that.
Its all natural selection, if the energy received from that act guarantees more eficiency in future reproducitve acts than that one loss then its alright.
@Taintedwisp: Go They eat the dead ones in order to have more energy to feed the living ones. Dead puppys are meat just like any other animal, not eat it would be a waste of energy and organic matter.
Animals have will you dumbass, clearly you know nothing about the brain.
-Makes blanket statement
-Refuses to back it up
-Calls other participant dumbass
Clearly you know nothing about intelligent conversation.
A will, or at least the will which I am talking about, requires reason to choose between different courses of action (simplified as a good choice and an evil choice, although in reality there are varying degrees.) Animals do not ponder whether the actions they take are good or evil, therefore they lack reason, and so they lack a will.
I think it's necessary to believe you have an eternal soul in order to have true happiness, as well as a mortal body. The combination of the two overcomes the fear of mortality and the need for mortal action to be impactful. When understood in the Christian context, it removes the guilt of past mistakes (which, with an eternal soul, would otherwise cripple a person indefinitely) and provides redemption from suffering (beyond a balancing of the scales.)
No Soul / no God - Live a live as best you can and die, you will feel nothing you will not even know anything because you no longer exist. You have nothing to really look forward to so life is either easy and you enjoy it or it is hard and you go commit suicide to escape the pain. and sure you can do some interesting things but in the grand scheme it doesn't really matter ( :( )
Soul / God - Live the best you can and love your neighbor as God commanded, live life to the fullest with service to the Lord with acknowledgement of how messed up you are and even through pain and suffering you have the gift of heaven to look forward to even if life gets difficult and how guilty you become because you have been forgiven and willingly serve. ( :) )
Immortal / no God? / Deism - id get bored and haunt some houses for entertainment awaiting the end of the black universe of nothingness ( :( )
NOTE: like everyone else this is my opinion upon the matter. If you want true happiness then lean to Immortality, I mean if you don't have a soul then it is impossible to be happy or sad because you no longer exist. Also I would disagree that as long as you believe it is true is all that matters. I would argue that the fact that Immortality is real or not is more important than the fact that you believe it is true or not. hmm take this for example and put gravity in the sentence (yes i know it is provable by scientific fact and so forth, but every metaphor breaks down at some point) "It doesn't matter if gravity is real or not as long as you believe it is" Well as you all know gravity exists no matter what you believe and when you try to jump off a cliff and fly you do not break the laws of gravity because of the solid fact that Gravity exists no matter what you believe. (I also believe that I don't make the rules of the "moral code" and honestly I'm glad I don't) Sorry to drift a bit off topic there again but just want to throw that out there.
And as said, in order to do this you have to prove the soul exists or not and that is what has been going on for the past 9 pages lol...
A will, or at least the will which I am talking about, requires reason to choose between different courses of action (simplified as a good choice and an evil choice, although in reality there are varying degrees.) Animals do not ponder whether the actions they take are good or evil, therefore they lack reason, and so they lack a will.
I think you're glorifying the human mind far too much. Good and evil is a human construct, first and foremost, which is seemingly why no other animal exhibits it. Humans don't exhibit the pack mentality of wolves (disregarding kinship), nor the formations of migrating birds. It's nothing more than a causailty of human evolution.
Now, to state that animals have no morals and then draw the conclusion that they, by extension, have no will, is a leap of faith.
"Good and evil" is a concept bred into us by evolution. Men who kill other men is generally not a favourable trait due to the penalty it inflicts on a populace's ability to reproduce. Naturally, if a population is made up of 10% murderers, that tribe will fair far worse than a tribe with 0% murderers. Note that I'm not suggesting that there's a "murder gene", more that evolution favours "good" morals because "bad" morals tend to be self-defeating.
There is a lot of literature on the evolution of morality and if you are going to attempt to refute this, you're going to need some very strong evidence.
