Jersey Girl wrote: ↑Wed Nov 02, 2022 8:36 am
I've returned as promised.
Jersey Girl, glad to hear you found time. You said a bunch of things about which I didn't know whether you wanted me to respond to or not. If you did want me to respond to some things I've omitted, let me know what they are and I'll do my best. For now I'm going to focus on a couple of things you said at the end.
Jersey Girl wrote:There you go with the impossible premise of thinking you are charged with taking care of everybody. What do you mean and who do you think you are that you are charged with taking care of everybody??????
I did a Google search on "the ones who walk away from omelas ursula le guin", and I got a blurb that included: "'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas' is a 1973 work of short philosophical fiction by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin. With deliberately both vague and vivid descriptions, the narrator depicts a summer festival in the utopian city of Omelas, whose prosperity depends on the perpetual misery of a single child." I haven't read this short story (yet), but I've done a lot of thinking about its central question. If an enormous amount of good (in this case the utopian city Omelas) can be brought about with the price the perpetual torture of the one small child, is the price worth it?
I say no, absolutely not. It's never worth it. But our society seems to be saying yes, as long as the small child is so far in the future that it doesn't have to think about her/him a lot. Think about it a little bit. A lot of people ignore predictions of catastrophes caused by global warming ultimately because they're sure those catastrophes won't happen in their lifetimes. Who will pay for the convenience fossil fuel consumption provides them? Future generations! Their children and their grandchildren! Who will pay for congress' liberal use of deficit spending? Future generations. All of society is built on the assumption that when one generation is in its declining years, the next couple of generations will run senior care centers to take care of it. That's fine if those future generations are always guaranteed to exist. Are they?
All of this is just Omelas in another form. The small child who must suffer so that we can enjoy life is always so far in the future that we don't care what happens to her/him. My whole point is that we
need to care. Our consciences should
require us to care. That small child is a real person, with hopes and dreams like all of us, and we can't conscientiously afford to ignore that s/he exists.
I have never meant to say that there is anything special about me. I am not the only person who has to work toward the welfare of everybody who will ever live; I think if we think about it, we all have that responsibility. It's too big a job for any one person to alone do, so we have to divide the herculean task (taking care of the welfare of everybody) among the people willing to provide that service. Figuring out
how to so divide that task is a herculean task itself, and I don't see how anybody but God can pull it off. So I say our consciences
need God.
Jersey Girl wrote:Jersey Girl, do you think that would be on topic?
Yes. Do you?
Really no. This thread began as a discussion of the reasons to believe or not believe in God. Christianity does not own the concept of God. There are many people in the world who believe in God but have no connection with Christianity whatsoever.
All that said, I have no objection to putting what I think about Jesus on the record. He suffered and died for me. I was a servant of sin, sometimes grievous sin, and Jesus set me free from that sin. Jesus is the Son of God, and in a very real sense, Jesus
is God. That is what I think of Jesus.