Gatekeeper said:
God is good (Love), which is the creative force in existence.
well, you're just offering two somewhat simplistic assertions here, rather than an argument. why is love always "good"? can love never be destructive or harmful? can love prevent, lead to punishment? can't love kill under some circumstances? then why is "love" always "good"? as for love being creative, can love not sometimes prevent creation, or stand in the way of change? as for creation, can it not sometimes be violent and destructive? your entire axiomatic basis here is pretty questionable.
(Mankind) are both good and evil, which is evidenced by our deeds.
then what about "hate the sin, love the sinner"? if my child does something naughty, are they therefore intrinsically "bad"? is this evidence of their "bad" nature? this is a pretty negative view of people. and can't certain deeds be both "good" or "bad", based on context?
All religions are false, there is but one "truth", or rather one "way" that leads to life, and that is "love".
but not only are your assertions flawed and your terminology vague to the point of uselessness, what evidence do you have that "all" religions miss the "way" apart from one? what evidence do you have that this "one way" *does* lead to "love" (which, of course, can sometimes mean death, not "life"?)
Until mankind can desire love above the evil in our hearts, we will continue to fall.
more question-begging - who says we are falling, or that "desiring love", whatever that means, will stop this falling? falling from where? to where?
If religions were true, they would lead us to a good end
defined how?
but there are falsehoods in every religion
name one in mine.
Hehe, You don't want to know ....
actually, that is exactly what i want to know. did you check the sign on the top of the website? it says "interfaith dialogue"
Yes, I believe there are two "forces" that are in opposition to one another, and it is through mankind that these forces are released upon the world. Mankind was created with these two forces in us, as a part of who we are.
ok, but as i've said, why can both forces not come from G!D?
The reason there is but one "True" God is that both 'forces' will eventually lead us to the same end "Love".
in which case calling it "love" is somewhat misleading. you might be better advised to call it "reunification".
Lust being our intense longing for the forbidden, i.e evil. Lust is mankind's desire to do evil deeds.
but "evil" cannot exist without "good" to measure itself against, therefore either evil is caused by the absence of good, in which case good kind of causes evil by being good. besides, both "good" and "evil" deeds are contextual as well. as for "the forbidden", who does the forbidding? where's that written down? who's enforcing that it's forbidden? how do i tell whether a particular thing is forbidden or not? sounds somewhat "legalistic" to me. in my tradition, we speak of an "evil inclination", but we also say that 'the evil inclination is "very good" (in fact, this is the exact "very good" from the creation account, check the wording) because without it, people wouldn't engage in business, build houses, procreate, or otherwise better themselves or develop'. we have a legend that the talmudic rabbis once proved this by imprisoning the "evil inclination" and realised that everyone just started staying in bed all day so nothing got done.
God is the positive, creative force in existence, and the Devil is the negative, destructive force in existence.
what, like G!D Can't Be Negative and Destructive? did the devil bring the flood, or destroy sodom and gomorrah?
So, your god is both good and evil?
G!D Is not "my god" - G!D Is G!D Is G!D. good and evil are human approximations. they do not apply to G!D. G!D Established the concepts but is not subject to them. that's what Being Infinite Divine is all about. something might look pretty bad to me (e.g. stealing) but how could the concept of stealing be applied to G!D? to come to that, how can the concept of "love" be applied to G!D? what we experience as "love", "anger", "evil", "good" are simply how we interpret things that are too subtle and complex at the level of the universe for us to understand; that doesn't mean we can't have a moral response to them based on trying to do the right thing and, indeed, we believe that's what G!D Wants us to do, but we can't possibly do anything but believe that, philosophically speaking. all we can do is be conscious of our own limitations and inadequacies and it is then that we begin to approach G!D-Consciousness, if you like. for me, the fallacy of christianity is that it supposed that G!D would have to incarnate as a fallible human, G!D Forbid, to really understand and experience that - like G!D Isn't Capable of Experiencing everything we experience from more perspectives than we can possibly imagine even ones that only exist
in potentia (from our point of view, that is).
Even so, a man cannot serve two masters, we must choose between the two opposing forces if we wish to stand.
we don't deny that there is a choice and that we must try to choose the good over the evil, but it is supremely egotistical to imagine that that also somehow applies to the Divine.
