How does one decide right vs wrong?

[wroughtn_harv]

Interesting perspective you have there Bill. I go along with it if I can have a couple of caveats kicked in just for grins.

The first thing would be of course is that we're all alike while being different. One perspective on say a faith is less about them and more about faith. It's not so much what you have faith in as it is that we as humans have found it advantageous to believe in something.

I guess you could say faith is the disease and a particular religion or perspective is the symptom. Not as in faith is a negative in and of itself. Faith is a blessing. I have tons of faith. I am a believer. I just don't believe like some folks. But that doesn't mean I don't have faith or am not a believer.

Yesterday as I was working it hit me that what I was experiencing was life as we know it. I was faced with choices like each and everyone of us face many times a day. But my choices were simple enough that they could be compared with the complicated ones and each was really a metaphor for the other.

I was setting posts. I was under pressure to get them all in because I had committments at home.

My choices involved doing it quick and nasty and then straightening it all up later or just living with it. You know, the old justifying a half way right job cause no one else would care enough to do it any better if they were in my shoes.

It was a constant battle all day long as it seemed it was taking forever and time wouldn't stand still for even a good guy like me just this once.

We as human beings face those choices every day just living. Where we have to decide if the quick and easy will be worth the pain of correcting later. If personal pride is just about what's obvious or if it involves not just the product but the process.

What I find intriguing about the subject of choices is I don't really believe there is a choice.

That'll set some carts on their kickstands./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

Even yesterday as I toiled and turmoiled over just how nice that fence line needed to be it wasn't a choice from my perspective. Choice infers options, that one can pick one or the other. I believe that happens rarely if ever in life to us. And I don't believe it ever happens on something important.

Take me yesterday doing that line. I desperately wanted to take some shortcuts cause I had some obligations to fulfill elsewhere. But the stronger motivation was the realization that I'd worked so hard everywhere else on this job to have it to my standards that I couldn't have this line look like another crew had come in and done it.

So it wasn't a choice. There were two pressures on me. Cut corners and get it done, produce product. Do it right because that's what you do, honor process. The stronger pressure was to honor process, do it right cause that's what you do.

I believe we can take any situation that involves morality or ethical behavior and take the decision down to it's basics. When we do we will find it isn't about morality or ethics. It's about pressures. One pressure will be stronger than the other. That will be the one that wins. Every time, without a doubt, no gamble, fact of life, as it is, period, paragraph, page, chapter, book.

What is really neat when you get to this point where blame isn't for the individual for their transgressions but for their makeup and life exeriences is you have to learn about personal responsibility. You see when you can't blame them then you have to accept some of the blame yourself.

That will knock the carts off the kickstands, probably sideways.

But this is for fun and off topic, right? What's more fun and off topic than below surface thinking?/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

I'm off to the shower. Then early in the morning I'm off to welding up that fence I set the post on Friday. All together I've got over a half mile up and ready to be welded up eight to ten foot centers. I won't be coming home until it's done or there's an emergency of one kind or another.

I'm looking at Wednesday unless I get into a zone and get real lucky. Then it might be Tuesday night.

It would be fun to come back and find this topic filled with some enthusiastic responses.

Till then if you wanna personal discussion and don't mind conversation while wearing a welding hood I'll be about mile marker 406 I 20 west of Ft Worth, Parker County where the bees kill old folks cause they can.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

I keep wantng to call wroghtn harv rout-IRON harv for some reason…/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

I was using “Faith” in the religious sense I think. I am an optimist, and think good of people too.

Yes, we are all alike. Do you think that extends beyond the human species? For example, do you think that non-human beings, which we refer to as “animals” are somehow inferior in the world of nature, as compared to us, the self-defined superior human, king of the food chain? Do you feel that female monkey who carries her dead young one somehow feels less pain than the human mother that lost her child? I guess I mean in general… Most people probably do think there is a difference…us and them…humans against the rest of nature. Why is that? Would the pilot of that UFO looking in for the first time see it the same way?

