What is justice?

Heavenly or earthly?

Earthly "justice" is an attempt to control the violence in our lives and communities by the search for collective unanimity against the victim/other in our midst.

Heavenly justice is God giving himself up to all our violence, suffering death under our collective unanimity against him as victim/other, so as to expose the lie of earthly "justice" and free us to live with the other and without victims.

(Apologies, I totally zoomtarded* this response, after having a quick look at James Alison's re-released book, 'Raising Abel'.

But it's a start. Right?

*https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Zoomtard

Solid phase dihydrogen monoxide, surely?

People won't like this but the universe is just to my understanding - there are no victims in truth - what we put out comes back to us at some stage - if not in this lifetime then it can be a future one - called karma. Sp nobody 'gets away' with anything. But this is not punishment - it is just the energetic laws of cause and effect and all the time God is always love and always healing and all is working towards that. I know that can be a hard one to swallow when we look around and see some of the things that go on - but there is always a much bigger picture at play than our one limited linear view of any one situation. Hence how we save ourselves by living according to the ways of love. :-)
ps don't shoot the messenger pls and if you don't like it you can ignore it!

A feeling of satisfaction to know that the act committed resulted in a outcome relative to the magnitude of the original act.

You'll note that justice can cover both negative and positive acts. If you are unrewarded for a beneficial act you were promised a reward for, do you not feel that there is an injustice?

Justice is a human created concept. As said in Hogfather:

Death: Humans need fantasy to *be* human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
Susan: With tooth fairies? Hogfathers?
Death: Yes. As practice, you have to start out learning to believe the little lies.
Susan: So we can believe the big ones?
Death: Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing.
Susan: They're not the same at all.
Death: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder, and sieve it through the finest sieve, and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet, you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. As if there is some, some rightness in the universe, by which it may be judged.
Susan: But people have got to believe that, or what's the point?
Death: You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?

Not a fan of cryptic crosswords, Will? Anyone want to lend assistance? :-)

Helio

I'm not sure who it is needs the long cool drink. You know what it says when you read 'Evian' backwards, yes?

Natman

"How else can they become?"

Become what?


Eunice

There was a line in 'Cold Feet', ages ago, "We did it to ourselves", or something like that, the trouble with your view is that some people do 'it' i.e. injustice, to others.


I'll pick up on Steven's comments, yep, it's a start. Justice: Doing what is right - there's another step.

Not a fan of cryptic crosswords, Will? Anyone want to lend assistance? :-)

Wouldn't that just water down the fun?

2MP - Become? Become human. To -be-.

A human without a sense of self, identity and some culturally created falsehoods is not truely human.

Extelligence is what sets us apart from other animals, an ability to propagate culture, knowledge and wisdom to successive generations. Justice is one of those things we inherit from our ancestors.

Natman

"Culturally created falsehoods" help us become truly human?

Balance. Or the perception thereof.

#4

Natman,

When I read Terry Pratchett I often feel he gets closer to the truth than perhaps even he realises.

Thanks for the comment.

2MP #10

Yes, they do. I'm not suggesting that they're healthy, or that they encourage other behaviours that exemplify humanity, but concepts like justice, duty, religion and love are aspects that define us as a species. Very few other creatures can claim to even come close, and those that do don't portray the vast scope of psychology that we do.

As a species, it is this that defines us, as a culture, we can decide which of these we adopt, and how, and to what extent. When these falsehoods become overarching, the result is regimes like the Taleban in Afganistan (religion), any facist state born out of the cauldron of 1920's Europe ("justice") and hardline communist states like North Korea (duty).

We're getting off topic slightly, not something I like to see in a thread with such a specific mandate and not even an entertaining blurb to start! :D

But my opinion stands; justice is an artificial construct designed to create a sense of satisfaction that things are 'fair'.

It's

JUST

ICE

Put a few of you out of your misery.

I'd organise butter on a rib

Fair play to you Graham :-)


Natman

I don’t think we’re getting off topic at all, you are raising the idea that the stories we humans tell have no truth in them.

Your view is that there is no justice, that there is no truth, that there is nothing which is fair (they are all *falsehoods*) and yet you wish to call this *truly* human.

2MP:

My point is that concepts such as justice, duty and so on have absolutely no existance at all, other than what we, as a species, give them. The quote from the Pratchett novel says it all.

