Raf

I thought that was tailor-made for word wolf, but you are correct.

My point, by the way, was not to make an accurate statement about Buddhism but to demonstrate that we tend to treat the claims of other religions with more skepticism than the claims of our own. Elijah ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire. Jesus ascended with no vehicle at all. Mohammed ascended to heaven on a winged horse. Well, that third claim is just silly.

Okeydoke... One of the main characters in this popular, comedic action movie seriously contemplates suicide. The actor did such a good job with that scene that he was offered the role of another classic character who also famously contemplates suicide. He did it. That is, the actor took the role. Neither character committed suicide, but one of them didn't survive until closing credits. The other stayed alive through three sequels. Name the popular, comedic action movie, and the classic character (also the name of the second movie).

Hang on. I think I just had a stroke. j/k

But Moving Right Along is straight up Muppet Movie.

Pretty sure they rode bicycles in The Great Muppet Caper.

How much ungodly fruit does TWI have to bear before you recognize it was an ungodly tree?

No one bought that, eh?

I've always felt it was more About the Way than it was doctrinal, but it's off topic here either way. ;)

Okay, so my exploration about the nature of evil is a direct consequence of my opposition to the opening quote of this thread ("the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he does not exist"). If the devil doesn't exist, how do we explain evil? And who gets to decide what is or is not evil? So that's why I thought my comments were on topic at the time. But I do recognize that others may see it as an expansion of the original topic. In any event, Chockfull still asks some great questions here that deserve an answer. With your permission, I'll take a crack at it. "If evil can be objectively measured, it is by a standard. What is that standard?" Excellent question, but you only explored half of it. The fundamentalist will say "God's Word." Actually, the fundamentalist will say the Bible, but the more spiritual might say "God's Word" without necessarily restricting that term to the Bible. I know, hard to imagine "God's Word" and "The Bible" being two different things, but most of Christianity has held that position for hundreds and hundreds of years. I won't get into the inadequacy of the Bible as a standard for determining what is good and what is evil because I believe that concept is explored in quite a bit of detail on another thread. That thread, however, does not explore the concept of evil. It takes for granted that we all agree slavery is evil, executing someone for a petty crime (like breaking the sabbath) is evil, and punishing a rapist by forcing him to marry the woman he raped is evil. But the question of what makes those things evil is not explored. What we do see on that thread is an argument that I was being a little less than fair because "it was another time." "Different laws for different cultures" was literally the opening of the very first reply, as though that is even remotely relevant. How can we argue that it's NOT "OK to rape, pillage, torture, kill, as long as it is a stranger tribe" if "different laws for different cultures" is an adequate response to the nature of evil. So we're going to agree here that... ...is inadequate. My moral code does not determine what is good or evil. Neither does yours or anyone else's. Neither does the Bible's. Good and evil are subjective by definition. But that does not mean their basis has to be. If we can agree on a sound basis for determining good and evil, then we can independently reach identical conclusions regardless of our backgrounds, cultures, historical time periods, etc. We won't always agree, but he areas in which we disagree can be narrowed down significantly. Every culture ever agrees that murder is wrong. But they do not agree on what constitutes murder. Is abortion murder? Is it murder to kill in self-defense? Is it murder to kill as punishment for violating a law against sabbath breaking? Against stealing? Against rape? Against murder? Different cultures disagree. But everyone agrees murder is wrong. Stealing. Every culture agrees it's wrong. Rape. Most cultures agree it's wrong (I'm being deliberately obtuse here. I want to say "every," but I don't want to presume). You get the idea. What do all these things have in common? They all objectively cause harm to people, and causing harm to people is NOT a matter of opinion. So I'm going to propose, in a simplistic way, that "good" is our way of describing those acts which benefit society or at least do society no harm, while "evil" is our way of pointing out those actions that harm individuals or society. We can explore this basis of determining good and evil, and we can refine it, but people of good will can likely agree that if I'm harming people with no justification, I'm committing evil. None of this requires a god to define good or a devil to personify evil. It requires people to hold themselves and each other accountable for their actions and their motives. And it gives us an objective basis to judge outside ourselves without the interference of a deity or a god's law. That's why I flinch at the concept of a devil. Blaming him for the presence of evil is a failure to accept responsibility for the things we do. In my opinion.

Fascinating.

Before I answer or attempt to answer the excellent questions you raise, let me ask you this. Are you allowing me in this discussion to expand the parameters of the thread you started? And are you allowing Bolshevik the same privilege to expand the topic in the direction that he wants to expand it? The second answer will determine my future responses to his posts.

Now, if you take for granted that Moses wrote Numbers, then what you have here is Moses calling himself more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth. Which I suppose can be written off as hyperbole. I mean, really, no one more humble? Yuhrite. But I submit that qualifies as self-referential greatness. [This, of course, evaporates when you realize Moses probably didn't write Numbers, if he existed at all. But that is another story.

That was easy, though. The "little three" were faked. Anyone can do it. [Everyone did, coff coff]

You were redefining commonly accepted terms for the specific purpose of derailing the conversation to what you want it to be rather than what it was. I sought clarity from the person who asked the question just to be sure, and was validated. So with all due respect, which admittedly is not much, the troll is the person trying to derail the thread, not the one trying to prevent that from happening.

That was Chockfull referring to my original post, with emphasis added by me. So I'm sorry if that was not clear, but in my opinion it is only unclear if you want to come in and redefine simple terms like "exist" so that people who agree the devil does not exist have to disagree because now you've turned non-existence into existence by metaphor or metonymy or Bolsheviksiosis. That's why I asked Chockfull to clarify, which he did quite adequately when he said ANY MORE THAN THAT KIND OF CLOUDS THE DISCUSSION. To which you replied by clouding the discussion. I'm not trying to start a flame war. I'm trying to stop a hijacking. But I guess I'm too late for that. Like I said, when you're done, let me know.

Because the point of the thread is whether he exists as a person or not. Anything else clouds the issue. But you just go on and hijack the thread so we can all go down your redefinition rabbit hole. Let me know when you're done. I suppose parsing the word "exists" could be a way of saying I presented a false dichotomy, though it wasn't what I had in mind and it apparently wasn't what chockfull had in mind. Either way, it's not a discussion I'm interested in, but if anyone else is, have fun.

So now we're going to parse the word "exists."

Ok, sorry... the ending you remember was not part of the original broadcast.You are mistaken. It WAS added later and tacked on. The Happy Days episode aired in February 1978. Mork and Mindy premiered Sept. 1978. A little longer than "directly at the end." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Favorite_Orkan

Valid, interesting discussion. ____________________________ Politics. I'm not saying it's been crossed. But that's a mighty fine line. Proceed with caution. :)

My last word (because who cares, really? This is incorrect. Mork was a one off character for Happy Days. The plan for a series came when people reacted to the character. That's why the original Happy Days episode where he appeared was just a dream. Only later was it retconned that it really happened.

Do I understand your topic and intent correctly? Was there something you wanted to discuss?

They are both attributing personality to an entity that does not exist as an individual. Really, man, the reason I put you on ignore before is I was tired of having to stop and agree on simple terms in order for a conversation to take place. You seem far more interested in bending people to your peculiar word usage than you are in actual dialogue. I won't entertain you further until you can demonstrate that you can have a conversation without descending into babbling.

My problem is that you redefine terms and then act as though everyone needs to bend to your definition, which is not how dialogue works. There is fundamentally no difference between the devil being invented as some zeitgeist and the devil being a description over time of naturally occurring phenomena. It is really frustrating to get sidetracked by your babbling BS everytime you decide to redefine terms to invent conflict. Sheesh.