Most of the choices the we as individuals face in life during our mundane existence probably mean about nothing in the total overall scheme of things…Hammer that nail…pull that plow…shoot that stranger[personally don’t like that one]…brush your teeth…

Personally, I attempt to make choices that will not harm others or cause them negative repercussions, unless there is reason to do so…like self defense, which is almost always never the case…but these choices are more related to day-to-day living than the higher questions that might be asked about the “meaning of life” or “what is really right or wrong?” REALLY…

<font color=blue> "Till then if you wanna personal discussion and don't mind conversation while wearing a welding hood I'll be about mile marker 406 I 20 west of Ft Worth, Parker County where the bees kill old folks cause they can. "</font color=blue>

Is that anywhere near Pittsburgh? /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif Wait! I don’t have a welding hood!!! /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif

If I may paraphrase and point something at myself…it is an old Taoist saying (I think):

<font color=red>He who knows, does not speak
He who speaks, does not know </font color=red>

Funny…my mind always drags me back to this saying when I get talking about subjects like those of this thread…and I realize I don’t know much about the big picture at all…/w3tcompact/icons/hmm.gif

Hope you got into that zone and back home early!

Bill in Pgh, PA

 

[Hydraman]

I have been reading this discussion since the onset; and it has been a good one. However; without you guys having some place called 'common ground' it could go on forever.
Some where, some how there has to be something you can agree on to always refer back to in order to build the argument for your side of the case. Otherwise it goes nowhere.
I would encourage all sides of this to read some of the work of Dr. Simon Greenleaf, who was Dean of Harvard Law School back in the 1800's. He basically wrote the book on what is,and what is not admissable as evidence in our courts of law. It is called ' The treatise on the Laws of Evidence'.
Then sometime later he tested the evidence of the resurection of Jesus Christ, and found that there is more evidence supporting this event than about any other event in history.
There is a new book out by a man by the name of Josh McDowell called'THE NEW EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT' . While none of this can 'prove' (in the scienticic sense) the resurection; it can bring us to a point that we have to make a decision, based on rational thought, as to whether we will believe or not.
When we look at the evidence that's there 'FAITH' is no longer a 'leap in the dark' (belief in something just because we want to); but, comes to 'resting in the sufficiency of the evidence'!

I don't have all the works in front of me, but the evidence of the resurection has been tried in every world court system since the first Resurection Sunday.
One of the strongest bits of evidence is the fact that the last people to have LEGAL possession of His body could not account for it. They were the ones that killed him, so why would they dispose of it.
Other evidence was when the Apostle's were hauled into the Roman and Jewish courts of the day and questioned, many times the answer was like 'We are just telling the things we saw, and YOU SAW TOO' to which the accusers had no reply!!

In order to continue I would have to post some whole books on the subject; so would encourage all to read some of these works. Bye now. Gotta go get some tractor time!!!

 

[Boone]

Isn't it amazing there is a belief in a God of some sort, found in so many cultures around this world, even isolated societies?

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Hi again,

Hydraman comments:

<font color=blue>I have been reading this discussion since the onset; and it has been a good one. However; without you guys having some place called 'common ground' it could go on forever.

Some where, some how there has to be something you can agree on to always refer back to in order to build the argument for your side of the case. Otherwise it goes nowhere.</font color=blue>

There is a common ground…it’s called the planet earth. At least that is the way I see it. And even with the common ground the discussion will go on forever I’m afraid. It only will stop when agreement is accomplished and there is no interest in continuing a discussion, or when such disagreement exists that the participants lose the desire to continue the discussion…

I think, too often, we do try to build a case to support our own personal position on something. It may be contrary to normal logic to dismantle rather than build. Removing clutter from the mind, in attempt to see whatever truth may be out there, may be counter intuitive…I don’t know. But it is something I tend to want to do, personally, at the rare times when I think about these things. Only thinking about these things now because of TBN and this thread!!! How can us guys that are into tractors even express thoughts like those of this thread??? /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif

My suggestion would be to try to look inward rather than outward. Building a case to defend one’s position does little but to reinforce a structure of beliefs that may cloud one’s ability to perceive what the “real truth” might be.

The easiest thing to do is to blindly accept a belief structure and be unbending in one’s thinking. I am not saying that anyone here at TBN fits that mold…maybe I do /w3tcompact/icons/blush.gif…but I guess that we all do this to some degree or another, and once we do we start to close our minds.