The universe isn't 'fair' it isn't 'just', it doesn't care. All of these values are given worth by what we give them. If humans didn't exist, the universe would function just as happily without worrying about fairness.

I don't believe I ever mentioned truth. Truth (little 't') as a fundamental is valid, something either is true, or isn't. Truth (capital 'T') as a belief is highly relative, even more subjective and impossible to define.

You're creating straw man argument out of my words.

Gwaham, you goed and spoilted it. I no talk to you any more so there. Yer not my fwend. :-/

2MP*There was a line in 'Cold Feet', ages ago, "We did it to ourselves", or something like that, the trouble with your view is that some people do 'it' i.e. injustice, to others.*
The line in cold feet is correct - we are doing it to ourselves - all of it.
I understand your comment and that there appears to be injustice done by some to others. However, to my understanding this is just looking at the scenario in one time frame without all the information that led up to the incident and that there is always always always a much bigger picture than we can see or perhaps even comprehend in some cases. Perhaps the person having it done to them did the same thing or similar to another in a previous lifetime? It's not just as simple as that as some people can live a life of sacrifice to assist humanity etc but by and large if someone has something happen to them that appears unjust it is quite likely that at some previous time point they have done the same/similar to another. Given the history of humanity and that we have all (in my view) lived thousands of lives it's not too hard to imagine that at some point we have all done some not so nice things!

Understanding this restores power to the individual who then realises there is no-one to blame and he can 'save' himself to use that terminology by learning to make choices that are self-loving in all areas and truly heal. Victims do not heal.....they remain disempowered and always blaming someone else for the circumstances of their life. By taking responsibility for all our choices that led to all our experiences the power is restored to us. Again how death is seen and understood is important - as it is not (in my view) the end or the great tragedy that we have been led to believe.

Of course it is easier to write this than to live it - but for me that is part of the journey. :-)

Regarding justice then - we have man-made justice that has the laws and courts and punishment etc and this evolves overtime and is arbitary - but in my view there is justice over and above that - that is consequent upon energetic laws and is the way it is. We perpetuate evil by our own lovelessness! And the back drop to that is that God is always loving and always healing in all of it - and all these circumstances can be understood as endeavouring to heal our separation from God, from Love.

Natman

"You're creating straw man argument out of my words."

I think you'll find I'm not.

I am emphasising your use of the words "falsehood" (the antonym of truth) and "truly" which would, if it were to mean anything, be connected to true/truth.

And you quoted 'Death': #4 "Death: You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?"

You then told me it was about becoming truly human.

Now you're telling me that we (in being truly human) assign worth to the concepts "justice, duty and so on" after telling me they didn't exist, so not only do you have to assign worth to them you have to assume them too. And you're also quoting Death: "Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder, and sieve it through the finest sieve, and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet, you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. As if there is some, some rightness in the universe, by which it may be judged."

And then you want to use words like "hardline and 'fascist', in a negative way, implying these are not examples of justice/fairness. By what measure do you make this judgement? How will you see this 'justice' done. What of those whose 'justice' differs from yours? What of those who do not receive fairness?

Sorry, but the words are loosing meaning - fast.

Natman: to my understanding there is Truth that is not based on belief but energetic laws that operate whether you or I believe them or not and these can be known and lived. The universe is just because it operates according to these laws....not that it cares - it just is the way it is and would operate alot more harmoniously if we weren't around!

Ah we have the blurb! Well I've ordered the books and look forward to hearing/reading what they say. I hope I am surprised and find that they are not based solely on mental constructs!

2MP, I don't think you're really reading what I'm writing; more like skimming the text, picking out the words you don't like near each other and then being overly critical of it.

Justice and Duty do not exist -without us-. It takes a human to create these concepts, a human to assign merit to something that would otherwise be just a word. You cannot seriously believe that an unintelligent universe somehow has justice and duty built into it? I'd love to see the experiements you've performed to establish that.

I am using those words to show an example of what happens when these concepts are taken to their extreme. Facism arose in the 1920's as a counter to the perceived injustices of the settlement of WWI, communism (in certain examples) is a state in which duty is expected above all else; working for the greater good. I never said that they are not examples of justice and fairness, simply that they are these concepts taken to the extreme.

What I'm trying to say is very simple, and you're convoluting it beyond reason:

Justice does not exist unless we give it meaning.

