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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Jun 19, 2010 - 02:35am PT
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Viking is a verb. It can be, but is usually a noun. "Vik" is an old Norse word meaning (roughly) a bay, many such of which are found in Scandinavia. It is a root in many modern Scandinavian place names, with "The Vik" an old-fashioned reference to Oslo fjord. "Viking" came to mean someone from a vik, but the exact derivation is unclear. Christian monks wrote most of what was written about Vikings at the time, and had no reason to say anything nice about them.
Sometimes English writers say someone is "going a-Viking".
On another note, TripL7 and others regularly refer to their god as saying we should or shouldn't do certain things. Things which are prohibited or severely restricted by most human cultures and religions, and which are sometimes claimed to be moral law. Behaviours that humans developed as we went from nomadic hunter-gatherers to settled agricultural folk, at much higher densities and frictions. Don't murder. If you fool around with someone else's spouse, assume problems. Don't steal. Don't lie. Do unto others. There's no need for a religious basis for any such requirements - it's simple social balance.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 19, 2010 - 03:36am PT
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Largo writes:
Material reductionism says that all "things" (from effects to stuff to energies to dreams to imaginings about God to tidal waves) are "produced," sourced or issue from atomic or energetic antecedents.
The common usage of "produced" implies a causal chain of interconnected occurances, a sequence. For instance, a factory produces a widget. They start with the raw materials and a mold, and the sequence proceeds from there to the finished product.
If the brain is said to produce thought, then we start with atomic/chemical stirrings, followed by a sequence in which A influences B which influences C and, viola, through this on-going process in real time we end up with thinking.
We might not yet have sufficient understanding of the intricate processes behind thought, insofar that we can specifically chart out the causal chain of those biochemical and electrowhatever happenings, but if thoughts are indeed "produced" but the evolved brain, than the causal chain must be there.
That is, unless someone here is saying and can explain that A) Yes, the evolved brain produces thought, and B) there is no causal chain linking the original atomic activity said to "produce" thinking, and the thinking itself.
If B is true, then by what process does the brain actually "produce" thinking?
I still don't get what the point is... certainly I would say that thoughts are produced by the brain, and that there is some process by which it occurs, a process that is physical, and involves the material that the brain is made of.
As yet, I cannot describe that process, I don't know what it is, but that is my working hypothesis. I would then proceed to formulate tests of that hypothesis and see if the observations of the tests are consistent with it, or rule it out.
In order to make sense of your "causal chain" which I think you intend to be a precise thing, we must have a similarly precise definition of thought, mind, consciousness. You have demurred in providing your precise definitions. But without such a definition it is hard to establish or refute the existence of such a causal link.
However, the causal link appears to be extremely important to your view point. I have utterly failed to understand why that is...
Also, the causal link you propose is "classical" and perhaps this is where the "quantum" sneaks into the various authors you have referenced, though my criticism remains the same of those ideas. But let me explain it a bit more.
Einstein's major criticism of quantum mechanics was essentially over a philosophical aesthetic, that our description of the universe are required to observe "local realism"... you can look on Wikipedia for more on this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_realism
In your example, A can influence B only if they are "local," and that the outcome for any influence pre-exist, that is that they do not depend on the influence.
The problem is, of course, that our formulations of quantum mechanics either violate "local realism" or something called "counterfactual definiteness" the idea that the result of the influence has a single, definite result.
So one way of breaking your classical causal chain is to revert to quantum mechanics... and propose that the brain is a quantum computer of sorts... the problem with that is the conditions to create a quantum computer in the brain do not exist, and the required entanglement of the quantum states, the "wave functions" would be destroyed by the interactions of those states with the "outside world," basically heat...
...in another way, however, you have to be careful to remember that the wave functions of quantum mechanics are not, themselves, physical objects. QM's constructs such a world in order to prescribe a computational procedure who's results correctly predict the probability of the system being in a particular state. Imagining the actual wave functions as "real objects" has caused almost a century of confusion trying to understand just what, exactly, is going on...