Now, compare this to wolf pack mentality. Both morality and pack mentality are both outcomes of successful natural selection. A wolf in a pack will fair better than a lone wolf. A tribe of humans with "good morals" will be less self-defeating than one with "bad morals".
My point is that morality is a product of evolution, and not a product of will, and trying to connect the two is as rediculous as stating that humans have no morals because we don't hunt in packs.
I think it's necessary to believe you have an eternal soul in order to have true happiness, as well as a mortal body. The combination of the two overcomes the fear of mortality and the need for mortal action to be impactful.
This relies entirely on the subject having a fear of his/her own mortality. If you accept that you are finite, then why would that fear play on your mind?
I mean really, you've not existed for billions of years already, so you know exactly what it feels like.
Can you guys stop arguing about what religion is right? My question had nothing to do with religion. :(
It doesn't matter if immortality is real or not as long as you believe it is. In my inner world, I make the rules.
I just asked if we need to believe we are immortal to achieve true happiness.
Basically, I think immortality would be awful. You'll outlive everyone around you. Anyone you grow close to will die or, if they were immortal, you'd eventually get sick of being with them. Not only that, you'd have to watch as the world decays. I also think you'd eventually lose the ability to relate to humanity due to your extended years.
If you could still get tired and feel pain it would be even worse! Aging would be an issue as well, depending on how you define immortality. In this case I am assuming you can get weaker and develop health problems but never die.
I one of the reasons I enjoyed Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles so much was that it showed how each of the characters dealt with immortality.
Some took up a hobby like painting or music, some wandered the earth for eternity and some tried their best to kill themselves. Most of them ended up alone.
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@Eiviyn: Go Your a crock of shit... lawl
Animals murder each other all the time, My dads cat eats other cats from time to time, they fight, animals do everything a human does, just without technology. Torture and everything.
Look at you, getting all mad.
Saying on one hand that religion doesn't cause violence, then calling names on the other because I stated morality didn't come from Yahweh.
Thank you for providing a living example.
@michaelknives: Go
My point is that the violence in Starcraft is far enough removed from reality that no real danger of actual sin comes into play - at least for me. It depends on the person though... if you're easily swayed by the kind of violence portrayed in Starcraft then you probably shouldn't be playing it. Extremely violent and realistic games like Grand Theft Auto I tend to stay away from (ok, maybe not so much realistic, but going around killing people in a city not unlike Miami is a bit closer to home then Tarsonis.) It's really about prudence... if doing anything causes you to sin, you should probably stop doing that thing.
Pornography, even animated pornography, obviously has the effect of causing a person to sin quite easily and gravely... so I don't go anywhere near that stuff.
Fun fact: The Papacy bears the diplomatic equivalent of a kingdom. World governments seem to acknowledge the Pope as the "ruler of Christianity." I'm just being a smart-ass, of course :P
As to Pope Pius XII supporting Hitler, you may want to do some fact checking. While there is some dispute on the matter, it seems pretty evident that he wasn't going around torching Jews to appease Hitler. You should also consider the climate of the environment at the time. The Vatican has no effective army, and Hitler's God-State mentality gave him pretty much no reservations against rolling defenseless nations (since Hitler's state was pretty much "always right in everything.") That's not to say the good Pope was a coward - he just wasn't stupid enough to start throwing pebbles at Nazi soldiers.
As far as Jesus being in the room with me, I'm not sure what He would think about the game itself, but I don't think He would disapprove of me socializing with people online, treating them like human beings worthy of His love, and engaging in discussions such as this where I have the opportunity to be a real witness to my faith. You do make a good point though. We should always be conscious of what we are doing and whether that is pleasing to God.
@Taintedwisp: Go
Ehm, actually no. There's a distinction between murder and killing. Murder can only be done to a person, and I don't care how much you love Fido, animals are not people.
@Eiviyn: Go
not mad, just get tired of hearing that animals cant murder lol.
also Calling people names isnt a sign of anger, I talk shit... its what I do lol. Feel free to talk shit back.