Tell me, what do YOU think? Arguing semantics with me over the inappropriate use of the term falsehood is one thing, and it's easy to critise anothers opinions, but you're remaining silent on your own perceptions.

In politics and philosophy a distinction is often made between formal justice and substantive justice. In the formal sense, a law is just if it is APPLIED JUSTLY, that is, if there is equality of treatment under the law. So if Prince Charles was caught speeding at an average of 57 miles per hour in a 40 mile zone instead of me he would have been awarded 3 penalty points instead of me.

This formal sense, however, doesn't really tell us anything about the CONTENT of justice. The Roman Emperor Justinian asserted that justice consists in 'giving every man his due'. But what is 'due'? The answer depends on our individual moral values, our sense of right and wrong, our understanding of fairness, etc.

David Thoreau, speaking from a pacifist viewpoint, believed that it was our duty to disobey unjust laws. A religious person might believe that the law of the land will only be 'just' if it conforms to the laws of a god, which should take precedence.

Social justice is closely linked to ideas of equality. So just laws could be regarded as laws which promote social equality. Recent research indicates that fair societies do better in terms of material AND psychological well-being (see 'The Spirit Level: why more equal societies almost always do better' by Richard Wilkinson). This contradicts the market philosophy that less equal societies do better.

There is a tension between the formal and substantive concepts. On the one hand, justice has to do with procedures: treating people justly means applying the relevant rules to them in a fair way. On the other, it has to do with outcomes: people should end up with what they 'deserve'. A dilemma arises when procedures that seem to be just lead to particular outcomes that are not. Should a thief be sent to jail for stealing food to feed his starving family?

Justice is therefore an essentially contested concept about which there is not general agreement.

Natman

This thought first... You say, “it's easy to critise anothers opinions, but you're remaining silent on your own perceptions.”

That has been said to me before on this blog, ages ago; it’s as if one cannot respond to a comment made without a complete counter argument. What I’m actually trying to do is develop a conversation on the basis of what you said, and that leads us nicely on to ‘semantics’.

It is not semantics to point out that the use of the word ‘falsehood’ implies the opposite, nor is it semantics to ask how we can be ‘truly’ human, if the stories we tell ourselves are ‘lies’: “You have to start out learning to believe the little lies.” Post 4 - I’m trying to understand *your* use of the words, because my first view is that if our humanly made stories of justice are ‘falsehoods’ (I’ll not say ‘not true’) then I’m thinking, ‘What value do they actually have.’ That’s why I said, ‘the words are loosing meaning’ In drawing attention to the meaning, I'm putting forward a view.

You will also have noted that another point of view I raised, by way of asking questions, was, “By what measure do you make this judgement? How will you see this 'justice' done. What of those whose 'justice' differs from yours? What of those who do not receive fairness?” This is important. If humans are defining meaning (and I’m not saying we don’t have to make judgements) I’m asking by what measure we assign the meaning of ‘not justice’ to certain actions and not to others.

I’m also asking, and in doing so outlining a view, “Why be concerned with justice (or whatever) in the first place", I said that when I said , “so not only do you have to assign worth to them you have to assume them too.”

Natman, I’m reading all of your words, and I’m taking them very seriously and I’m suggesting that everyone seems to assume something called justice (it’s in every cry, “That’s not fair!”) and everyone has some standard by which they seek, call for and apply justice. On the basis of that it is perfectly reasonable to ask the question, ‘If the universe is impersonal (and we are part of it, not distant from it) where did we get these ideas from?

2MP/Natman -

Being as this is a debate on the realism/antirealism of justice, the semantics of the truthhood/falsity of judicial claims is precisely what's in question. In virtue of what are claims about justice held to be warrantably assertable? Natman holds that the appropriate semantic content of assertions of justice comes from constructed language, contrasting it with what s/he calls "Truth with a capital T" that underpins some other assertions about the world in a subjective, "impossible to define" sense. I presume this is about the gulf between observation and reality, or perhaps about the nature of consensus.

At any rate, what 2MP is quite rightly pointing out is that what may seem like just semantics of assertions of justice has a substantial contribution to how the notion of justice is put to use. If, in fact, your semantics are readily decidable, such that simply saying "that's just/injust" has some universally agreeable standard for confirming the _truth_ of the assertion, then that's exactly the same as there being some simple and exact thing that IS Justice in that instance; namely, whatever it is in virtue of which your assertion was correct to make.