I've often thought that all things were God, but if God is good, then all things cannot be a part of God simply because evil exists.
i don't understand this. haven't you read the book of job? theodicy is an intractable philosophical issue. this problem becomes far more manageable when you understand that the definition of "All" has to include the possibility of "evil" to be complete. if you understand that evil is estrangement from G!D, but that "there is no place empty of G!D" as it says in the zohar - and the same is attributed to one of the imams of the shi'a, i believe.
It seems much more probable that two forces (Good and evil) are in opposition to one another, yet both work together to ensure that mankind will become suitable caretakers over the earth.
but why is that incompatible with them both "working for" G!D?
We were made in the image of God (Good), but also in the image of the Devil (Evil).
throw me a frickin' bone here - what evidence are you going on for the second bit of the sentence?
I submit that Judaism is false also, being that there can be only "one" truth.
says you. but assertion is cheap - why don't you try backing that one up? who says the "new testament" is "truth"? there are some pretty large holes in its version of events which are explainable by early church polemic, not actual documentary evidence of the beliefs and practices of the jews at the time.
Jesus represented that truth (Love), and lived His life through it.
the thing is, i think jesus was a pretty good bloke and taught some really good stuff - but the good stuff was not significantly different from what the sages taught and, frankly, there's nothing there that's worth starting a new religion over; there's very little in, say, the sermon on the mount that isn't taught every week in synagogues to this day. and, of course, there is some pretty rubbish stuff in the new testament as well, which isn't really that attributable to jesus, but is more obviously put in by people who had never actually met the guy and lived some time later - paul springs to mind immediately. what if jesus was right, but his followers got completely the wrong idea about what he was trying to do? for me, "you are peter, the rock" - this is a statement of frustration: "you must have rocks in your head - and you're going to build a whole fecking edifice on top of that, idiot". and, of course, none of this means that he had to be anything other than an exceptional teacher and human being. as for the idea that because jesus "represented the truth and lived his life through it", that certainly doesn't mean that nobody else ever could have - human history is full of tales of people who lived "perfect" lives.
His Father was love (Good/God), but the Pharisees father was the devil (Evil).
have you any evidence for this other than "because i say so"?
They sought to kill Jesus after all, and simply because He called them out on their evil ways.
rubbish. who is the "they"? crucifixion is a roman punishment, not a jewish one; the court proceedings described in the new testament would have been completely invalid under jewish law as extensively documented from contemporary accounts. of course, it could have been a kangaroo court got up by corrupt individuals, but that is a sad fact of life, not an indictment of judaism as a religion.
We won't need laws to govern our lives in the end.
*sigh* well, possibly, but we really can't know until the Mashiah shows up, so it's a bit of a moot point, isn't it? surely what we need to know is what to do *right now*?
really? tell that to someone who starts having an affair with someone that he genuinely falls in love with but is already married. tell that to every gay person in the world, if you don't think what they fall in is love, or moral.
Even so, the spiritual law of love is preferred before the laws given through Moses.
not for us it isn't. that is why it is called "a law for YOU FOREVER", see genesis 13:15, exodus 3:15, 12:14, 12:17, 12:24, 15:18, 28:43, 29:28, 30:21, 32:13, leviticus 6:18, 6:22, 7:36, 10:9, 10:15, 16:29, 16:31, 17:7, 23:14, 23:21, 25:34... actually, there are so many of these it runs to several pages:
Bible Concordance: Forever
Bible Concordance: Forevermore
This is because love was in the beginning, and it was acting in opposition to love that mankind fell from Gods grace.
umph, we don't interpret it that way - remember, the fruit was from the tree of KNOWLEDGE of good and evil - in other words, to know whether what you were doing was a sin or not; without free-will, there can be no sin.
this is a fundamental point of difference between us:
I Call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse: therefore choose life, that you may live, you and your seed; - deuteronomy 30:19
are you suggesting that this does not mean that we have a choice to make? you even said it yourself. the ability to make choices means we have free will.
We act on our strongest desire.
you're starting to sound like that rodger tutt bloke who never shuts up about how even if you overrule your strongest desire, the overruling therefore becomes your strongest desire and so you're still acting on your strongest desire. it's a circular argument - but to act correctly is to make your "strongest desire" the desire to choose the "good".
Religion places restrictions on man, when the only thing forbidden (Even today) is acting in opposition to God who is love.
except for us - i refer you to the earlier references to "forever"
in short, this argument simply doesn't stand up, it is pure assertion and it even lacks internal coherence.
b'shalom
bananabrain
