(December 25, 2016 at 2:12 am)scoobysnack Wrote: Basically what it means is either you serve yourself, or you serve others and God. By serving others through God, you serve yourself because we are all one. However if you only serve yourself, you can't serve others and God. God wants us to serve others, because in the end we grow ourselves while we grow others towards God.

I think that if I stopped a bunch of people and asked them what this means, I'd get a different answer each time.  It's not really a meaningful statement.  It offers no specifics and begins with a false dichotomy: either I can only serve myself, or I can only serve others AND god.  If "we are all one" then when I serve myself I am serving everyone, am I not?  It doesn't make any sense.

(December 25, 2016 at 2:12 am)scoobysnack Wrote: Basically what it means is either you serve yourself, or you serve others and God. By serving others through God, you serve yourself because we are all one. However if you only serve yourself, you can't serve others and God. God wants us to serve others, because in the end we grow ourselves while we grow others towards God.

I do appreciate the simple transparency in your rephrasing of MK's post.  In essence you're saying, serve the good of the whole and you will serve yourself in a fitting measure.  

I've got to say though "serve" is a loaded word.  It implies I am humbling myself to another.  And why should I do this?  The implication in your proposition is that one humbles ones self in order to exalt one's self.  So ultimately the appeal is to self interest even if one would like to call it enlightened self interest.

How am I to serve others?  The usual suggestion is that one ought do unto others as one would have them do unto you.  But can we assume that everyone is wired to want the same sort of  doing-unto?  Some doing-unto can feel oppressive to the one being done unto, to the point of interfering with that ones ability to pursue his own chosen projects.  For some of us, it would be better to say "do not interfere with others in the manner you would like them not to interfere with you".

It is very hard to know what everyone would like done unto them.  Hell, it can even be hard to know what one would like to receive.  In the end, wouldn't it just be simpler if everyone gave others the space to do as they like .. along with the means to the degree that is much needed and to do so would not undermine ones ability to go on pursuing ones own project?

In the end it is the question of how much one ought to share the means they control with others who have less.  If your excess means are limited, then how much and with whom do you share?  And how far down ought one draw down their own means for the benefit of others?  What if the amount of crushing need far exceeds ones ability to contribute?  The OP's simple, general questions and your own rephrasing of them lead to more complicated and specific questions, to which I do not have the answers.  But neither do I accept the authority of any religion or system of beliefs to decide them for me.

Guys, it's really simple.
You decide to love more then yourself rationally, you would see you must love all good living beings. At this point you don't know whether God exists or not, but your love of all living beings would want him to exist, him being the greatest possible living being, the most good possible living being. You would want him to exist.

And I know for certain God guides who wishes him to exist, to his existence. You may say this is confirmation bias, etc, but the other way is the real confirmation bias. If you love yourself to the degree you don't want there to be a guide guiding his creation neither the way to obey him manifest through a judgement revealed by him neither a mystical link and light connecting us to God, you become bias against everything that indicates God's existence.

If you love God, you would want to know he exists as opposed to delude yourself he does. You would fight hard against deluding yourself that he exists, but search for proofs.

I have offerred many of these proofs. The latest of them being so manifest, mainly, we require perception for our true value to exist, and we are not the source of that perception, nor are we the maintainers of what our souls have earned and not what that accounts for our deeds and yes there is a Lord keeping score, it's so clear so manifest. You can say it's all subjective, but you know there is a real value to who you are that is beyond subjective judgement of misguided minds.

The issue is not if there is anything clear or proof, it's that you are in a state where you value yourself more then the whole, and more then God. If you value God (even while not knowing he exists) with the value meant for a being of such status and highness, you would search the depths and find him/her/it.

Why do I always get the feeling these essays are actually to reinforce your own belief? You must be aware that you don't have a hoot in hell of converting anyone here...I can't help but shake the feeling they are mantras said over and over to help you forget the gaping logical holes in your belief system.

Or god has nothing to do with anything good and exist wholly apart form anything good. humanity itself is good and serving it apart from a magic sky genie for the sake of good and still accepting the fact that there is no evidence of a god let alone a good one. And that acts of love no more prove god then then the existence of lima beans .

(December 25, 2016 at 12:28 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: And I know for certain God guides who wishes him to exist, to his existence.

Bold mine. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

(December 25, 2016 at 2:12 am)scoobysnack Wrote: Basically what it means is either you serve yourself, or you serve others and God. By serving others through God, you serve yourself because we are all one. However if you only serve yourself, you can't serve others and God. God wants us to serve others, because in the end we grow ourselves while we grow others towards God.

This is silly. The underlying premise is that there are no overlapping interests between myself and the rest of humanity ... an obvious absurdity which discounts any mutual values, feelings, and interests. The idea that one can only arrive at such concordances through religious faith is fatuous.

I think, many atheists here don't even bother to try to take belief seriously, because God in main religions like, Islam, is presented as a tyrant who only can offer "server now or burn in afterlife". People seeing this nightmare offered to them, see permanent death as a decent ending.

(December 25, 2016 at 12:28 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: Guys, it's really simple.

Of course it is. In your worldview you can either get Dame Palm and her five lovely daughters to wank you or you can get an invisible, non-corporeal being to do it. Me, I prefer Dame Palm.

(December 25, 2016 at 12:28 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: Guys, it's really simple.
You decide to love more then yourself rationally, you would see you must love all good living beings.

Not possible and not desirable.  Love is an emotion, not a logical thought process, and attempting to love everyone both trivializes love and turns it into an obligation rather than a gift.

Furthermore, the word "must" is a red flag.  I think it's insufferably rude to attempt to dictate what someone else's emotional landscape should be; in fact, I view such a demand as abusive and not loving at all.

Quote: At this point you don't know whether God exists or not, but your love of all living beings would want him to exist...

No.  You don't get to decide what I want, either.

Quote:I have offered many of these proofs.

Not "proof"; not even evidence, IMO.  Just a religion-inspired hypothesis at this point.