But Natman is strengthened, not weakened, by this realisation. Why? Because _People Disagree on What is Just_. Taking from the well-off and giving to the disadvantaged is just or not depending on how one feels the dissonance between work and profit is against them, for instance. What we might suggest is that this disagreement may be partly due to a conflation between Justice and Privilege in society, and Rawls tries to pose an experiment that eliminates the role of Privilege in favour of a neutral, human conception of societal fairness, but even in the face of the Original Position, we still all have differing ideas as to what constitutes the right way to organise ourselves and manage resources.

Getting to grips with how people really talk about Justice is what we're ultimately trying to accomplish when we ask what it "is". That not everyone is talking about the same thing becomes increasingly clear the more analysis of the subject goes on, since the content of their assertions is often radically different. Importantly, however, discussions _about_ theories of justice have a more common semantics. We might radically disagree about what justice is, but we do have the resources to meaningfully locate our disagreements; which, much more than actually having a singular answer, is a powerful tool in creating civilisation.

Brian,

A very helpful post.

Eunice, "The universe is just because it operates according to these laws"

The line between the laws "out there" and the laws "in the head" isn't so easily drawn. Pre-quantum physicists would have said there's no way for something to be in two places at once, or two distinct things to be occupying exactly the same space, yet the status of such assertions is currently in question since the emergence of Dual Slit experiments and the like.

It seems right that the Universe is structured in some way, but is it really correct to think of there being such a thing as a law of nature independent of our observations? Would it make any difference if there were no such things, and the Universe simply operated in an orderly manner without them?

The same goes for Justice: what difference would it really make if there was no formal, rule-based system of just action as long as some sort of ordered structure is in place?

H

OK, them, spoil mine!!! Double dare!

(It's much easier to make a cryptic clue than to solve one...but what the hey!)

To be fair, I organise butter on a rib.

GV

I certainly know what earthly injustice is,

Murderers being housed in jails at 45k per year, murderers being released after a few years jail. While 200,000 unborn babies are murdered per year in the UK and terminally ill folk are being considered to be added to the OK to kill list.

Does anyone know if a survey has ever been done comparing the number of unwanted babies being born, in a given country or society, and the number of prisoners in its jails?

Savedby,

I think you have just explained how subjective justice is.

There is no OK to kill list and 200,000 unborn babies are not murdered every year.

What you have shown is not injustice, it is hyperbole, my word de jour.

They are falsehoods in the meaning that Justice and other such concepts have no meaning other than which we give them, not that the concept itself is flawed or fundamentally wrong. It is entirely possible to create a concept with no rational background or justifiable standing, and then use it to do some worthwhile things (isn't that a good description of religion?). Given that the value of Truth (capital 'T') is impossible to establish and almost certainly doesn't exist, then there is no independant and verifiable basis upon which to establish justice. That is what I mean by calling it a falsehood. Something can be false and still have worth.

Indeed, as I've said, it's difficult, if not impossible, to be human without having some sense of justice, no matter how skewed it may be.

On a side note, 2MP, despite perhaps coming across as cranky and petty, I do enjoy our debates. It's always good to have an opportunity to have my opinions challenged. :)

I'm also slightly impressed by the level and depth that this thread is reaching. Despite Helios attempts at some clever wordsmithing ;)

Paul, good to have you back after the PZ shindig!
Graham, I'm as slow as Will tonite; I'll return to this :-)

PaulR - I'm not talking about laws in the head. To my understanding there are energetic laws of the universe that are operative whether I am aware of them or not. Of course if we were not here to observe them then we wouldn't know about them! :-) However people do not need to observe them for them to be present.
You say:*Would it make any difference if there were no such things, and the Universe simply operated in an orderly manner without them? The same goes for Justice: what difference would it really make if there was no formal, rule-based system of just action as long as some sort of ordered structure is in place?*

To me saying that something operates in an orderly manner implies that there are laws/systems that allow that order to occur otherwise would be chaos......can you have an ordered structure that does not have a foundation of laws behind that system that allows it to operate in an ordered way??

Natman: there is in my view Truth - it is energetic Truth that understands the energetic laws of the universe and the human being and the interconnections! It is Truth that is universal and unifiying :-)

Dave: I agree with your comments.

