Moral Compass

[seeds]

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When is it going to become obvious to everyone that the messiah has arrived.

Forget about visiting Jerusalem and all of the holy sites associated with Judaism and Christianity.

Forget about making a pilgrimage to Mecca and circumambulating around this boring old idol of a religion that allegedly forbids idol worship...



Indeed, forget all of that old world nonsense and come to America where idol worship is our favorite pastime, and where the "new Mecca" is a sacred place called "Mar-a-Lago" where you will soon be able to circumambulate this shiny new symbol of the world's long-awaited savior...


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Prices of worship (subject to change) are as follows:

• 1 circumambulation = $100.00
  2 circumambulations = $175.00
  5 circumambulations = $375.00
  10 circumambulations...
  (which includes the use of a ladder for leaving a personal (and intimate) offering in the idol's Golden Well, of which several devotees will pray over)
  ... = $1200.00
  (Moderately priced replicas of the Golden Idol will be available at the gift shop)

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Clearly, all of humanity's troubles will be "flushed away" once everyone finally accepts the founder of...

TRUMPIANITY®

...as their personal savior and adopts his glorious ideals.
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[seeds]

How could Seeds, for example, who is certainly a serious man, be converted to IC’s demiurge? He couldn’t.

sshhhh!...my secret plan, which uses impeccable logic, along with fanciful visualization tools,...

(and yes, even employs some sophomoric [literal potty] humor in an attempt to keep things light)

...again, my plan is for IC (and others like him) to eventually come to realize that the Creator of the vast and majestic order of the universe isn't the horrifying demonic entity that the writers of the Bible have implied him (her/it) to be with their ridiculously cruel Heaven/Hell scenario.
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[Janoah]

That's obviously not the case, since the universe itself is not eternal.

On what basis do you claim that there was a time when there was no matter?

Or cosmic expansion.

The universe may expand, contract, or become wrinkled, but if something exploded, then existing matter exploded, that is, there is no such thing as “Ex nihilo.”

that that chain of regressing causes cannot possibly be infinite.

Actual (simultaneous) infinity is absurd, but an infinite cause-and-effect relationship in time is not absurd, Aristotle noted this, and I read this from Maimonides, who points out that Aristotle has already proven this. (Maimonides read Aristotle in Arabic translation).

By the way, Singularity of the BB model is philosophically untenable, because it assumes an actual infinitesimal and infinitely large value, and actual infinity is absurd.

[Immanuel Can]

...there is no such thing as “Ex nihilo.”

Actually, you can know logically that there has to be. All matter is contingent. Contingent things have to have a beginning. But there is no possibility of an infinite regress of causes. So something has to be the very first Uncaused Cause.

The same is true whether one is a Theist or a total Atheist. It makes no difference. The only debate that's possible to have is, "What is the nature of that First Cause."

...an infinite cause-and-effect relationship in time

An infinite regress of causes is. You're not grasping the basic claim properly.

An infinite regress of causes never gets started at all, because the prerequisites necessary for each 'effect' are also infinite.

It's a complicated realization, until the first time one grasps it: after that, it's perfectly obvious.

[Janoah]

That is how I make my moral decisions. How do you do it?

I have already mentioned my moral compass - to follow my conscience.
And not because it is written somewhere.
I can digress into the history of the issue.
I was born into a non-religious family, and the Bible was not in my family, because in the USSR where I lived, in principle there were no religious books for sale.
Marxism was taught in educational institutions, and I liked it, I believed in socialism.
But at some stage I had a question: is there something the main in life, and if so, what?
And the answer came to me that the main is - not to lie to yourself, and the rest is consequences.
I was interested to know if there are worldview systems that have such an answer.
At this time, I received a Bible from a Christian friend.
The Christian Bible, as usual, contained the “Old Testament” and the Gospels together.
I started reading the Gospels, maybe my answer is there.
I reached the place where it was said that the first commandment is to love...
I realized that this is beautiful, but not true, because cause and effect are confused.
For, the first thing is to follow conscience, and love is the consequence.
If on the contrary, then as a result, love is conscienceless, and the idea of God is perverted, they begin to deify the beloved idol, and this is what happened in Christianity.
Then I began to read the Tanakh, and came to the place “speaks the truth in his heart”, this was the answer to which I came, but I saw that some work was needed here, because it was not said that this was the main principle, and not one of them.
Thus, the advantage of Christianity is that there was an attempt to find the main, although it was not found correctly, but the disadvantage is that the search for the truly main principle was closed, that is, it ran into a dead end.
The advantage of Judaism is that it has not closed its way in the search for the main principle, but requires additional refinement in this search.
In a conversation with rabbis in Israel, I saw that such a search was not perceived with hostility, even my article was published in a religious publication (in Hebrew), where I mentioned this aspect of the main principle, but I have not yet found a clear consensus.

[Janoah]

...there is no such thing as “Ex nihilo.”

All matter is contingent.

Matter follows natural Law, and this is understandable if you don’t confuse yourself.

[nemos]

... For, the first thing is to follow conscience, and love is the consequence...

As I see it, "love" is a law of nature, or perhaps a property of matter, that determines the evolution of the universe. This law can manifest itself in different forms, including emotional or moral-ethical ones, respectively. And it is not about whether you love, but about whether you are in accordance with this law. If yes, then love becomes your attitude or quality, if not, then you are actually contradicting.

[Janoah]

... For, the first thing is to follow conscience, and love is the consequence...