@BasharTeg: Go
To many any instance where one animal, be it human or not, kills another Not for food, is murder.
and I dont mean self defense.
@Taintedwisp: Go
I'm just saying we should maintain consistency in the terms we decide to use. Here are several definitions for the word "murder" which I found scattered around the internets:
Wikipedia
free dictionary
free dictionary legal
Merriam-Webster
None of these say "the unlawful killing of human or animal."
@BasharTeg: Go
Okay different example
the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought
what about when a dog kills a child..
The point is, ANYONE OR ANYTHING can murder... Ratio wise, humans do it more, due to technology.
I disagree. A dog killing a child is a behavioral response, not an act of the will. Murder must be an act of the will - since animals lack any will whatsoever, they are therefore incapable of committing murder...
Not that this has anything to do with the topic. I'm just obsessed with precision...
@BasharTeg: Go
Animals have will you dumbass, clearly you know nothing about the brain.
@Nebuli2: Go
ha, how does it feel to agree with me? sucks dont it, LAWL, i love arguments like this, keeps these forums interesting. lol
Edit: Yall do realize, that I just join in all these arguments for fun dont you? I am a christian, but half the shit I say I dont believe, I believe in the bible, what it teaches, and what I understand from it, not what some idiot wearing a funny hat tells me it means.(Pope)
I think animals murder but it's not evil or good to them. They don't have stupid morale values. If you want to compare animal actions and human actions you must remove the morale value otherwise you will be biased. Morales are just stupid asinine reasons to give us a reason to excuse ourselves from something. People think murder in war time is ok, yet it's still the same thing as murder in non war time.
Animals don't discriminate. If they feel their home is threatened or anything they will defend it, that's how they see it. They don't see it as murder because they don't care what it is it's self preservation. Humans just labeled it as murder and something to look down on. Some cultures believe sexual relations should be kept secretive and stay within the household, yet it's a natural occurring event.
So Bashar is wrong. Murder is just a term humans use, it's just killing with some other associations human put up, so technically it's killing plain and simple. Animals don't murder though, they don't see it as that.
Although I can't explain the reasoning behind the animals who eat their own kind at birth and stuff like that.
And now the thread is oficially off topic. But trying for a brief moment to go back to Rodrigo's points, I do agree its necessary to go "down the road" in order to get wiser and then happier and not everybody can get there. But I also believe very "stupid" people (and animals) can go pretty high on the happiness axis so maybe the correlation isn't straight, it's more like an inverted parabole.
EDIT:
Its all natural selection, if the energy received from that act guarantees more eficiency in future reproducitve acts than that one loss then its alright.
@SoulFilcher: Go
Male dogs eat the litter so they can Re-impregnate the mother.
Mother dogs, Eat the dead of their litter. That I dont understand/.
@Taintedwisp: Go They eat the dead ones in order to have more energy to feed the living ones. Dead puppys are meat just like any other animal, not eat it would be a waste of energy and organic matter.
@SoulFilcher: Go
Since we are already soo far off topic...
Can you guys stop arguing about what religion is right? My question had nothing to do with religion. :(
It doesn't matter if immortality is real or not as long as you believe it is. In my inner world, I make the rules.
I just asked if we need to believe we are immortal to achieve true happiness.
-Makes blanket statement
-Refuses to back it up
-Calls other participant dumbass
Clearly you know nothing about intelligent conversation.
A will, or at least the will which I am talking about, requires reason to choose between different courses of action (simplified as a good choice and an evil choice, although in reality there are varying degrees.) Animals do not ponder whether the actions they take are good or evil, therefore they lack reason, and so they lack a will.
I think it's necessary to believe you have an eternal soul in order to have true happiness, as well as a mortal body. The combination of the two overcomes the fear of mortality and the need for mortal action to be impactful. When understood in the Christian context, it removes the guilt of past mistakes (which, with an eternal soul, would otherwise cripple a person indefinitely) and provides redemption from suffering (beyond a balancing of the scales.)