...I'd say we don't know, but it is sure to cause a lot of flack. But the interpretation of Quantum Mechanics has yet to be provided. Perhaps we don't need it yet.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jun 19, 2010 - 05:02am PT
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Ed:
That's some deep stuff and it seems like physicists have as many takes on it all as the various baptist sects have on god. I have to admit to getting lost pretty quick in the thick of it. I get the wave/particle thing, but clearly don't grasp all the various implications which flow from pondering such things. Still, fascinating stuff for as long as I can follow it all - all the more so that some folks were pondering this at a time when the world largely still ran on animal power, gas, and steam.
jstan:
I think you're on to something with your comment on music. It is so 'of us' and reassuring. And the rote aspect of how we learn it also plays many assimilative, bonding, and identifying roles in a tribe or society. I think where it differs from religion is that while music maintains many of its rote functions, it also serves as a vehicle for many people to explore and express themselves through improv and the creation of new music. Religious dogma and doctrine by contrast don't encourage you to improv and riff off the basics or generate your own view of things. If it did, then half the posts in this thread wouldn't be comprised of the same centuries-old dead folk quotes.
Largo:
Your trick question is maybe just a little too trick for the likes of me as once I'm hemmed in by the causal chasm on one side and a disinterest in getting religous or new-agey on the othe other I dumb-up pretty quick relative to where to go at that point. Maybe if I had more education and chops in something like phsyics or philosophy like you guys it might not feel so much like staring at a brick wall and having someone ask 'how can we move forward'. As it is, my basic instinctual response doesn't get much deeper than 'huh?'
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Jun 19, 2010 - 08:58am PT
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"two little fishie and a mama fishie too
"boop-boop, dittem-dattem-wattem choo!
"wow! that shark almost ate me for ...
"seafood, mama!"
jan is one wise woman. i hope fructose learns to listen to her.
i guess that was healyje's problem with the surfboard. de viking vasn't verking vor de viking. (vorgive me, voden)
i hope largo isn't throwing in the towel. he gets hung up on his own metaphors, but we all do in trying to describe the, ah, difficult to know (i almost said unknowable, which would have been hanging up on one myself). my problem with his recent post, and he's done it before, is the emptiness he refers to, emptiness "between atoms" in this case. from what i know of the subject, and it isn't a very professional understanding, there's lots of space between atoms and within atoms. atoms are essentially empty space governed by tiny particles with forces at work on them. the particles themselves fall apart in that old dance of the wu li masters. and space itself is something called spacetime. so largo's emptiness is--extraspatial? so hard to go there. happening in his mind? ergo just a subjective construct of his? why should i even try to go there?
ed: what i know of the relativity-quantum debate is einstein's remark to niels bohr: "god does not play dice". as i understand, the debate continues to this day, although "god" does indeed play dice when you let light into a camera oscura one photon at a time.
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go-B
climber
In God We Trust
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Jun 19, 2010 - 09:20am PT
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That is not true repentance which does not come of faith in Jesus,
and that is not true faith in Jesus which is not tinctured with repentance.
Charles Spurgeon
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Jun 19, 2010 - 09:28am PT
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gobeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee's BACK!
thou shalt not sin, said arthur dimmesdale.
um, getting back to sex here, tripl, jesus said whoever looks at a woman with lust in his heart--commits adultery with her, i guess, right?
but norton was talking about looking at his wife with lust in his heart. jesus didn't say "... a woman other than one's wife ...", right? so you literal bible dudes are stuck with that sucker--can't even look upon your own wife with lust.
just a little reasoning from a premise. i look at my woman that way all the time and would never take jesus seriously on sexual matters because, frankly, he didn't know squat.
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426
climber
Buzzard Point, TN
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Jun 19, 2010 - 10:34am PT
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"The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also."
— Mark Twain
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Boulder Creek CA
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Jun 19, 2010 - 12:12pm PT
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Mark Twain was wise. It's all about awareness...not just self centered awareness or socially acceptable awareness or peer-reviewed awareness...
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 19, 2010 - 12:30pm PT
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the debate is not a debate anymore, at least not about physics.... John Bell took Einstein's criticism and from it derived a quantitative relationship, known as the "Bell inequality," which can be tested in experiments.
it has, and it comes down on the side of quantum mechanics.
