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When was this thread renamed :"6 to 10 questions about morality and sex, or why you are not moral"?

It wandered it a bit. You don't find it interesting?

As mentioned before life is not black and white. It is grey. And people that don't seem to understand that are probably dumb.

Then discussion and possible education can only be a good thing.

Of course it's fun to indicate your beliefs, while trying to nail down all the wrong points of another member, but heck, I am certain that noone will change their minds over this thread.

You never know. Nobody expects the other to. But good discussion is offering up opposing viewpoints, so that people can see how others look at the same situation. No one is attacking anyone.

It is a simple matter of wanting to be the most important thing in the world to someone, not simply "backup important thing" because "primary important thing" didn't quite work out.

Well I don't know, Esper. I think that's dependent on the one scenario and leaves out a lot of others. Why couldn't you be the most important person in somebody's life, just because they've been in a relationship before? People get in and out of relationships, they learn the kind of people they are compatible with and who they aren't compatible with.

Somebody could've been in many different relationships and then BANG! as soon as they meet you it all falls away and they devote themselves entirely. Maybe somebody was in a bad relationship, and you represent everything that was missing from that.

I wouldn't want a girl to slap my ass and call me "cutie-pie" if she's done that to another man

And seriously, I'm not taking the piss or anything, but what if she'd gotten all exhausted and sweaty from enjoying a really good game of tennis with another man? Would that make you look a a raquet differently? What's the difference between the two situations?

[the]

I'm going to take up a few of Stranger's points on sex here too.

And might I add that contrary to popular belief, the sexual repression is not created by Christianity or any religion, but is a result of the ever-increasing obsession that Western society has had with sexuality since the industrial revolution.

I'm not sure that's entirely correct. I think the ever-increasing obsession with sex in the Western world is just a more direct symptom of sexual repression, not the cause. The way we portray sex in the media nowadays, is grossly out of whack, but not in the way you might think.

Sex and sexuality is the very cornerstone of life. Without sex we have no society. Without sex, there is no us. It's the most important part of who we are and how we got here Like it or not, whether directly or indirectly, it drives everything we do.

I think the the predominant view we have on sexuality these days is pretty adolescent, but sex is something to be celebrated. It's the act of creation.

First of all, consent isn't always as clear-cut as it may seem. A lot of times, someone will consent to sex in the heat of the moment, and come to regret it later. Other times, you may have someone who initially does not want to have sex, but after repeated coaxing from their partner, pressure from friends, and exposure to all the sexual imagery displayed in the media, they'll change their mind.

Perfectly true. But many times somebody will agree in the heat of the moment, and it will be something that makes a hugely positive impact on their lives. It has the potential for good and bad, in that sense it's no different from any other situation. The only problem with sexual imagery in the media is that there's too much titilation, not enough education. The problem would be multiplied if there wasn't a willingness to display and discuss sex. The likeyhood of somebody then finding themselves in a compromising situation they don't understand is much greater.

Second, safe sex doesn't exist. No method of birth control or STD protection is 100% effective. Duh.

Safe walking down the street doesn't exist. There's risk in everything we do. Often, the riskier something is, the more worthwhile it is.

However, safety is, comparatively, the least of my worries. The most underestimated consequence of having sex too early is the emotional scarring it gives you. Usually, when unmarried people have sex, chances are that they haven't gotten to know one another very well beforehand; spontenaiety is seen as romantic in our culture. As a result, there is more of a risk of breaking up.

Well, depending on how early somebody has sex, the possibility of emotional scarring over a positive experience is dependent on many other factors. Sex would only be the catalyst to the reaction. The possibility of breaking up may be greater, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. We learn from and intigrate bad experiences. It's the only thing that really makes us stronger.

Sexual chemistry is not enough to sustain a relationship, after all. Neither is love. For a relationship to last, you need to be compatible with one another in a mental, emotional, and spiritual sense, and you also need to be committed to one another.

You'll find no argument from me here. But not everybody is cut out for relationships like that. Not everybody should be.