No Soul / no God - Live a live as best you can and die, you will feel nothing you will not even know anything because you no longer exist. You have nothing to really look forward to so life is either easy and you enjoy it or it is hard and you go commit suicide to escape the pain. and sure you can do some interesting things but in the grand scheme it doesn't really matter ( :( )
Soul / God - Live the best you can and love your neighbor as God commanded, live life to the fullest with service to the Lord with acknowledgement of how messed up you are and even through pain and suffering you have the gift of heaven to look forward to even if life gets difficult and how guilty you become because you have been forgiven and willingly serve. ( :) )
Immortal / no God? / Deism - id get bored and haunt some houses for entertainment awaiting the end of the black universe of nothingness ( :( )
NOTE: like everyone else this is my opinion upon the matter. If you want true happiness then lean to Immortality, I mean if you don't have a soul then it is impossible to be happy or sad because you no longer exist. Also I would disagree that as long as you believe it is true is all that matters. I would argue that the fact that Immortality is real or not is more important than the fact that you believe it is true or not. hmm take this for example and put gravity in the sentence (yes i know it is provable by scientific fact and so forth, but every metaphor breaks down at some point) "It doesn't matter if gravity is real or not as long as you believe it is" Well as you all know gravity exists no matter what you believe and when you try to jump off a cliff and fly you do not break the laws of gravity because of the solid fact that Gravity exists no matter what you believe. (I also believe that I don't make the rules of the "moral code" and honestly I'm glad I don't) Sorry to drift a bit off topic there again but just want to throw that out there.
And as said, in order to do this you have to prove the soul exists or not and that is what has been going on for the past 9 pages lol...
I think you're glorifying the human mind far too much. Good and evil is a human construct, first and foremost, which is seemingly why no other animal exhibits it. Humans don't exhibit the pack mentality of wolves (disregarding kinship), nor the formations of migrating birds. It's nothing more than a causailty of human evolution.
Now, to state that animals have no morals and then draw the conclusion that they, by extension, have no will, is a leap of faith.
"Good and evil" is a concept bred into us by evolution. Men who kill other men is generally not a favourable trait due to the penalty it inflicts on a populace's ability to reproduce. Naturally, if a population is made up of 10% murderers, that tribe will fair far worse than a tribe with 0% murderers. Note that I'm not suggesting that there's a "murder gene", more that evolution favours "good" morals because "bad" morals tend to be self-defeating.
There is a lot of literature on the evolution of morality and if you are going to attempt to refute this, you're going to need some very strong evidence.
Now, compare this to wolf pack mentality. Both morality and pack mentality are both outcomes of successful natural selection. A wolf in a pack will fair better than a lone wolf. A tribe of humans with "good morals" will be less self-defeating than one with "bad morals".
My point is that morality is a product of evolution, and not a product of will, and trying to connect the two is as rediculous as stating that humans have no morals because we don't hunt in packs.
This relies entirely on the subject having a fear of his/her own mortality. If you accept that you are finite, then why would that fear play on your mind?
I mean really, you've not existed for billions of years already, so you know exactly what it feels like.
@Eiviyn: Go I approve messages from you.
Others: read more books.
Basically, I think immortality would be awful. You'll outlive everyone around you. Anyone you grow close to will die or, if they were immortal, you'd eventually get sick of being with them. Not only that, you'd have to watch as the world decays. I also think you'd eventually lose the ability to relate to humanity due to your extended years.
If you could still get tired and feel pain it would be even worse! Aging would be an issue as well, depending on how you define immortality. In this case I am assuming you can get weaker and develop health problems but never die.
I one of the reasons I enjoyed Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles so much was that it showed how each of the characters dealt with immortality. Some took up a hobby like painting or music, some wandered the earth for eternity and some tried their best to kill themselves. Most of them ended up alone.