As I see it, "love" is a law of nature,

If gravitational pull is considered love, then yes, the moon still loves the sun.

But if you return to the sinful Earth, is it clear that love can be conscienceless?

For example, sadism is also a kind of "love", for violence and cruelty.

[Immanuel Can]

That is how I make my moral decisions. How do you do it?

I have already mentioned my moral compass - to follow my conscience.

That would be fine, if your conscience is always in perfect order.

And not because it is written somewhere.

So you don't observe Torah, as any part of that?

I can digress into the history of the issue.

I actually found that interesting.

I started reading the Gospels, maybe my answer is there.
I reached the place where it was said that the first commandment is to love...

Not just "to love."

I know the section to which you refer here. And if you look again, you'll find that it went as follows:

And one of them, [the Pharisees] a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him: “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Upon these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets.”

The whole Law is that we put God first in our affections, and orient our lives to Him. The second is that we love our neighbour as we do ourselves. Both mention "love," but both also have an object: the first commandment making the Almighty the focus, and the second, other people. If we could do these two, we would satisfy every requirement of the whole Law...not just the big 10, but all 613.

For, the first thing is to follow conscience,

Not according to Scripture. For in Scripture, we are taught, “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?" (The Tanahk, Jeremiah 17:9) And again, in Ecclesiastes, we read, "Indeed, there is not a righteous person on earth who does good and does not ever sin." (Ecc.7:20) And again, Moses charges the people, in Deuteronomy 12:8 “You shall not do at all what we are doing here today, everyone doing whatever is right in his own eyes." We can find many more such passages. According, then, to Scripture, the judgments of men's consciences are often not trustworthy, and even lead them to do evil.

And evil is never love.

I have not yet found a clear consensus.

I'm not surprised.

There is an old joke about rabbis: "When there are two rabbis in a room, there are three opinions."

[Immanuel Can]

...there is no such thing as “Ex nihilo.”

All matter is contingent.

Matter follows natural Law, and this is understandable if you don’t confuse yourself.

You don't know what "contingent" means? Let me put it another way: matter is not eternal. The universe itself is not eternal. And science clearly shows us that this is true.

But we could just have asked Torah. For in Genesis, the very first verse, it tells us, "In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth."

[nemos]

... But if you return to the sinful Earth, is it clear that love can be conscienceless?
For example, sadism is also a kind of "love", for violence and cruelty.

One might as well ask if there can be a conscience without "love". How would you define a conscience, and why do some have it and some might not, even the same sadists you mentioned?
You won't deny that the universe has a tendency towards self-organization, right? So we should, or at least could, assume that this self-organization is determined by laws!? So why should one of these laws not be responsible for "love"? Don't you think love is directed to organization too?

[Dontaskme]

All matter is contingent.

Matter follows natural Law, and this is understandable if you don’t confuse yourself.

You don't know what "contingent" means? Let me put it another way: matter is not eternal. The universe itself is not eternal. And science clearly shows us that this is true.

The word ''eternal'' is an oxymoron. It's at best a meaningless word when it comes to the so called claimed KNOWN

All concepts known are known to be temporal, never eternal. The knower can only know the temporal, never the eternal. Any claim to know the eternal would be like knowing the absolute from a relative point of view, that's simply absurd.

The biggest LIE that was ever told to you can be found in the Bible.

Eternal life is the greatest promise in the Bible. It was this promise that compelled early Christians to share the “Good News of the Gospel” to the then known world.

The KNOWN WORLD knows nothing of the eternal, because the known is only temporal, never eternal. Only not-knowing is eternal. Not-knowing is unchanging, whereas knowing is change. In reality, there is only known this unchanging change, an illusion of the eternal temporal appearing in timeless time.

[nemos]

I wonder if there is an explanatory glossary for the words used in the Bible, because different people can give different meanings to the same word? Especially if the word was used 2000 years ago, possibly in a language that no one speaks now, but is being explained today. Why should the word "eternal" have the same meaning today as it did then?

Have you played with broken phones as a child? The same text is whispered from one person to another, and as a result the text changes noticeably.

[Dontaskme]

I wonder if there is an explanatory glossary for the words used in the Bible, because different people can give different meanings to the same word? Especially if the word was used 2000 years ago, possibly in a language that no one speaks now, but is being explained today. Why should the word "eternal" have the same meaning today as it did then?

Have you played with broken phones as a child? The same text is whispered from one person to another, and as a result the text changes noticeably.

Well According to human man-made-up meanings of words, as recorded and reported to be fact in the dictionary, the word ''eternal'' means: ''lasting or existing forever; without end:''

However, contrary to what the Bible says: I'm now reporting that That which lasts forever cannot be known, is impossible to be known, especially when it comes to a human life lasting forever, like the bible promises.
It's obviously a fictional fable, because the very idea is to assume a human being can live eternally, when in truth, it's common knowledge to anyone with an ounce of intellect, knows damn well a single individual human life is only ever a temporal appearance, and never an eternal appearance.

[nemos]

... the word ''eternal'' means: ''lasting or existing forever; without end:''...

Yes, I understand that you are absolutely sure.
God is said to have created the world in 6 days, and on the 7th he decided to rest. It seems incredible and miraculous, but how long was the day when there wasn't even light yet? Is it still 24 hours, or the length of the day, or the speed of the earth's rotation was precisely determined ? By the way it is still not constant, I mean the length of the day. Words can be quite confusing.