steve

There's really a lot to respond to and I"m having a busy day so I can't catch up to all of it. I'd like to hear anything more big deeb has to say since he's got much more experience in organized religion than the rest of us.

I just had a couple quick thoughts. First, within Christianity, I think God and Jesus are separate. The bible says that God is a vengeful God, but Jesus died for our sins. So in my mind I always picture God taking the stance of "you broke my law, now you get punished, just like I said" but Jesus always arguing for the good in people "have mercy, just forgive him," etc.

One thing I definitely don't understand is why someone who isn't religious would care what other people do. I'm pretty much about maximizing libery, especially in a commercial sense, but I do support certain restrictions demanded by the social contract (which abrogates the state of nature). (state of nature--might makes right)(social contract--we give up certain liberties in exchange for state protection). So if someone isn't religious, why make an issue of what others do? If people want to paint their walls pink and stand on their head in the corner for 6 hrs a day to get closer to God, because that's their interpretation of the bible, who cares?

Lastly, someone mentioned something about law and religion. Law is pretty much 2 parts--dispute resolution and enforcing the social contract. Dispute resolution is everything besides criminal conduct, and criminal conduct is enforcing the social contract. The idea is that if you break your contract with society, you get punished.

It's annoying that I had nothing to do the past few days and there was no good table talk, but now I'm busy and the TT is getting good.