Robert Seeberger wrote:
In terms of morality and ethics *why* one chooses can be more
important than *what* one chooses.
Yuck! I know you state "can be" and not the absolute "are", but you
still are positing that "in some cases" "the ends justify the means" and
worse "the intent justify the means". "I'm only hurting you because I
think in the end it will help you."
Of all of the slippery slopes in Judeo-Christian ethics, this is the one
that irks me the most, and one that has been used to do so much ill in
the world. As a pragmatist I can certainly understand that there may be
some situations where that might be the case. But I still see it as an
awful moral slope to stand on as ones basic morality. In that sense I
much prefer the (Nichiren) Buddhist focus on one's "actions" and their
consequences. Not decisions, but actions. Less time in the head, more
room for repercussions to hit you (karma, whether you believe it is
cosmic or simply inter-personal).
Again, something I've felt myself, but in this case I find the idea a
bit solipsistic (maybe narcissistic is a better word).
Not being much on Bible literalism, I feel that the Garden story is a
metaphor for the birth of human self-awareness. In that sense the
shame of loosing the Garden is akin to a longing for the "golden-age"
where we didn't have to think so much.(As Homo Sapiens it is our
nature to think about things even when those things pain us.)
But it elevates stupidity, nostalgia and ignorance over knowledge and
futurity! There was no golden age, ever. Just mindless, ignorant,
brutal survival.
The Bible is backward. It starts in beauty and ends in pain. Life so
often starts with pain and ends with some semblance of beauty, albeit so
often hidden in pain: the beauty of love, of experience and wisdom, of
the power of family and society.
Human history seems to have started amidst turmoil and pain, and I'd
love to hope ends in brilliant beauty.
I've always joked that I could write a better bible if I thought people
might actually care to read it. Only problem is I'd have to
conscientiously leave out the Monotheism, Patriarchal Society, Vengeance
and Miracles, and then you don't have much of a bible. A good story,
perhaps, but nothing people would battle to the death over, which
appears to be such a major goal of Western Civilization's organized
religion. (I sometimes wonder if the Greeks did too good of a job in
trying to separate the useful Philosophy from Religion that all that was
left was the Irrational stuff...)
--
--Max Battcher--
http://www.worldmaker.net/
"I'm gonna win, trust in me / I have come to save this world / and in
the end I'll get the grrrl!" --Machinae Supremacy, Hero (Promo Track)
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