The Golden Rule and Jesus as "Just Another Golden Ruler"- No

punnet2 punnet2 7 hours ago (edited) "Neither are you very respectful in your verbal conduct." Coming from someone who makes condescending remarks like "pompous" about others. Such hypocrisy. Your explanation is still deficient: You gloss over how "personal growth work, social services and activist related work" led you to adopt belief in anything "spiritual", let alone christian science. (And I have to wonder if you consider Mary Baker Eddy "pompous".) I take it you're asking for other versions of the Golden Rule: - "This is the sum of duty. Do not unto others that which would cause you pain if done to you" (Mahabharata) - "What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your fellow man. That is the whole Torah; the rest is just commentary." (Rabbi Hillel) - "The sage has no concern for himself, but makes the concerns of others his own. He is good to those who are good. He is also good to those who are not good. That is the virtue of good." (Tao Te Ching -- didn't you study that?) So again: jesus is not special for articulating the Golden Rule. "Believing in God isn´t necessary to appreciate the value of the Golden Rule? " Correct. One can readily appreciate that a society where individuals practice the Golden Rule is more stable than one where they do not. No need to appeal to supernatural superstitions like god. "Now, solve the clarion call of sustainability without a unifying foundation that is the motivating force of a way of relating to God the Creator that allowed Christianity to defend itself against Islam and more, and someone like FDR to be in charge of the US just as the likes of Hitler was abusing other forms of Christian accomplishments of power." I'm not sure what you're insinuating, nor asking. We don't need "god the creator" as a "motivating force"; only a desire for a stable society. Your implication that "christianity defended itself against islam" is suspect: Christian Spain failed to defend itself against the Moors, and christian Byzantium failed to defend itself against the Turks -- not to mention the Holy Land itself. In any case, there is no need to appeal to a god to explain why one group defended itself another; military strategy is a far more reasonable explanation. And and far as FDR and Hitler: surely you're not claiming that your god played some role in WWII. Green Peacemst Green Peacemst 8 minutes ago (edited) @punnet2 Addressing the pompous attitude of others frankly isn´t hypocrisy, and clearly that´s part of your misguided attitude. Apparently, your view of the religious includes one of arrogant entitlement. Sorry. Your rudeness is a character flaw of yours that cuts to the later points. Mary Baker Eddy has left an approach that offers a powerful legacy. Your calling her "pompous" might refer to other less than polished qualities that she exhibited, but you like her contemporary detractors clearly try to impugn someone you know only from others ignorant and agenda-laden smears. Indeed, the pomposity continues with you. Clearly, it is part of your presuppositions and allegiances. Nice to see you actually citing religious texts, as you pompously frame it in terms of my needs. Do I know it from Taoism? I simply don´t confuse the issues like you do. The existence in other paths supports a number of things: an argument for the objectivity of moral law, and the soundness of Jesus´ representing the principle as Commandments for Moses and God, specifically with the word "love." Your assumption that such universality negates Jesus´ uniqueness and legacy is crude reductionist fallacy. The innovative combination with Jesus´ life, mission, message, including the religio-historical context, is something you appear unwilling or unable to recognize. That is your presuppositionalism. I uncovered the social studies scholars´ assessment processes in responding to the pretensions of rationalism, scientific materialism, and Comte´s positivism, and one significant approach is called naturally "antipositivism," and better "interpretivism." "We just need the desire for a stable society" And your rationalism betrays you. Rationalism depends on assumptions, and itself has formed in pockets that are small bubbles in society. Society in the US´s superpower quasi-"beacon" and "pacemaker" itself doesn´t involve people electing rationalist fingerwaggers and bookworm faux-idealists. Fundamentalists are the bad fruit of profiteers plotting and sculpting an evil Jesus "pro-life" for MAGA. Why would profiteers fund twisted Christianity? Better start asking some more empirical questions, dear rationalist. Meanwhile, progressives are also handcuffed in the US. Yet, the obvious problems of Big Biz undoing FDR´s pro-social approach until the Glass-Steagall act in 2000 are virtually left unacknowledged by progressives. Why? They have been subdued by Cold War propaganda and the fundamentalist wave that has twisted religious fervor, making progressive Christians secularists and rationalists, just still Christian in name. Otherwise, "desire for a better society" went the way of Bernie´s presidential campaign. He´s a secular Jew, and that´s not Christian. Your rationalism is blind from functional illiteracy in the multidisciplinary issues involved. Al Gore´s high integrity led him to do a slide show. It was made into a film, and he shared the Noble Prize. That shows how fast things can happen, and his public appeal is all characteristic of the spirit of Christian love. Noam Chomsky has shown before Bernie that Jews can be activists. Yet, he was largely intellectually rationalist in his approach. Gore can get a lot more homey and say the word, "a moral issue." Same with Michael Moore, who made jokes about how it would have looked if Jesus had needed medical insurance in his ministry. The science of unsustainability is clear. Europe´s actions in the right direction reflect the secular strength under the US´ protection and the squashing of WWII. Spiritual trends like yoga and Buddhism, and comparative religious studies are still in need of multidisciplinary integration there, without the same extent of the American tradition of religious freedom. "Military strategy" is not a competing, mutually exclusive explanation with religion, it is mutually inclusive in Levels of Analysis. Christian Iberia fell to the Muslims, as the Muslims swept unstoppably out to Indonesia over the years. Constantinople fell in 1453, actually. Western Europe, however, was defended in 732 by Charles Martel who showed the right stuff at the right time. He reflected the Christian principles that correlate with the rise of University-based education in Christianity and the fall of the Golden Age of scholarship in Islam. Christians established of monasteries for spiritual practice, the inclusion of classical literature with Bible study, and the later founding of Universities. Charles Martel´s preparations for the Islamic invasion reflected that dedication to truth in a monarch. The correlation with the monastic-University connection helps flesh out the psychosocial and cultural component issues that you simply can´t grasp in your ad hoc arguments and presuppositionalism. The same goes for FDR and Hitler. Your reductionist rationalism leaves you with snarkiness, not argument. Without taking psychosocial and cultural historical components in detail, you are operating according to the fallacies and ideology of secular and scientific materialism. FDR had pro-social and activist fervor cultivated during his Social Gospel upbringing that had him pushing up against crass business conservative isolationists, not abandoning his fervor. The investigation into Wall St had stalled until FDR supported its continuance with Pecora and his work. The isolationists didn´t want the US to get involved, like the British-French appeasement of Hitler. FDR pushed for aid to the UK, then Soviet Russia, and for an unprecedented peacetime draft after events broke the spell of the isolationists. The "desire for a better world" isn´t naturally sound. That´s why the Wall St Stock Market Crash happened, not a Denmark co-operative pro-social transformation by JP Morgan´s greedy acts. FDR did head towards Danish pro-sociality, and wasn´t deterred, which requires adequate orientation. FDR´s speeches to the nation, like 1936 Brotherhood Day, were religious speeches. "No greater thing could come to our land today than a revival of the spirit of religion...." Hitler appropriated Germany´s secularized scientific-tech capacities with raging, nationalist stereotypes and violence that are human bio-psychosocial inclinations. Sorry. You´re left holding an empty rationalist bag, popped and blubbering in the release of its last gases.