Christianity

[Lacewing]

I'm all too familiar with those who want to tell the mentally ill to just snap out of it.

So, what's your advice for a mentally ill person?

You ask people here what to do... and you express how hopeless you feel... then you get pissed off at people giving you their honest feedback in the best way they can. You show no gratitude or acknowledgement. Seems like you're just here to vent and get mad at people.

If you don't like the suggestions you're being given, what would be the advice YOU would give to someone else who is expressing all that you're expressing?

[Gary Childress]

I'm all too familiar with those who want to tell the mentally ill to just snap out of it.

So, what's your advice for a mentally ill person?

You ask people here what to do... and you express how hopeless you feel... then you get pissed off at people giving you their honest feedback in the best way they can. You show no gratitude or acknowledgement. Seems like you're just here to vent and get mad at people.

If you don't like the suggestions you're being given, what would be the advice YOU would give to someone else who is expressing all that you're expressing?

Sometimes we don't want advice. Sometimes we just want to find someone else to talk to who will understand. If you don't understand, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Sharing one's woes can itself be therapeutic. At least it makes one feel less like a freak of nature.

[Lacewing]

Sometimes we don't want advice. Sometimes we just want to find someone else to talk to who will understand. If you don't understand, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Sharing one's woes can itself be therapeutic. At least it makes one feel less like a freak of nature.

I do have compassion, Gary... and I wish you the very best. I believe I've told you that. It is my own nature to find ways to empower myself, so it's hard for me to understand why another person wouldn't want that for themselves. Further, this forum is for questioning and challenging all sorts of thoughts and claims. You're essentially asking that people not do that. Are we supposed to turn this into a therapy forum?

People here are showing compassion, but they're being straight-forward in their responses too. You're venting and threatening in a place that is not designed to assist you in such a way. So... is that so you can get more angry?

[Gary Childress]

Sometimes we don't want advice. Sometimes we just want to find someone else to talk to who will understand. If you don't understand, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Sharing one's woes can itself be therapeutic. At least it makes one feel less like a freak of nature.

I do have compassion, Gary... and I wish you the very best. I believe I've told you that. It is my own nature to find ways to empower myself, so it's hard for me to understand why another person wouldn't want that for themselves. Further, this forum is for questioning and challenging all sorts of thoughts and claims. You're essentially asking that people not do that. Are we supposed to turn this into a therapy forum?

People here are showing compassion, but they're being straight-forward in their responses too. You're venting and threatening in a place that is not designed to assist you in such a way. So... is that so you can get more angry?

If I can't show my face or open my mouth in public anymore without using the forum "inappropriately", then I'll just stick to the mental health support forum I belong to. Mainstream websites are clearly not for those down on their luck and on their last leg psychologically. I dropped out of college for the same reason. You all don't want to hear what someone sitting off in some dark corner of existence has to say about things. That's fine. There's nothing you can do anyway. I'll see if I can drum up a philosophical discussion on a support forum website somewhere.

[Harry Baird]

We cannot "love" what we kill for food. Love and killing are two largely opposite things.

Yep. I partially confronted that recognition early on in life when a family friend triggered it in me, and more fully later on in life after reading Animal Liberation by Peter Singer. Adopting a vegetarian diet is the partial response. Adopting veganism is the fuller response.

So the next question becomes, what makes it OK to not love something?

My own answer, which I think is fairly straightforward and uncontroversial, is that it is OK not to love something when it is not conscious, and only then.

If it is that we must love every "soul", then how do we know whether something has a soul or not?

That's a good question and difficult to answer. I think there's good evidence that at least all biological life is conscious (has a soul). That includes plants and microorganisms.

This raises the question: is even veganism an adequate response to the recognition that love and killing for food are incompatible?

There are several ways to respond to the challenge that that poses, from most stringent to least:

1. By further eliminating foods which directly result in plant deaths from one's diet, and eating only "fruit-like" foods - anything that detaches harmlessly from a plant. It could be argued, "But even fruit-like entities are probably conscious", to which an adequate answer seems to be: perhaps, but (a) in the case of sweet fruit, they are specifically made by plants to be eaten (in exchange for spreading the plant's seeds), so it seems unlikely that they suffer in being eaten, and (b) in the case of such entities as seeds, nuts, legumes, etc, they seem more to have the potential for conscious life rather than to be actively living, so the harm in consuming them seems to be far less than in killing and consuming actively living plants themselves.
2. By recognising that animals probably suffer a lot more than plants in agriculture - for example, plants can't move, so aren't harmed by being constrained and constricted as animals are - and using this recognition to justify adopting at least veganism over omnivory even though not going as far as the more stringent fruitarian response above.
3. By recognising that the animals that we raise in agriculture themselves eat plants - great quantities of them - such that eliminating animal products from one's diet saves plant lives anyway, and using this to again justify veganism over omnivory even though not going as far as fruitarianism.