What the problem is, I believe, is trying to make physical sense out of something that is not physical: wave functions, ψ, and their combinations... which are very much a model construction of how the world works. We are all taught, on our first introduction to the wave function, that it is not an observable, but only its magnitude ψ*ψ, which corresponds to a probability, is observable.
The way that ψ is manipulated is well described, however we run into many of these philosophical problems on the interpretation of the quantum mechanics by insisting that our abstract model of reality, depending on ψ, has a physical interpretation. It might, but there may be something else which provides a better model, by which I mean helps resolve some inconsistency of theory with experiment, that would subsume our old models and help us progress in our understanding.
This property of quantum mechanics, which Einstein referred to as "spooky action at a distance" is the stuff of entanglement so much in vogue these days... and entanglement is a property of the wavefunction ψ that Bell's theorem establishes as the correct description, and thus we find that quantum mechanics violates Einstein's cherished aesthetic of "local realism."
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Jun 19, 2010 - 12:53pm PT
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mark twain, quite the affable atheist.
my wife and i celebrated our 25th anniversary a year ago in lustful cohabitation at a bed and breakfast in angel's camp, scene of twain's "celebrated jumping frog of calaveras county". the little town is a real kick--they have the jumping frog walk (hop?) of fame on their sidewalks, with world records that sound incredible until someone tells you you have to divide the figures by three--it's judged by three consecutive leaps, and good luck if they're in the same direction.
angel's camp has probably the best rock-and-shell shop on the planet, complete with a spry octogenarian who gives public lectures on paleontology. i hope i'm cooking like he is 18 years from now. but forget the poopy for-tourists cabin south of town, built on the site of twain's stay in the area in the 1860s. not the original cabin, just there for tourists, and it's the second cabin they built, and there's a scrupulous history on a metal plaque of the first tourist trap cabin and how it got run down and how the local kiwanis-rotary or whatever rebuilt it. it's got a fence around it so it won't be attacked by terrorists, and you can walk around it and peep in at the faux log cabin work. twain rolled over in his grave twice over this. don't visit this cabin to look at the cabin, but it's in a pretty place in the woods.
we were fortunate that a genuine mark twain scholar stayed at the B&B at the same time. i shielded my eyes so as not to look at his wife with lust. it's gonna be hard to start shielding my eyes with my own wife because she's around here all day and sometimes she even sneaks up on me.
this scholar said that the reason twain came to angels camp (named after a guy named george angel, by the way) was that he and several buddies, all from san francisco, were helping one of their group hide from the law, apparently a genuine murder rap. real wild west stuff--holing up in the woods on the lam. just helping a friend out, i guess--a streak of loyalty twain apparently never talked much about. the jumping frog story, which he picked up one day when he came to town for supplies and a dram, was published in a magazine in new york and effectively launched his career as a successful writer.
btw, there's a great mark twain collection at uc-berkeley. this scholar was fresh from visiting there. it was such a fun stay we almost forgot about all that lust that had brought us together.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Jun 19, 2010 - 01:01pm PT
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oh, norton, picky picky. jesus himself got angry at the moneychangers in the temple, a regular tantrum the dude threw. don't you understand yet that it's okay if jesus does it because he's god, but not okay for you and me because we gotta follow rules?
norton, you are such an ignoramus. men are never stoned to death for adultery. women get the stoning because it's their fault for being too beautiful.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Jun 19, 2010 - 01:13pm PT
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Thanks, Tony, for straightening my sinful white ass out about that.
Intellectual cowards, every damn one of them.
I am doomed.
Come on Gobby, tell us again how Half Dome was instantly created only 6000 years ago.
Edit, I got post 1600, only thirty thousand more to go.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jun 19, 2010 - 01:34pm PT
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Being what my wife technically refers to as an 'Irish whore', I personally think it is a sin to not appreciate the charms of a woman who 'works' for you on a genital entanglement level. Acting on that appreciation is another matter, but lust? I'm with Donini - desire until death or death once desire is gone.
