LEGO,
>There is a saying that "If you are not a socialist when you are young, you haven't got
>a heart. If you are still a socialist when you are old, you haven't got a brain."
At least you avoided the common mistake of misattributing that saying to Churchill (who actually had great respect for his old socialist opponent Attlee).
The saying makes assumptions about the flaws of one position while ignoring those of the opposing position, and the shifting meaning of "socialism" has complicated it further so it's no longer possible to make meaningful comparisons on labels alone (if it ever was).

PC racism is just as bad as conventional racism, but you seem to think the former justifies the latter! You've become too programmed yourself to tell whether those who disagree with you are programmed or not, let alone to deprogram them. And what evidence do you have that leftists are trying to admit Critical Race Theory into the school curriculum?

Thinkabit.

Are we at court with Plato?

Your selfish man acts in total self interest with visible good outcomes, as you explain.

But is the good outcome relevant to the charge that selfishness is bad.

Shouldn’t the question be, in your example, is the selfish man acting as a good man or a self interested bad man, with coincidental good outcomes?

Platos paradox.

Aidan

#...Christ was very concerned with the state of society here on Earth....#

Show me your evidence for that view.

The mission of Christ was to include the Gentiles into the Kingdom of God.

The “consequences” were to improve the reliability of the populations thus saved, and to have them behaving as good men.
That was a secondary outcome.

The primary importance of Christ (And Christianity), is to save souls for the new Jerusalem, which is Heaven in the next life, Eternity, and to be undefiled and pure enough to dwell with the perfect unblemished God. To achieve this aim, was the prime mission of Christ.

Prove me wrong, I’d be happy enough!

Yuyutsu.

#... Also true, greed is one of the six obstacles on the path to God: lust, anger, greed, delusion, pride and envy...#

The broad road to Hell is open to those who think becoming a good man alone, will tick them off for Heaven.

He did say: it is easier for a rich man to walk a Camel through the eye of a needle, than it is for him to enter the kingdom of God. (Poetic license).

It’s a very complicated subject. And very painful for the converted. StPaul had his head decapitated by the Romans for his troubles, as did John the Baptist, and of course Christ was crucified on the cross. That was but a precursor to what was to befall future Christians.

It’s a formality to define Christianity as a religion for taxation purposes, but another thing altogether, defining a yoga class, based loosely on Eastern religions such as Daffy Ducks ADI-Da as a religion. That’s actually a philosophy.

Dan

To Aiden.

Scrub "socialist" and insert "lefty."

Most people associate socialism with being left wing, which of course is not correct at all. There are right wing socialists (Fascists) and left wing socialists (Communists). In my haste to post I forgot that.

My bad.

Adian:
>FALSE. They'd be fought under duress, and probably with a lot of deserters, but they'd still be fought.
Indeed famously, a lot of British soldiers in WW1 were killed by their own side after being wrongfully convicted of cowardice.

But who is going to enforce the duress? In a selfish world the soldiers doing the physical arresting (or whatever it's called in the army) and court-marshaling won't even attempt the arrest because they would reason that this is likely the sort of action that would provoke the deserter to harm them.

>LAUGHABLY FALSE. That would mean robbers are less selfish than law abiding citizens! I suggest you try and start to live up to your name.
The flaw in your logic, of course, is that not all people are so risk averse, and the prospect of great reward is enticing to many.

Nope! The logical is flawless because I in this paragraph's hypothetical ALL people are COMPLETELY selfish. So as a result ALL people have the same aversion to risk. It is clear from the scenario I've described that I mean ALL people even though I don't specifically use the word ALL in the first sentence. This is because I use the word NOBODY in the second sentence. (Another example of this nobody/all thing is if someone says: "NOBODY in the room is quiet" then this means that ALL people in the room are making noise)

>But in reality, poverty is the cause of overpopulation, as people have many children in the hope some survive.

Which millennium are you living in? These days the majority of people make it to adulthood, even in poor countries.

Dear Dan,

Why would anyone want to define 'religion' for taxation purposes? How more foolish they can get?

Is Christianity a religion?
For some, I think, it is.
For others, it is only a social club they visit on Sundays.

You touched on the topic of Effort versus Grace.
It is a deep subject. I can relate to it but I am not sure whether you like to delve that deep at this time.

Regarding the "eye of a needle", yes, so long as someone thinks: "I am a rich man", or just the same "I am a poor man", then they are focused on money/possessions rather than on God, thus they are not ready for His Kingdom. However, one could alternately think: "God gave me all this wealth to administer in His name" - such a person, however rich, is ready for the Kingdom. It's what's in the mind that counts, not what's in the bank.

Yuyutsu

I think we’d get away with a small dive into this topic.

Firstly, the Christian Bible as a literary guide to Christian faith.
Scant, describes it. We have four short and seperate versions of Christ’s life and work, repeating the story and a few scribbling from the apostles.
Much of recent discovery has been heavily redacted by the RC church as not fitting their views and withheld from us.
It’s not a good start to a religion that took off on a global scale, and mostly still flourishes. So what drives it forward?

My view is, the longing for an afterlife which has room in it for us, the soul. That longing, to actually matter in the big scheme of things, nails the “effort” to believe. Mostly that motivation is hugely selfish.
The view of history put a desperate need in it for a purpose for the individual where most battles were hand to hand encounters with the necessity to slaughter the enemy before the reverse. Life was cheap.

We’re led to believe, Christ was totally selfless, but that view straight away, falls in a heap. As a mortal, he had the same necessity for daily survival as do we all. A very selfish pursuit. Thus the demarcation line between body and soul.
So in a walk with the spiritual Christ, separating faith from works is vital. That’s a real tough one!

I don’t know if ever you have waded through Watchman Nees book, “the spiritual man”as I have, but he contextualises this incredibly difficult topic in a book with an equivalence to war and peace. In fact that’s a good comparison, since this battle between body and soul is just that, war and peace.

Dan