Human nature is a pretty big topic. Do you have any advice on how to approach it? I am interested in trying to get a better understanding of why people do the things they do, but it’s hard to know where to begin. Let me know if you have any suggestions of things to read or of how to go about trying to understand it.
Here’s a suggestion of a book that is fun to read (not textbook style) and very revealing about human nature. Titled The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, it’s a timeless classic on “Hell’s latest novelties and Heaven’s unanswerable answer.” The structure is a series of letters by the senior devil to his nephew, Wormwood. One reviewer called it a “sly and ironic portrayal of human life and foibles from the vantage point of Screwtape, a highly placed assistant to ‘Our Father Below.’” It’s been described as “at once wildly comic, dealy serious and strikingly original.” (I couldn’t have said it better, lol)! Anyhow, give it a try!
We seem to be on the same page, however…
Sometimes people seek happiness incorrectly,
Well it’s a little unclear what you mean by incorrectly. But I do agree that there have been some things that I did because I thought they would make me happy that in the long run probably caused me more unhappiness than happiness.
Thanks for the suggestion. It does seem rather interesting. I’ll make sure to check it out.Here’s a suggestion of a book that is fun to read (not textbook style) and very revealing about human nature. Titled The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, it’s a timeless classic on “Hell’s latest novelties and Heaven’s unanswerable answer.” The structure is a series of letters by the senior devil to his nephew, Wormwood. One reviewer called it a “sly and ironic portrayal of human life and foibles from the vantage point of Screwtape, a highly placed assistant to ‘Our Father Below.’” It’s been described as “at once wildly comic, dealy serious and strikingly original.” (I couldn’t have said it better, lol)! Anyhow, give it a try!
ah oh…
There is a great book by Kathleen Norris which concerns her battles with acedia, a rather quaint monastic term from the 4th century. The book is called “Acedia & Me” and I have exerpted a couple of reading selections.
Only if your concept of reward and punishment is like this: if you do this the carrot, if you don’t the stick.
It does not really matter whether you worry about it or not, now, because face it you will. Those who baked their bodies into skin cancer was not worried until they were at deaths door.
Whoever told you that it is an unreasonable request is wrong. Keep praying. Even if just after waking and before going to bed.
Aahh,but there are solid arguments that God exists. The ones proposed by Aquinas for one. The one that we have been discussing a few pages back. You claim that you have debunked these argument but you have not.
To say that one is looking for God would be like a mouse looking for a cat
. God will find you. You flee, you run but God will find you. There is no doubt about it. But… that is just one of my so called assertions
.You said "We have no basis for making definitive conclusions about what natural laws would hold in a state of absolute nothingness.”
I think the reason you fail to grasp this concept is that you keep interchanging concepts and terminology. We are not talking about tasks but matter. You are right, if the universe has no beginning then that would hold true but you now again fall back into an eternal universe. A few posts back you accepted the theory of the Big Bang as the going theory for the origiin of the universe. If the universe has an origin then it has a beginning. I think you are being rather disingenous here.
You know very well I defined this term many posts back. An Uncaused-cause is one that does not depend on anything for its existence. A caused-cause is that which causes or determined some other being’s existence but was itself caused into existence by another being.
That you cannot understand it does not prove it does not work. All it demonstrates is that you cannot comprehend it.
Maaan, are we back on that roundabout again? It does not matter whether it was contracting or expanding. The question is whether it had a beginning.
Based on current evidence, since you accept hte Big Bang and concur that this is the accepted theory, the universe has a begnning. We are going on circles here.
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Since we do not have any data to support any of the theory of what happened before planck time, why are we even considering this. This is bordering on the mythical.
When people speak of that it is experiential. And people have experienced this. I have experienced this.benedictus2:
I didn’t mean anything specific, just that I’ve heard people say how being with God, in heaven and possibly on Earth, exceeds the amount of happiness we can get from anything else
You will not be able to grasp this at this stage in your life but we will always seek for more and never ever be satisfied because our hearts were made by God for Him alone. As I pointed in my above post, St Augustine is 100% correct when he wrote that our hearts will always be restless until they rest in Him.
And interestingly enough relationships are formed by the bond of Love. We Christians say God IS Love. All we do is mirror God who created us out of Love.
That was really a great post, Angie God is NOT a star. God in NOT our sun. And, by the same token - no one really has Faith that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. (Now, it may be that their sun won’t rise tomorrow…or, any other following day - but, that is a different story.) Faith is the virtue by which something not seen (or other-wise measureable since we can’t see the air but we can scientifically prove it is there) is believed from evidence presented.
I have limited experience in the area of geunine atheists. From this admitted limited sample size I have come up with my own pet theory that goes something like this (and credit the Schlitz beer commercial of many years ago…
) “Life is short, so go for all the gusto you can.” This implies at least two things: an acknowledgement that life is finite and that pleasure is the real end of life and ultimate consequences are the stuff of children’s fairy stories. The people I knew were no more concerned with the consequences their lives were experienceing then they were about being hit by a low-flying pig.
Maybe it would be more helpful to use the word “mistakenly” instead of “incorrectly.”
Then,
I did not know about acedia … thank you for the message and the links. Thanks for recommending that book. It’s something I probably never would have thought of reading, but it does seem rather interesting. I added it to the list of books I want to read.