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go-B
climber
In God We Trust
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Jun 19, 2010 - 02:15pm PT
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Jun 19, 2010 - 02:20pm PT
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Jesus, I've been trying to get out of this discussion but here goes:
Ed wrote: In order to make sense of your "causal chain" which I think you intend to be a precise thing, we must have a similarly precise definition of thought, mind, consciousness. You have demurred in providing your precise definitions. But without such a definition it is hard to establish or refute the existence of such a causal link.
My logic so far is to first go after what I believe are the holes in looking at a strictly materialistic point of reality. Unless we can agree what the basic material and non-material and factors are, any definition I posit would immediately be shot down if it didn't conform to a material reductionist system. A system that focuses strictly on material is great - with material. The limitation is you will never see nor even imagine anything beyond material, and most materialist wouldn't want to anyhow.
I posited the two views of Container Space and Relational Space, stating that my view is that neither is absolutely true or absolutely false, but that, paradoxically, direct experience shows us examples of both metaphysical approaches. In terms of hard science - and I'm no scientist - relativity seems to favor relational space. However the general theory of relativity, I am told, re-introduces container-like features such as the possibility of completely empty universes. Perhaps both Container Space and Relational Space are at play, depending on your perspective or what's in your field of view.
In terms of mind, you either have conscious cognitive content or you do not not. When you do not have thoughts, in those little gaps between, perhaps you might get some little sense of timeless "container space." One perspective would be to consider that space as created by thought or material/atomic stirrings, but this, in fact, is just another thought or thought process that has come to fill the space once more. The brain might say, "It's all an illusion," but this is just the analytical mind trying to
label what "it" (what I'm here calling container space) is or is not. And how about when we settle into that spaced between thoughts and the brains says, "There's nothing here. There's nothing to talk about."
Tis would be correct in one in important sense, so rather than talk about "nothing" or container space, some meditation practices focus on simply trig to be there, hanging out in nowhere. Enough time there and you'll start to understand that container space and relational space are really the same things. The ever changing flux of experience rises like a geyser, existing in mid-air for a second or a century, but in time, falling back to the source. We ;accord reality the dignity that when the geyser rises, or forms take shape, be they thoughts or pitons or the side of Half Dome, they are really and truly "there." It's the "nothing at all" and "no place" from which they arise and to where they return, that little gap at the end of your last thought and the start of your next, where worlds fall down and certainly is lost for a moment. Maybe I will try and make this "space" more tangible - my knee is f*#ked up so I can't climb or bike - but I need some time to consider this. I'm not demuring to frame this all in words, but I need time to run up to it.
E wrote: "However, the causal link appears to be extremely important to your view point. I have utterly failed to understand why that is..."
The causal link HAS TO BE there, totally unbroken, for material reductionism to be a viable theory. You have here a totally mechanistic system of causation. It cannot, at any stage, fail to act like a machine. I was forcing the conversation in the hopes of probing those places and conditions to where the mechanism apparently seems to break down, or to where other factors need to be introduced to "explain" how A lead to B leads to C. I am NOT saying that God or any super duper big man is required to "explain" how, say, atomic stirring in the brain produce thought, only promoting looking at how material itself might not be the end-all source of "all." However, if you conceive of "all" only in terms of material, we're stuck.
JL
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Jun 19, 2010 - 03:09pm PT
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Here comes another "devil's advocate" comment/question(s):
How many of the "Christians" here have ever read the Gnostic Gospels?
Why were so many other sacred texts discarded by the wayside at the Council of Nicea?
How were the "Books of the Bible" really selected? Why were these selected?
Why was the Council of Nicea even held?
