I think that the two are linked. You have to recognize that your consciousness is a gift that makes you something much greater than an animal or random speck of protoplasm. You also have to recognize that your neighbor also has that precious consciousness even though you have no actual physical evidence proving that is the case. Your love and gratitude to God and your love for your neighbor are fundamentally derived from the same source and are in that sense inseparable.

I don't think this is true. I do not believe you can simply choose to believe and love God anymore then you can choose to believe that you are a bear. its takes a change in information or the make up of your brain to change your beliefs. its not simply a matter of choosing.

We had a thread about this before and I posed to theists to choose to not believe. Or to choose to believe they could fly for a week. They all thought it was preposterous. And they were right.

It is interesting how often arguments are preposterous except when it applies to what they believe. But that's another matter...

I agree with you.

That's also why I put the "choice" into quotes - I didn't want to object RLK on this part, because I wanted him to answer the part of my post that I considered important.

Well, if God made love then the problem sort of solves itself - so I just think the debate needs to be notched down to resolving God's existence.

Well im screwed because idk that animals dont have consciousness and idk that my consciousness is greater then all animal life in the universe (except for God of course).

But they're not quite the same are they? Telling us to love our neighbour is like me telling my kids to get along. The other would be like me telling my kids not just that the had to obey me, but HAD to love me as well. Are you telling me that they are really coming from the same place? Don't you feel that loving your neighbour is more important than loving your god? If you had to pick one and only one: which one would you pick?

I am instructed to do both so I would never pick one. I have explained how they come from the same place.

Well they both come from God, of course, but you don't see a difference in being commanded to treat your peers well, and being commanded to have love and gratitude towards your superior?

Edit: or how one is geared towards a happy civilization, and the other geared towards a happy deity?

Ugh. What a horrible, horrible post. What makes you think religion has a monopoly on love? I most certainly do not love God, but I do love goodness, truth, peace and mercy. I am not inclined towards hate, destruction, murder, or evil. Whether you like it or not, love is a word we use to describe a human emotion. It's not contingent upon your imaginary friend.

Justin you are full of it. You have no respect or love towards Christians. You hate the idea that people believe in God. You are hating Jerok's post. You definitely are not honest towards certain people on this forum. You show no mercy.

Luke 6: 32-34

Also RLK, how do you reconcile your point of view above with God also stating specifically in that context that he's a jealous god. Is it not more consistent to read it as meaning exactly what it says?

And for those who would decline and take oblivion?

Your point in this thread was to question why I have chosen the teaching from Jesus about the most important commandments as the center piece of my Christianity. I have tried to answer that. This is asking me now to reconcile that with a piece of Old Testament writing. I am going to decline. There are many aspects of the OT that seem contrary to the spirit of Jesus' message. I am not sure if those are due to translation, human error or if Jesus actually intended to apply a course correction to a religion that had gone off course. In any event I am neither able to perform that reconciliation nor disturbed by it.

I cannot actually imagine wanting to make that choice so I have no answer.

as usual, your reply misses all the points of his post.

If you say so.

As usual, your reply misses all the points of my post.

No. Your point was pretty common to your posts. You call someone hateful while ignoring any attempt at reasons.

Let's demonstrate:
His points:
I'll bullet point and summarize since you're not very bright.
* Religion does not have a monopoly on love
by way of example
* While he does not follow a religion he: 'loves' goodness, truth, peace and mercy. He is not inclined to hate, destruction, murder or evil. (contrary to theists who claim you will do all of this is you don't have religion)
* People can love each other and be peaceful without invisible gods.

He made a point and the explained by way of example why his point was accurate.

Your response:
Summary- You call him a hater.

How does this prove that love requires religion? It doesn't. Its nothing more then you insulting. I wonder how many times you've called people haters? Ironic, isn't it? (Is ironic too big a word for you?)

You can't imagine wanting to cease to exist?

The gap between my intuition and that of others never ceases to amaze me.

You are special, no question about it.

you really can't picture if, given the choice, let's say... between an eternity in torment or simply not existing, that you would choose non-existence?

If so, I would say its not madnak who is special.

Out of context.

That was not the scenario in which the choice was presented so obviously I was not referring to this specific choice.

That's fine. Sometimes its easy (for me) to lose the thread of a conversation and get confused.

I think I'm clear now. Though, If I understand correctly, I still and surprised at your answer.

gg posted:
You responded-
gg wrote-
you responded-
Which, I agree with GG, your response makes no sense. It avoids all the questions raised. (namely: How is it a gift to have conciousness when the conciousness is the only factor why most people screw up and go to hell?)

AND... what led us here-
Madnak said-
You replied
I don't understand that you can't imagine this... if you recall, by choosing consciousness over Oblivion, you are electing to have limited (one lifetime) of consciousness for a possibility of life in heaven and a decent chance that you'll spend eternity in Hell. (The original op said 20% go to heaven, which he pulled out of his rear, but let's go with it for the sake of argument)

You can't understand why someone would say non-existence (which, let's face it, isn't painful. We all didn't exist before we were born (as best we know) and we weren't there to be bothered by it. Where the other end leaves a very respectable chance that you will suffer eternal damnation.

Perhaps I'm not sure what you mean by your answer above? (respectable chance my reading comprehension is off) Because I think we would want the choice and the only imaginable answer is oblivion. Non existence has no downside. But eternal damnation is inconceiveable horrible, no?

Where am I confused here?

You selectively edited my answers. To the first point I said:


The point being that all you know is that you have consciousness. You do not know that you are going to Hell or that the probability of you going to Hell is 80% or 1% or 0%. In fact, it is a little hard to understand a God who gave you consciousness only to damn you to Hell. So the entire counterargument rested on an assumption about the statistics of damnation that are manufactured out of nothing. I pointed that out and questioned whether this even constituted a counterargument at all, a question that has been totally ignored. The OP then listed an extensive set of assumptions, none of which are consistent with my view and announced that he lives a life that will send him to Hell (whatever that means). The discussion appeared to be going nowhere, so I basically said: "OK, cool."

You said conciousness is a tremendous gift which should be acknowledged.

I said that statistically, conciousness is not a tremendous gift. I based that on an assumption that more people go to hell than to heaven (800/1000 people going to hell was an illustration - point stands even if it is 501/1000). I think this was a fair assumption, but if it wasn't, then argument obviously fails.

My whole point was that on average, if my assumption was correct, if a person is given conciousness as a gift, she will go to hell more times than to heaven, and thus, this is a bad gift.

Then you started asking me quiestion about what I would do etc. which was irrelevant to the point I conveyed - that this is in general a bad gift

***

If all you know is that you have a conciousness, then you don't know that this conciousness is a tremendous gift.

Knowledge of conciousness being a tremendous gift comes from your religion, so whoever has that knowledge also knows concept of hell etc.

you may not "know" it but there is obviously a preponderance of evidence which suggests this is true. I cant believe you would seriously argue otherwise but I would like to hear you try.

Just like when us theists want to deny evolution since we don't "know" it to be true. The argument we are given in return is to look at the preponderance of evidence.