religion and love

Quote:

---

cacian: love is unconditional
god isn't
one cannot compare the two as being one and the sane covenant or not.

---

Very profound cacian. May I say the ideal for us is unconditional love - this is what faith teaches us and so many struggle with. God's love is not unconditional, as you noted, as some might erroneously espouse. I think you meant 'same' instead of "sane" in S3... but I get your drift.

An LDS view of divine love: https://www.lds.org/ensign/2003/02/divine-love?lang=eng

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor STATELY

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lokasenna

The nasty little cynic who lives in a dark corner of my soul, and who makes himself known more often than is probably healthy for me, has come to the conclusion that love of one's own offspring is merely personal vanity in a more socially acceptable form. It is self-love transferred to a little meat homunculus made in one's own image (and produced by one's own... er... exertions). This is the only reason my inner cynic has for explaining why other people find their interchangeable mini-Winston Churchills either a) adorable or b) interesting.

---

It occurred to me that I might be more of a cynic than you are. I don't think the human species would survive if it had to rely on personal vanity. We need pleasure-pain chemicals in our brains to encourage us to reproduce, stay together and then take care of the children.

But even with all this chemical reinforcement to do what we are supposed to do we can still choose to mess things up. If we do, the punishment is swift, if not for us, for someone else. I suppose this could be viewed as karma or conditional love.

It all seems mechanical and impersonal when chemicals are involved, but I think it has been deliberately set up this way. The idea that someone would go through all that trouble for us helps to melt the cynic in me. It's all a hint of what it's all about.

I've no starry eyed view of parental love. I can recite Larkins' These be the verse by heart and with feeling.


But hang on. You said love has to be earned. I gave an example where it is not earned (and getting up in the night to care for a baby is an act of love, whatever the motivation). Then you seemed to say that isn't really love.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

It occurred to me that I might be more of a cynic than you are. I don't think the human species would survive if it had to rely on personal vanity. We need pleasure-pain chemicals in our brains to encourage us to reproduce, stay together and then take care of the children.

But even with all this chemical reinforcement to do what we are supposed to do we can still choose to mess things up. If we do, the punishment is swift, if not for us, for someone else. I suppose this could be viewed as karma or conditional love.

It all seems mechanical and impersonal when chemicals are involved, but I think it has been deliberately set up this way. The idea that someone would go through all that trouble for us helps to melt the cynic in me. It's all a hint of what it's all about.

---

Interesting theory, Yes/No, but if everything related to love went down to chemicals, destructive people(including parents, and relatives) and destructive groups might be cured with the adequate chemical treament.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Danik 2016

Interesting theory, Yes/No, but if everything related to love went down to chemicals, destructive people(including parents, and relatives) and destructive groups might be cured with the adequate chemical treament.

---

Love isn't reduced to chemistry. There is only a biological support for it. As a pleasure and pain support it implies we have to make choices which often aren't easy taking us beyond what can be explained biologically.

Yes, I guess it is by what is called the human free will, that the complications start. Sometimes I wish humans were as single minded as animals. They at least are generally bend in protecting their own species and their own group.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O-BFMcwiY8

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Danik 2016

Yes, I guess it is by what is called the human free will, that the complications start. Sometimes I wish humans were as single minded as animals. They at least are generally bend in protecting their own species and their own group.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O-BFMcwiY8

---

Nice rescue of the baby elephant. The older elephants also had the sense to lead the baby to an area where the slope was not as steep.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by cacian

should they be kept
separate
or
together?

Jesus loves you is a religious point of view and not a statement.

---

Like the two could be kept apart. It entails rewriting most Christmas carrols. I don't like that, as I am very fond of Christmas the way it used to be. God's angels would turn into mere soldiers, right, or bodyguards?

In every religion it is love that is struggling to emerge from the cultural maze of dictates it is ensnared in. Social order works better, too, when passionate humanity has constant reminders of good behavior versus the non empathic kind. This kind of reminder is better than a billy club or a posted ordinance that you shall love your neighbor as yourself, or else. I will choose threats deferred to a later Hell over those autocratic reminders.

I have frequently advocated that the Bible be reduced to the size of a first volume of poetry containing only advice that is valuable to people in their daily lives. One benefit is that Bibles on motel nightstands might actually be read with enjoyment and a greater chance of personal transformation because of the new density of meaningful words. You could do this with all the holy books of the world. Then you could even combine them into one text!

What would this new volume contain, ideally? Well, (it seems like a month since I kissed my baby goodbye) firstly, why would anyone need in their daily lives the creation myths of any religion? They are all bogus guesswork, and they have to go. After you get rid of the geneologies and outdated advice, you would not have a condensed Bible but a stripped Bible. A stripped Bible the world could use, and probably would more frequently.

This volume would be almost exclusively about love, wouldn't it? True, it would be a somewhat secularized text. The kind of love from One that enacted deadly pogroms against

Amorites
Canaanites
Ba-shan-ites
Midianites
Perizzites
Hivites
Jebusites
Makkedahites
Libnah
Lachish
Eglon
Hebronites
Debir
Gibeonites

would be absent from the text. The bulk of the advice of daily value to us would come from those passages involving right behavior and love. I would also include any instance of outstanding poetry.

The full Bible would still be around for scholars and diehards, it would not be outlawed or anything like that? I think the stripped Bible would be useful for its density of good advice.

My larger deli-loaf holy book would contain the truly wise words of all the world's major religions stripped from nonsensical surroundings, placed in new company, and might be no thicker than the collected poetry of Phillip Larkin.

Instead of stripping the Bible or other sacred texts, one could write and even longer commentary. Or shorter commentary. In particular I am thinking of the three volume commentary on the Bhagavad Gita by Eknath Easwaran as a good example of how to make sense out of an ancient sacred text.