Now I'm going to go lurk in my cave and await the answers to these questions from the know-it-all Christians. Some answers to these will be provided in a subsequent post.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Jun 19, 2010 - 04:15pm PT
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gobee, a little religious humor for you--
a priest and a rabbi were pretty good friends and would sit down to a dash of irish whiskey or mogen david from time to time. and they would bare their souls.
so the priest asks, tell me, rabbi, i know you jews have a strict ban against eating pork, but did you ever, just once, out of curiosity, give in to it and eat a little pork?
after a bit of a pause the rabbi admits, yes, he did eat pork once.
then he asks, father, now i know that catholic priests must observe strict celibacy, but did you ever, maybe just once, out of curiosity, did you ever have a woman?
after quite a longer pause the priest, in a small voice, admits, yes, he did once.
the rabbi: beats eating pork, doesn't it?
brokedown: we've talked a little about the gnostic gospels previously on this thread. i've read pagels and ehrman on the subject. none of the professed christians seems to want to touch it.
ed, i hate it when a real physicist comes along. i'd rather read books by real physicists--they have to be edited by ignoramuses, making them a lot easier to understand.
so, at the risk of making this a physics lesson, you're saying that a wave function is not physical? is a wave physical?
and einstein's "local realism"--is that the special theory of relativity? if so, does a refutation of local realism affect the general theory of relativity?
largo: a little off your topic here, but perhaps it might be helpful. you're a zazen heavy on the one hand, but on the other you undertook a rather mainstream protestant heavily academic and theoretical graduate christian seminary-type education, from what i know of the claremont school of theology. i'd be interested in a short sketch on how these twain might meet.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Jun 19, 2010 - 04:27pm PT
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"lust", by the way, is a germanic word. "lustig" in german means healthy, robust, full of the joy of life.
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TripL7
Trad climber
san diego
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Jun 19, 2010 - 04:49pm PT
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"You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment,' But I say to you whoever is angry to his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And who ever says to his brother 'Raca!" Shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says 'You fool!' shall be in danger of hell fire.
Therefore, if you bring your gift to the alter, and remember that your brother has something against you...First be reconciled to your brother, then come offer your gift.
Agree with your adversary quickly...lest the adversary deliver you to the judge...and you be thrown into prison." Matthew 5:21-25
Key words: "without cause"!!
Norton, you had cause to be angry at the women who beat her dog. It would have been tantamount to Jesus' righteous anger at the money changers(who were cheating and inflating cost etc.)in the Temple!!
Norton & T Bird...Once again, what you refer to as "lust/lusting for/with your "WIVES", Jesus would consider it as LOVE...and bless it!
Jesus was simply warning people what could happen with anger and hate in ones heart...it could go from an internal to external act.
And what good does it do to carry bitterness and anger with us...it is like a cancer that eats away and destroys you.
Therefore it is better to:
"Be angry and do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place for the devil." Ephesians 4:26
In other words, get a handle on it, and don't let your anger turn into murder!
Good advice, no?
The Lord's Prayer says "Forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors..."
"For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses." Matthew 6:14-15
God will forgive us of anything, if we ask. He did not say that He would eliminate all the consequences of our actions, so once again, it is better to think before we act. And reflect on all He has forgiven us for.
Just some good advice(like M. H. observed)in my humble opinion...
Anger and bitterness is destructive, we are all aware of this. I have a bad temper, and have major reasons to be very angry at individuals who have wronged me. And there are many that I have wronged...
Jesus has helped me with these issues, as Cragman and ID would say..."Glory be to God!"
Edit: And in regards to sexual lusting for a women who is not your wife, for example your secretary, or fellow worker, or your boss...how often has something that started in ones mind, ended up with a divorce or worse? That is what Jesus is telling us to 'nip it in the bud'!!
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Jun 19, 2010 - 06:25pm PT
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tripl, you got the key words right, but back it up one notch. anger without cause is a relative rarity, if not a nonentity.
the thing about jesus is that he really didn't have much insight, into anger or sexual desire or most of the other things he would touch on ever so lightly. what he did real well, however, was to pose as god's know-it-all, deliver a batch of lukewarm plattitudes, and then withdraw from the alleged crowds he attracted. he was quite the aloof character, and that's what damages his credibility with so many of us. we don't see a guy who ever got down here in the mix where most of us spend our lives and made real sense of it.
i don't think it's an accident that jesus was aloof. most gurus are. each one of them delivers a limited wisdom. the big ones start religions, but none of them really turns out to be the universal code for humanity that it strives to be. bottom line? gotta figure it out for yourself. it's what we're here to do.
btw, i'm in a second marriage. divorce was one of the best things that happened to me.
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