Some of you may ask "well, what about casual sex?" I have to admit that I wonder if casual sex even exists; more often than not, when I hear stories about it, one or more people get emotionally attached in the end. This leads me to believe that we are naturally inclined to love and care for those we are sexually intimate with. In the cases where casual sex works, I hypothesize that it is a result of a person's heart getting broken so many times that they just don't feel it anymore.

Again. This varies from person to person. For a lot of people the emotional connection and the sexual connection can be two very different things. Some people may be covering up some deep emotional pain by having casual sex, but I'd wager there's just about as many who just plain like it that way, Male or Female. Nothing wrong with that if that's what works for them.

An alternate hypothesis is that casual sex is more beneficial to men than it is to women. This is supported by evolutionary theories as well as personal experience; it's usually the women who get emotionally attached. In this case, I would say that women who like casual sex are trying to be like men; in a patriarchal society such as ours, this is called "empowerment", and is seen as a good thing. Obviously, I have problems with this.

I do have something to say here. I think.
Might have to stew on it a bit longer though.

If you can get married and stay married to the same person for life, then you'll undoubtedly be spared much of the emotional scarring that you'd get if you had sex with more than one person.

That is a bit baseless, tbh. Sex is when we are at our most unguarded, but that gives it equal potential to be an empowering experience and imprint positively on personality. Somebody with sexual confidence extends that confidence into all areas of life, because so much of our unconcious processing when dealing with either gender, is, at the root, determined by sex. It's just a fact of being an animal. No getting round it. Much as you can get on top of it, you can't really control smells and instinct.

Marriage, at least, provides more protection, a way of "predicting the weather", so to speak.

I don't want to be protected. Let it shine when it wants to and rain when I least expect.

I do find it rather odd how, when christian morals are brought into the discussion, the ones mentioned more than anything are the morals about sex.

Well it's almost always extreme sexual repression that creates fanatacism in the first place.

I think it's a kind of "don't think about polar bears" scenario.

I liked the incessant poking and screaming.

[really]

Well, what's really weird, is that often, these dreams - if they were recorded directly from "what I see" or how else call this... could make 3-4 hour long movies! Even telling what I saw could take a nice hour. But I saw it all during 2-3 minutes?

Well time's a bit funny like that. Nobody experiences it the same way and nobody really knows how it works. As measured by the clock, it ticks along and we all hit the same points together. We start work at 9:00, go for lunch at 12:00. But inbetween each tick we all live it differently. Ever thought a day totally flew by, while the person beside you dies of boredom because the clock's just crawling along? Why does time seem to stretch or contract depending on mood? Other animals, like flies, experience time completely differently, and they live alongside us.

Einstein told us that time is a "thing", just like space. It can be warped and bent, the way it acts is dependant on gravity. Not just your perception of it, but your place in it changes, depending on how fast you are travelling. The way humans measure time is in how fast the Earth orbits around the moon. But our motion is being slowed by the tides, so even the most accurate atomic clocks lose seconds every so often and need to be reset. We are constantly redefining what time means to us.

Erm, sorry. Gone a bit offtopic. Bare in mind that I'm grasping at something here and I'm not too sure what it is.

Basically, experience of time is a subjective thing, how fast we move through it is dependant on where you are and who you are. When you're dreaming, and it's just your brain at work, who knows in what kind of ways it's moving or if it's subject to the same constraints we are?

The Experience and Perception of Time

I'll shut up now.

Well, Rharpe. We all kind of guessed that your answers to your own questions would be yes. If you'r not willing to give any thought or explanation as to why you hold these views, especially after MrColossal took the time to engage you, then it's no wonder you're getting "jumped on".

Also, it's becoming clear from the questions you asked that this isn't really about religion, is it?

Go for it.

I'll chip in if I can, but I'd like to listen.

In a less antagonistic fashion....

Do you still think this Rharpe?

Have your opinons changed at all from what you've been reading since?

I for one would love to hear what you have to say here, Rharpe.