Do we really need a whole Iliad or Hamlet or any of the world's other great books? Why don't we just strip them all down, so they can be read with pleasure, on the back of a post it note or a cracker jack box? Scholars would still have the whole War and Peace. What do modern people get out of all that stuff about Napoleon really?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mortalterror

Do we really need a whole Iliad or Hamlet or any of the world's other great books? Why don't we just strip them all down, so they can be read with pleasure, on the back of a post it note or a cracker jack box? Scholars would still have the whole War and Peace. What do modern people get out of all that stuff about Napoleon really?

---

I like your argument. However, what we do is strip them down anyway. Do you think more people on earth have read the Illiad than have seen the movie Troy starring Bad Pitt? Stripped it down. Guess what? Meanwhile, the full the text of the Illiad is still around for fans like me and you of the wine-blue sea and the rosey-fingered dawn. I have known more than a few people with Biblical verses on placards stuck all over their walls. Stripped it down. There is nothing wrong with it. It is already done in a variety of ways. My suggestion is more inclusive, but can act as an immediate spiritual guide and comfort. Do you think more people read the Bible as literati or historians than read it for spiritual comfort and guidance? There is no comfort or guidance in a genealogical list. I propose, however, there is high entertainment value in reading a recitation by Achilles of an ancestor's deeds or grievances before he and his opponent engage swords. Achilles then listens to his opponent's recitation, as well. Biblical geneaologies will not entertain, comfort or guide anyone of sound mind.

Are you offended if you listen to the radio and only the best song with the most popular appeal from a hit play is aired? The distillation process will go on all around us increasingly so. Shorter packets is the key to the mind of the wider public--ma and pa Kettle, let's say--but not the key to good literature, which cares nothing about the size of the packet it is delivered in.

Now, of course I never proposed doing this to literature in general. That was your gut reaction coming to the fore. There was a reason for doing it only to the holy books that billions of people profess to believe were divnely received from the old boy himself. Billions of people react differently to these books than any other books. They take the evil garbage in them literally right along with the beautiful precepts. Try chewing your favorite food on one side of your mouth and a live frog on the other. This is all right for those of us who must. But the the broken-hearted, the grieving, the suicidal, need immediate references to guide and comfort them. Isn't that largely what the content of these books is supposed to do on a humanitarian level, or are more people interested in reading them as literature again? Even in those literature classes, they do not assign the entire Bible to read, do they? Select books and passages might be assigned. That is like you doing it. Are you mad at yourself, lad? We all participate in the distillation somewhere, barely even thinking of it.

I'll admit that something like what you describe already exists and has for nearly two thousand years. My mother has been reading out of a prayer book filled with all kinds of upbeat inspirational parts of the Bible as long as I've been alive. The Roman Breviary, Book of Common Prayer, or Book of Hours also fulfills this function among various denominations. Before those came about, people would often use Psalters which were mostly just the Book of Psalms.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mortalterror

I'll admit that something like what you describe already exists and has for nearly two thousand years. My mother has been reading out of a prayer book filled with all kinds of upbeat inspirational parts of the Bible as long as I've been alive. The Roman Breviary, Book of Common Prayer, or Book of Hours also fulfills this function among various denominations. Before those came about, people would often use Psalters which were mostly just the Book of Psalms.

---

I have heard the names of those distillations but could not have told you that is what they are. I suspected such things might already exist in some form. So I learned something. Whether many would be inspired to learn that my deli-loaf holy book had replaced (or joined) the Bible on the their motel nighstand, is dubious. It would be basically a multi-cultural version of your mother's prayer book. That probably already exists, too.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by desiresjab

Like the two could be kept apart. It entails rewriting most Christmas carrols. I don't like that, as I am very fond of Christmas the way it used to be. God's angels would turn into mere soldiers, right, or bodyguards?

In every religion it is love that is struggling to emerge from the cultural maze of dictates it is ensnared in. Social order works better, too, when passionate humanity has constant reminders of good behavior versus the non empathic kind. This kind of reminder is better than a billy club or a posted ordinance that you shall love your neighbor as yourself, or else. I will choose threats deferred to a later Hell over those autocratic reminders.

I have frequently advocated that the Bible be reduced to the size of a first volume of poetry containing only advice that is valuable to people in their daily lives. One benefit is that Bibles on motel nightstands might actually be read with enjoyment and a greater chance of personal transformation because of the new density of meaningful words. You could do this with all the holy books of the world. Then you could even combine them into one text!

What would this new volume contain, ideally? Well, (it seems like a month since I kissed my baby goodbye) firstly, why would anyone need in their daily lives the creation myths of any religion? They are all bogus guesswork, and they have to go. After you get rid of the geneologies and outdated advice, you would not have a condensed Bible but a stripped Bible. A stripped Bible the world could use, and probably would more frequently.

This volume would be almost exclusively about love, wouldn't it? True, it would be a somewhat secularized text. The kind of love from One that enacted deadly pogroms against

Amorites
Canaanites
Ba-shan-ites
Midianites
Perizzites
Hivites
Jebusites
Makkedahites
Libnah
Lachish
Eglon
Hebronites
Debir
Gibeonites

would be absent from the text. The bulk of the advice of daily value to us would come from those passages involving right behavior and love. I would also include any instance of outstanding poetry.

The full Bible would still be around for scholars and diehards, it would not be outlawed or anything like that? I think the stripped Bible would be useful for its density of good advice.

My larger deli-loaf holy book would contain the truly wise words of all the world's major religions stripped from nonsensical surroundings, placed in new company, and might be no thicker than the collected poetry of Phillip Larkin.

---

I am no mantra but
IF god is immortal and love isn't
how does one bridge the gap?

With the f-word (which is faith, by the way).