None of these responses is perfect: even under the most stringent option of fruitarianism, plants and animals are killed incidentally, for example, by insecticides in the case of animals (insects, at least) and by land-clearing and weeding in the case of plants. However, they are all a lot better than doing nothing.

I'm pretty tempted to say that a rock does not have a soul. However, there are cultures that seem to believe even rocks possess some kind of "spirit" or something. So can I even truly be sure that rocks don't have souls?

Nope, you can't. I tend towards an animistic outlook, and I think that animistic cultures might be right about this, at least for some entities that our modern culture deems to be inanimate.

If they do, then what constitutes loving a rock? Using it as a dildo? (Please excuse my vulgarity)

I don't think that love in this instance would need to be active; passively not harming or displacing a rock would probably be sufficient.

[seeds]

I'm pretty tempted to say that a rock does not have a soul.

Might I suggest that that's one temptation that you can safely give-in to without any negative consequences to you or a rock.

However, there are cultures that seem to believe even rocks possess some kind of "spirit" or something. So can I even truly be sure that rocks don't have souls? If they do, then what constitutes loving a rock?

Well, one way you can love a rock is by sending $19.25 (plus shipping) to Amazon, and, in return, they will send you this...


_______

[Agent Smith]

So there was this guy, it was the iron age, and he had an urgent message. He was crucified. Was the message delivered/not?

Iron age??!

What age was it?

[BigMike]

So there was this guy, it was the iron age, and he had an urgent message. He was crucified. Was the message delivered/not?

Iron age??!

What age was it?

Gosh! You are correct. Even though you said "iron age" and I repeated it, I actually thought you said "stone age." Unbelievable!

[Agent Smith]

Iron age??!

What age was it?

Gosh! You are correct. Even though you said "iron age" and I repeated it, I actually thought you said "stone age." Unbelievable!

I have Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins to thank for that tidbit. It's true, no?

[Dubious]

So there was this guy, it was the iron age, and he had an urgent message. He was crucified. Was the message delivered/not?

It was the Classical Age, not the Iron Age which preceded it, in which Christ was crucified. The Iron Age ended approx 600 to 500 BCE.

[BigMike]

What age was it?

Gosh! You are correct. Even though you said "iron age" and I repeated it, I actually thought you said "stone age." Unbelievable!

I have Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins to thank for that tidbit. It's true, no?

I love them both.

[Agent Smith]

Gosh! You are correct. Even though you said "iron age" and I repeated it, I actually thought you said "stone age." Unbelievable!

I have Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins to thank for that tidbit. It's true, no?

I love them both.

[Agent Smith]

So there was this guy, it was the iron age, and he had an urgent message. He was crucified. Was the message delivered/not?

It was the Classical Age, not the Iron Age which preceded it, in which Christ was crucified. The Iron Age ended approx 600 to 500 BCE.

I stand corrected. So they were wrong, my sources. Interesting, no? It's a rather difficult project to undertake if we are to make factual connections between Jesus and other minds.

[Dubious]

So there was this guy, it was the iron age, and he had an urgent message. He was crucified. Was the message delivered/not?

It was the Classical Age, not the Iron Age which preceded it, in which Christ was crucified. The Iron Age ended approx 600 to 500 BCE.

I stand corrected. So they were wrong, my sources. Interesting, no? It's a rather difficult project to undertake if we are to make factual connections between Jesus and other minds.

It's nice to know there are some still alive who agree to be corrected!

As for Jesus of whom we know virtually nothing, it took others who never knew him to make up his mind for him. Who knows if a whole new and different personality wasn't created in the gospel exposés which followed much later barely resembling its originator.

[Agent Smith]

It was the Classical Age, not the Iron Age which preceded it, in which Christ was crucified. The Iron Age ended approx 600 to 500 BCE.

I stand corrected. So they were wrong, my sources. Interesting, no? It's a rather difficult project to undertake if we are to make factual connections between Jesus and other minds.

It's nice to know there are some still alive who agree to be corrected!

As for Jesus of whom we know virtually nothing, it took others who never knew him to make up his mind for him. Who knows if a whole new and different personality wasn't created in the gospel exposés which followed much later barely resembling its originator.

That's there, true! Magnum Veritas is all that I can muster with me broken Latin. Allahu Akbar!