As long as you're showing a willingness to honestly listen to others and compare, contrast and integrate their worldviews with your own (like your last post makes it sound), then that's all that can be asked of anyone. I'll extend the same courtesy.

You're entitled to your say just as much as anyone else is entitled to theirs.

Ergo, God created Satan, the ruler of hell.Ã,  Satan is evil.Ã,  Satan, as part of "everything", is evil.Ã,  As part of everything, Satan is part of God.Ã,  Henceforth, God is part evil.

If God isn't part evil, then something exists outside of God, therefore God isn't what everyone thinks "He" is.

I think the way to look at this is that the Christian view of God and Satan is only one of many cultural lenses through which human beings view the world. The world is structured in such a way that anything you want to find, you can find provided you look at it the right way. That's the nature of it. It is everything.

A predominant way of looking at the world (including Christianity's) is to see it as how the two polar opposites of Good and Evil interact in the world around us, which is seen metaphorically as a battle for souls between God and the Devil. Satan can only exist in tandem with God. They both need each other or the structure falls apart. In a monotheistic religion like Christianity you have God, who stands for absolutely everything that's loving and moral. Satan is byproduct. Created through the need for somewhere to put all the dark things that are left over.

You can't have Good unless you have Evil, because neither concept can exist without the other. How do you define Peace, if you don't have War to contrast it against? You can't. Without war there is no such thing as peace, and vice versa. Without European there is no African, only Human.

But it's how we build up our concepts and beliefs and use them to interact with the world around us that's important. Across the world, there are an infinite number of Gods for infinite different purposes, some more specialised than others.

As I said above, the Christian God stands for everything loving and moral. Worship of the Christian God is to devote yourself to these things, to become a vessel for spreading those influences into the world around you. To make yourself as most like God as is possible in the physical world.

It works the same way for other, polytheistic Religions. But they don't have things seperated into two such distinct categories. They have Gods of Compassion, Gods of Mischief, Gods of War etc. etc.
Worship of these Gods is to invite their influence into your life, for you to be a conduit for their mysteries. Worship the Chinese Kuan Yin and you devote yourself to spreading Her influence, to bring compassion to all you see, even those who perhaps don't deserve it. But her remit doesn't cover everything we would label "good", she has many counterparts to cover those areas.


Really, the Gods that we worship are as much vessels as we are. Since this is the AGS forum, I'll use that as a metaphor. They are the front-end interface. They appear in forms we can understand and interact with, and through them we can influence and be influenced by all the code that churns away behind the scenes.

I think you hit the nail right on the head there, Stranger.

Yes, I'm aware of that. What I'm not aware of is why the hell you are eating fish and chips out of a bag...

Good God man! You've never had fish and chips wrapped up in newspaper, so that all the chips get covered in newsprint and the paper gets so soaked in grease that the plastic bag they're in gets wet and everything spills out onto your kitchen table so that the salt and the vinegar and the hot, hot fat get EVERYWHERE?

I lament the passing of the time when consumption of fish and chips was innocent and free. Before the fall from grace. Before mankind learned to synthesise styrenes, and God wept.


IF I WERE A STYROFOAM CONTAINER ......

Mr. Harper? The new Prime Minister of Canada?

Weeeeeellll......have you ever seen them in the same room at the same time?

3) Christianity + anything else = war. Christianity + Islam = the Crusades. Christianity + a few gossipping bitties in the church = The Salem Witch Trials. Christianity + people thinking for themselves = The Inquisition.

That's not of Christianity per se as I'm sure you're aware from what you say above. War and true Christianity are irreconcilable concepts. It's money and power dressed up in religion, just one of the long list of excuses we've come up with to run each other through, ever since one monkey looked at another a bit funny. Pick any other religion (ermm.......Zen Buddhism?) and you can see it happen too. It's only because "Christianity" has been so prominent and widespread that it looks like it's the cause of so much crap.

