brokenhead: So believing in Jesus is killing the truth
Kevin Solway: Certainly it is, if "believing in Jesus" means believing unreservedly that Jesus actually existed, or that he was the only Son of God and the only way to God-awareness.
You have a dim view of the mental capacities of your fellow humans, dimmer even than my own.
I believe that Jesus actually existed. The "unreservedly" qualifier you add is almost humorous. Either he did or he did not. What could reservations possibly achieve? For you or for anyone else? Are you waiting for a videotape to turn up?
Who said Jesus was the only Son of God? Clearly, if God exists, then we are all his children. And I certainly don't believe he is the only way to God-awareness. There are many. I believe he subsumes all of them.
brokenhead: ...a truth which you the lone hero are valiant enough to defend in the midst of all the rest of us fools.
Kevin: I don't know why you think I might be the only one. History is scattered with thousands of people who have conveyed the same message as myself.
Well I don't think that, obviously. It is nice to hear you say this, however.
Kevin: If you don't understand that killing people can give pleasure to the person doing the killing then you haven't tried to understand the psychology of killers, and you haven't looked into your own self. All of our ancestors were killers. That's why we exist now and those who competed with us are now dead. There is a killer inside every one of us, as a product of our formation.
You are wrong here, and this is really a very important point. I have looked inside myself every bit as relentlessly as you have looked inside yourself, and if it were possible to ascertain who has looked the harder, I frankly think you have nothing on me.
"All of our ancestors were killers." Patently absurd. My father was a physician, a healer not a killer. I don't even have to go back more than one generation to refute you. But of course, you are referring to pre-civilized times. You should say so. The truth is, most of our ancestors never killed anybody. You need to re-evaluate your motivations, Kevin, to find out why you are making such factually incorrect statements.
We do indeed carry the genetic results of evolution and are very much animals by heredity. Yet there is no evidence that other animals kill simply for pleasure. On the contrary, evidence seems to indicate that in the wild, an animal will kill to fulfill a need, the immediate survival of himself or another animal which shares as much of his DNA as possible.
You think I am avoiding the truth in some fashion? I think you are holding on to the grimmest possible outlook and calling it the truth, and you are doing it so that nobody will try and take it away from you because after all, who would want it?
The psychology of killers is something that I have indeed been fascinated by. But all the evidence points to how aberrant their behavior is. People are definitely more capable of bloodlust than nonhuman species, I will grant you. But if you are arguing that that is our true nature and denying it is avoiding "the truth," you are quite mistaken. Animals do not need to be taught ethics in order not to kill simply for the pleasure of it. People, however, do need to be taught. If a child grew up in the wild - a Tarzan - he would kill when necessary, as the wild animals do. However, within a human environment, he needs guidance, as society by nature makes us all vulnerable to animal urges. Humans need values. If they were in the wild, they would pick up the values of the wild, as the Native Americans did, who managed to remain in balance with Nature for thousands of years. The "pleasure of killing" to which you refer is not the echo of our genetic heritage, but a much more modern phenomenon. It exists where society is locally in a state of decay. It is a symptom of relative sophistication, as you should know if you understood history. The blood sports of the Roman gladiators came about because Rome was an
advanced society. The same is true for the atrocities of the twentieth century, such as the Holocaust. Germany became
decadent. This has nothing to do with genes and everything to do with social mores, with the fabric of society fraying all around. The technical capabilities in weaponry, communication, transporation, and information-processing grew faster than society's ability to rein in political movements, which are all power-driven.
I guess what I am trying to say is if there is in fact a killer inside every one of us, why is it in there and not out here?