Natman (33):

I largely agree with you. I would put it this way. All concepts are man-made. The question is whether they relate to objective reality or instead just relate to other concepts of value to us. Justice is not an objective concept. In other words, it does not exist independently of our thinking. As Hamlet says: “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so”.

It is, however, a valuable concept and one with which we humans are much concerned. Indeed, we could say that justice is one of the most important qualities of a good society.

On a personal level, if we live a good life and behave well towards other people, we expect them to behave well towards us. We expect this reciprocity because we have ‘earned it’. It is why the Golden Rule is found in all religions and all philosophies. Furthemore, on a wider macro political level, we expect ‘good’ actions to be rewarded because they 'deserve it' and bad actions to be punished because that is what they 'deserve'.

On the last point, that is one of the reasons why NI appears to be a very unjust society. People who spent most of their lives preaching hateful and bigoted ideas are rewarded by becoming Lords of the Realm, and people who have led terrorist organisations which did horrendous things to other people are applauded as peacemaking, tree hugging flowerpot men. But are these ‘injustices’ necessary to promote a more ‘just’ society in NI in the long run? Only history will judge (perhaps?).

On a more ‘cosmic’ level, there is a total lack of ‘justice’. Many good people suffer and many bad people don’t. The universe and nature are morally indifferent. If you unlucky to live in an earthquake zone, you may be killed in one. If you are lucky to have healthy genes, you may live to a ripe old age, etc.

As humans, we often strive to make up for the ethical deficiencies of the natural realm. That is why human justice is so important, even if we cannot agree in what it consists.

Brian: I understand your views but feel it is not as simple as that and not as black and white. There is a much bigger picture at play - but many people find it too hard to swallow as it calls us all to live with a very high degree of integrity and responsibility and most don't want to go there and even those that do don't find it that easy! So I would say at a cosmic level there is justice due to energetic laws not because the cosmos 'judges' on moral issues - and nothing is down to luck or chance or accident. We need human laws and human justice as well for society etc but it is certainly not the whole picture in my view.

Eunice:

You say that there is cosmic justice because of ‘energetic laws’. I don’t know what that means. Presumably, it is nothing to do with ‘god’, since you suggested on the humour thread that ‘god’ is internal within each person. Or is ‘god’ both internal and external or internal or external depending on the argument?

I do so wish, though, that in discussions of ethical matters, god was left out of the argument. I find him an annoying distraction and a colossal red herring. I accept that it is I who introduced ‘Him’ here, but only for clarification. Where do these cosmic ‘energetic laws’ come from?

Will,

Having read your update, it seems to me that what is being proposed is that to understand a concept such as justice, you have to understand the impact of the lack of it. It is akin to walking a mile in the other persons shoes.

It's a bit John Howard Griffin's "Black Like Me" again, the white man does not understand the concept of racism because he has never suffered the impact of it.

To put an odd spin on it, Justice is merely the result of removing the reality of injustice.

Dave/William:

It is, though, a negative concept. It’s the same as saying freedom is what is left when all the restrictions have been removed or equality is what is left when all the inequalities have been removed.

I think that social injustices are a major concern of the modern era. The argument that extremes of income and wealth are good for society will, I hope, come under severe criticism in the coming years.

The 18 millionaires in the British Cabinet, whose collective fortune amounts to about £50m, are wielding the axe on public spending and seeking to control incomes. It’s all a bit reminiscent of an extravagant Charles Haughey, without irony, telling the Irish people that ‘as a community we are living beyond our means’ and that ‘we should only undertake those things we can afford’.

We had a collection of greedy bankers losing huge amounts of the people’s money by making bets on dodgy mortgages. Eventually they realised that the bets were based on worthless assets and that technically they were bankrupt.

The last government bailed them out with billions of pounds, thus transferring the debt from the private to the public sector. The bankers said thank you very much and continued to pay themselves multimillion-pound bonuses which they invested in such a way as to pay as little tax as possible.

The British public expressed their anger by voting out the government and replacing it with a coalition of public school millionaires, who promptly blame the debt on the profligate spending of their predecessors and now tell everybody that the only solution is to cut public services. Civil servants lose their jobs, unemployment rises, libraries are closed, hospitals are not built, firms are denied crucial loans, and support for the poor and the disabled disappears.

