(December 28, 2014 at 9:26 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: Your giving to the community from your current earnings. Taking enough for your own needs. Disproportionate wealth is commonly seen as a barrier to happiness. That's what has to be given away.It gets muddled in the NT, when Jesus criticizes the high priests who make sure to donate 10% of everything yet are not giving the proper guidance to the flock. And then he praises an old woman who donates a pittance because it was all she had, while others gave from what they had to spare even though the implication is that they gave much more in absolute terms. And of course, he cuts a young man off at the knees for not selling all of his belongings, even though it appears the young man is a devout believer in god (to the point that Jesus "felt love for him").
What's interesting is that it allows for an incredibly broad range of possible interpretations. You can decide that giving anything is far less important than being a good person, or you can decide that being a good person means nothing if you don't give away your last coin. And just about anything in between, depending on how you mix and match the stories and shape your interpretation. Then just claim that your opinion is "spirit driven" and you're set!
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
