Dear OzSpen,

We CAN pursue an understanding of God and it is an excellent practice which prepares and purifies us to become better recipients of divine grace. Yet what we end up with instead, is direct knowledge of God rather than mere intellectual understanding of words and formulas.

A person is only a physical object. YOU, however, are not a person nor a physical object.

The word 'person' comes from Latin 'persona', an actor's mask. While we are wearing this mask, this costume of a human person, we are not it!

This mask has no will, how less so a free will, but by God's gift, we do.

rache,

<<If the Bible is going to be used as the some sort of moral guide then it explicitly states that homosexuality is an abomination punishable by death - no excuses.>>

This statement suffers from a lack of biblical knowledge on the difference between the Old Covenant (OT) for the Israelites and the New Covenant (NT) for the era after Jesus Christ's death, burial and resurrection, providing opportunity for all to receive eternal salvation.

Therefore, under the NT, homosexual behaviour is described as 'shameful acts' (Rom 1:26) and the destiny for homosexuals and many other sinners is: 'wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God' (1 Cor 6:9).

<<So what's it going to be - instructions that are meant to be followed or a convenient excuse to justify prejudices?>>

What does it mean? Those who practise all kinds of wrongdoing (not just homosexuality), measured against God's standard, will not enter into God's eternal kingdom at death.

<<Many seem to conveniently ignore other instructions about wearing mixed cloth, eating shellfish, killing witches, beating slaves, cutting the hair on the sides of their heads and so on, but zero in on specific topics - convenience permitting>>.

Again, you seem to have misunderstood the Old Covenant vs New Covenant and the nature of slavery. The NT speaks of those who 'have been set free from [slavery to] sin and have become slaves to righteousness' (Rom 6:18). Here is not the place to examine the NT word for slave, doulos, and its use.

<<Morality changes over time and almost all those things are sensibly put aside but some seem to hang around.>>

Who said so? Do we 'sensibly put aside' lying, murder, theft, committing adultery, pursuing homosexual acts or heterosexual promiscuity, polygamy, pre-marital sex?

Where are you going to stop with the extent of what is allowed for your brand of ethics - moral relativism - when that morality leads to endorsement of paedophilia, rape and sexual abuse of children?

That will lead to moral chaos in Australia. Ethical standards have consequences.

Yuyutsu,

<<A person is only a physical object. YOU, however, are not a person nor a physical object.

The word 'person' comes from Latin 'persona', an actor's mask. While we are wearing this mask, this costume of a human person, we are not it!>>

To the contrary, 'person' was used before the Latin:

1. 'Then Peter opened his mouth and said, “In truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons" (Acts 10:34). 'Respecter of persons' = proswpolempetes. It is a compound word, of 'proswpon' = face or person, and 'lambanw', I take or take up.

2. Also, in Romans 2:11 it states, 'There is no respect of persons with God'.

A person or a human being consists of the physical body and the unseen part which the Scriptures variously describe as soul, spirit, heart and mind.

Jesus taught other people and his disciples: 'For what will it profit a man [human being] if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul' (Mark 8:36)?

Thus, human beings as persons are more than physical matter.

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Dear Yuyutsu,

.

You wrote :

«A person is a physical object … »
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That’s Nazi language, Yuyutsu. The German Nazis of Adolf Hitler dehumanized their victims, negating their personal identity as human beings, and tattooed them with numbers. They did this to demonstrate that they were nothing more than objects.

I do not know why you persist in declaring that “a person is a physical object” but, whatever the reason, it reveals a complete lack of sensitivity (and humanity) to the horrors of the Holocaust (or Shoah) and the suffering and humiliation of the families and friends of the six million innocent, civilian, Jewish victims.

An object, in its philosophical sense, is “a thing external to the thinking mind or subject” (OED).

In the case in hand, Yuyutsu, you are the “thinking mind or subject” and you designate “a person” (any person) as the “external thing”. I find that particularly degrading, demeaning and insulting. Is that how you consider your wife and children, your friends, acquaintances and fellow human beings ? Are they all just “physical objects” or things ?

You who are so religious, claiming in previous threads on this forum, that you, yourself, are God, that I am God and that other people are God – and now, that as persons, we are all just “physical objects (or things). Logically, that makes your God just a “physical object” or thing as well.

I am ready to accept the elusive games you often play on this OLO forum, Yuutsu, and the outlandish statements you also adore making. They do not bother me. But I do not accept your indifference to Nazi genocide and crimes against humanity.

Violent words engender violent action.

Adolf Hitler wrote in his book, Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”) :

«The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous … effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand »

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Dear OzSpen,

Yes, if you wish to go into subtleties, then a person also includes a mind which is not normally considered physical, but is a subtler body of ours which does not completely dissolve when our gross human body dies.

Neither body nor mind have free will, so it would be more accurate (though it would confuse everyday language) to describe them both as physical. The mental body, however, being more subtle, is more directly illumined by God's light than the physical body, thus free will seems to emanate from the mind more than from the physical body - but even this is still an illusion as the source of free will is God alone.

P.S. The first two verses you quoted are about God's lack of discrimination between Jews and "gentiles". As for the third verse, no one can lose his soul - but one can corrupt their mind, thus lose contact between body and soul, which is what the verse refers to.

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Dear Banjo,

Even a broken clock is correct twice a day.

Hitler was correct in claiming that we are not humans, but he believed that some (like Jews) are lower than humans, while I claim that we all are far higher than humans. In fact, calling us "human" is a degrading insult to who we really are - God!

So Yuyutsu, according to your view point I have a physical human body but which is detached from me.

Indeed what you're saying is that this body of mine really has nothing to do with the "real me" or in other words this body and me cannot interact in anyway (eg, it cannot be controlled by the me).

Thus if my body was to murder someone than I'm in no way responsible.

Have I got this view-point of your's right?