Since I'm having fun too and this thread is thouroughly derailed anyway, I'm going to ramble a bit. Apologies in advance, and yes, this is nothing but a personal point of view.


See, the problem I have with most of this talk of Good and Evil and what God intended is that I don't think Creation is quite as clear cut as that. It's a particularly human point of view. "Sin" is just a concept we apply to things we do that we know we shouldn't, that are detrimental to the growth of ourselves and society. It's not a tangible, set in stone thing that was forged at the beginning of time by a pantheon of cosmic dwarves with really huge hammers made of stars or anything.

As a living, thinking being, you're always standing at the same point observing the world around you. In order to fuction, you have to make order out of all the infinite number of things that are going on at once. You have to put stuff in boxes of Good and Evil so you can understand how they relate to each other and then by extension how you relate to them. That's how we learn how to live and fuction with all those things. Same process as studying for school, solving a huge maths problem. See how each bit interects with the other and then intigrate them into a working model you can understand.

Really, all the labels we put on things are just different names for the same stuff. Out there in the world are infinite experiences like "finding a ten pound note in the street" and also "tripping up and breaking your back". These are things that just happen. Neither is inherently Good or Evil except in how they relate to you and those around you. In this case, one buys you a nice bag of Fish and Chips, the other puts you in traction for half a year.

To say that God has a plan. To say that s/he wants us to do one thing or the other is grafting a human way of thinking onto a process that is definitely not human. God is all of the things you see around you and inside you. As much a part of everything as anything else. Think of the whole of creation as the one big brain, putting out neurons that look like human beings and trees and office buildings and the whole spectrum of Gods that we build for ourselves. All are alive in their own ways, and they all experience the world differently. Where they meet, we get communication. Evolution.

There's not so much a "plan" as there is "growth".


Bloody hell. First thing on a Sunday and I'm not even out of bed yet.

Morals is another thing, but that's got nothing to do with religion. Ã, (Some priests molest children. Ã, Most Satanists don't.. Ã, Which is right?).

I agree with some of what you're saying here spleen. But that's a bit of an unexamined statement. That could just as easily be rephrased (Most preists don't molest children. Some Satanists do.. Which is right?).

Also don't confuse Satanism and Devil-worship. They are two distinctly different things. Satanism itself doesn't actually have a whole lot to do with either side of Christianity.

I think the main point here is the title of Mr. Harper's piece.

If I was the Devil. Not if you were the Devil. Or If they were the Devil.

What he's doing is seperating out his own moral code, all the things that he finds morally acceptable/unacceptable and polarising them into self/not-self categories. One thing is good, the other is not. Once he's done that, he's grafting it onto his ingrained Christian framework, which is handily pre-polarised into good and evil.

All he's doing is telling us about things that piss him off (a number of which are perfectly valid) using Christian metaphors to do so. Don't be duped into thinking he's talking objective truth just because he mentions God. It's a bit of paint on a soapbox is all.

If you really want to get into it, it's actually a bit temple and marketplace.


Apart from that, not too sure what he's trying to achieve. There's a lot of undesirable things going on in the world, sure. But what about the rest? Surely one should be identifying and empowering the postitive things in life, instead of brooding on everything that's wrong. That'll never do anyone any good. And it'll give you indigestion.

If I were the Devil, I'd create butterflies and rainbows and wee fishies and creativity and jokes and dancing and basic, common, honest-to-goodness human decency.

I GUESS I WOULD LEAVE THINGS PRETTY MUCH THE WAY THEY ARE! etc. etc.

Would a horse do instead?

Ah. Back again.


It seems that the problem wasn't so clear cut. The compiled folder is just not updating when it should be and I'm not sure why.

When I delete it and then save again, a new folder is created with the new data in it, but If I don't delete it, then nothing happens. Hrrrm.

It's not really a huge problem, but is is rather irritating. Any idea at all why it's doing this to me?

Wow.

This is already looking and sounding great.

I'm not able to contribute unfortunately (I'll be digging myself into a deep enough hole with my own game), but I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this one. Keep us posted.