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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (14418)	5/25/2001 8:27:46 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 82486

And there is something wrong with people who want to see themselves AND everyone else as a turd. I don't mind in the least if people want to see themselves as turds. In many cases I could even get up some energy to agree. But when you want to see people as turds who do not believe they are turds, you begin to really affect people with your belief system. Such a conception changes the way you view all sorts of important societal issue. Now people have every right in a free country to think this way, but I will always find it a very repellent way of thinking.

To: Lane3 who wrote (14418)	5/26/2001 4:58:52 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 82486

I have been working on a manuscript, but this has nagged at me all day. It represents such a sheer incomprehension of the religious point of view that, at first, I thought I would overlook it, as a courtesy. But I cannot. The religious point of view is that man is "a little lower than the angels", "made in God's image", and the focus of Divine Love. Even with acceptance of the doctrine of Original Sin, as I have pointed out, plenty of religious people do not believe in Total Depravity, and even among those that do, the focus is on that grace which not only saves, but uplifts them. From the religious point of view, it is the atheist who thinks that man is a turd, essentially and irredeemably. Since there is no value in the nature of things, there is no value in man. The reality is that he is just another waste product of a pointless universe. Agnostics are just people who are not sure that man is no better than moss or, for that matter, mud. The objection is, of course, we "make" our own value, and life is so rich, What, me worry? Why we should find it better that we care about certain things, when the truth is, all of it is inherently indifferent, beats me. It would seem to me that it would be worse to know that there is no difference, in the actual order of things, between life and death, heroism and villainy, human dignity and human degradation, that it is all a matter of personal choice and/or social convention. But I am not intent on arguing the point, only in contrasting points of view.......