Like hydraman, I too goota go now and get that tractor singin’ to me…ah…the sound of music…/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

And like Boone, I also find it interesting that so many cultures have developed a belief in some kind of supreme being or life force over the milleniums. At the same time, just like today, those beliefs were likely not universal…some believed, and some probably did not…

Let’s get them diesels singing now!

Bill in Pgh, PA…

 

[knucklehead]

Good post, Don. I sorta bowed out of this, because we were kinda "circling". The common ground issue is elusive. My understanding, gained here and from other posts, is that truth itself is being questioned. It's classic post modern thinking, an improper evolution of the rise of intellectualism of the late 1700's (which produced, among other things, the work by Dr. Greenleaf). Thanks for the reminder - I haven't read the books, only heard of them in conversation, and in discussions on radio programs.

Referred to as the "death of truth", the post modern tack is not valid thinking. Taken to it's full length, we can't question rapists or murderers, because "their truth" may allow them to freely indulge their way of living without guilt, and we shouldn't impose our morality on them. Most who tout themselves as free thinkers (and those believing in Biblical truth as not free, by inference), do not agree that we should allow rampant murder, but continue to talk as if relativism is a valid position to hold. Attempts to point out that they are actually operating from a position of absolutes are met with cute retorts and colloquialisms. Eventually, there's either going to be a blow up, or we have to employ the old sense of humor. I chose the latter.

As long as slipshod thinking and divergent anecdotes are accepted as evidence of one's position, we will not find common ground. I suppose we could next hear the virgin birth likened to a divergent anecdote; the circle will continue.

Back to tractor talk. /w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif

 

[BigDave]

Boone,

You hit you hit the nail on the head for me...everyone believes in something: Baptist, Catholic, Hindu, Jew, Methodist, Muslim, Satanist, Tribal Bushmen, & even the Scientist. The problem is most everyone think's they are right, and thus everyone else must be wrong. Who's right? How about everyone? Or no one? Maybe everyone is partly right and partly wrong. Is there a greater consciencous that can be gained by study all of man's beliefs. Should we look at what all of these beliefs have in common? Is the truth the intersection of all of man's beliefs. OR is the truth the union of all of man's beliefs. Is it possible for Yes and No to be true at the same time? That depends on what you believe to be the nature of God and the Universe. Are we meant to understand? Is it even possble for us to understand. Is God as simple as any one religion makes God out to be. The law's of physics are pretty complex, and they don't explain the WHY or even much of the WHAT or HOW. So what is the absolute truth. Drum role please....

Come on guys, I don't know the ABSOLUTE truth. /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif


Harv,

Talking about Parker County makes me a little homesick for Texas, I used to live outside a little town called Haslet over in Tarrant County.

 

[Hydraman]

I again would encourage you to read the above listed book by Mr. McDowell. He started from the point you described as 'personal feelings' about things spiritual; and while in law school, set out to disprove the resurection of Jesus Christ, and found overwhelming evidence supporting the event. Based on his findings, he then put his faith in Christ. But, don't take my word for it,read some of his work, please.

 

[Hydraman]

Also we can go back even further in time and read some of the work of Flavius Josephus, who was a Jewish historian/ lawyer that recorded the events of his time(First century) for the Roman Government. He himself , as I understand , did not convert to Christianity. But as a witness to the events, his work is a valuable source of evidence. I guess I am sounding like a broken record, but to base our decisions on personal experience, rather than to research the evidence is rather foolhardy. I know the very idea of the resurection defies rational thought, but there is an overwhelming amount of LEGAL evidence supporting it. Christianity was born in the most hostile environment possible- the very city in which the leaders and politicians killed Him- if they could have produced His body, Christianity would have died in the womb. And if they could have produced it, they WOULD have done so!!! and stopped any such foolishness!!

 

[Anonymous Poster]

I think we kind of really drifted outside the rules of this forum in this thread...after reading Muhammad's posted review of the rules...

So I'm off to tractor land again and will be happy to reside there...

Been fun!

Bill in Pgh, PA...