It’s also reminiscient of the 1930s Depression cartoon which showed four class stereotypes on a ladder. A cloth-capped unemployed man is standing at the bottom, up to his neck in water. “Equality of sacrifice - that’s the big idea, friends!”, says the silk-hatted figure at the top. “Let’s all step down one rung”.

Is this fair? Is this just?

Natman

No worries, I enjoy our conversations too.

I’m going to try and pick up on a few things that have been said recently which will include your views and the views of others.

Paul suggests that your view is strengthened, before I come to that though thankyou for the clarification regarding ‘falsehood’. When I first read the word falsehood I took you to mean that concepts such as justice, concepts which are so very important to human beings were built on false foundations. Given that scenario I could see no reason to assign value to justice, if it were to be built on something false then at best it would be pragmatic, and maybe not even that; indeed I might even have suggested that to ‘justify’ someone (to consider them in the right) would be a deceit. Your explanation most the suggestion on somewhat, and maybe we can get back to it; I am still concerned though by your phrase that there is “no independent and verifiable basis upon which to establish justice.”, but hey, I take a Christian view of the world!

Back to Paul’s comment then that your view is strengthened. He does so (if I’m reading him correctly) on the basis that, “_People Disagree on What is Just_.”, I agree they do, but if it is difficult enough agreeing on what justice is within a particular framework, how much more difficult will it be agreeing between cultures. What do we do when our human understanding of justice clashes between cultures? How do we determine then which ‘justice’ is ‘just’. Trouble is, people go to war on the basis of such clashes.

Not only that but Paul’s comments also illustrate the idea that we all refer to some ‘standard’ or other when trying to reach just decisions. And perhaps this, as Brian suggested in an earlier comment (#24) is where the problems really lie.

I wonder then are we agreed that:

Justice is important, it actually effects people for good and ill and in this sense it is not false.

That society needs reference points in seeking to make decisions about justice, and yes, these decisions may vary from one instance to another according to circumstance.

That we as human beings do have a role to play in giving meaning to concepts like justice, we recognise it’s worth, we seek to apply it well and consistently and that justice is important in helping society function well.


There are other issues here aswell such as ‘injustice’, an ‘injustice world’, ultimate (cosmic) justice and injustice and what we deserve, but I’ll leave that for another time.

To be fair, can I butter on a rib in a roundabout way?

H

I am shocked that you would promote such a dangerous substance as dihydrogen monoxide. You are aware that 100% of those who ingest dihydrogen monoxide eventually die? And that it is highly addictive? 100% of users are unable to live without that substance? That in fact, you can become addicted in the womb?

And that the NI Assembly has passed no law to outlaw it's use? It is available in schools all over the country???

GV

Peter M:

I largely agree with that (42), except that this is rather odd:

"we as human beings do have a role to play in giving meaning to concepts..."

It is we alone who give meaning to concepts. We invented them!

For goodness sake, Graham, what's your beef?

Brian (#41)

You seem to have a problem with rich people, that the only people who should make the decisions that effect 'normal' people are those with average incomes and no substantial reserves of wealth. It's a fact (perhaps an unhappy one) that wealth leads to a better education (for the most part) and I'd rather have well educated people in power than people with more connection to the way I live, but not as informed or capable. Your perception seems to be (and forgive me if I'm inferring too much from your words) that because they're wealthy, because their income and jobs are secure, they feel they can cut pay and pensions, make many thousands of people unemployed and do so without much concern at all. is this right?

It's certainly not an injustice, rather it's an opinion that whilst wildly held, is fairly short-sighted and ignores the wider social problems in favour of short-term 'fairness' to those without vast sums of money.

If the Government hadn't bailed out the banks, some, if not many, would've failed, all their savers would lose their money, all the tax those companies pay would be lost. Yes, a few rich people would've lost a substantial amount of their revenue, but by far the most people effected would've been ordinary savers. Your perception of 'justice' is tempered with a view from your own standpoint and is a good example of why justice as a concept is highly subjective and difficult to define.

2MP (#42)

Yes, I agree to your points, although I think we're going to have to disagree on the fundamental value of justice. From my own viewpoint, from someone who doesn't believe in any god and who views religion as a relic from the past, justice has no independant value, no baseline to establish, other that what we, as humans, give it. an ultimately, that view is determined by the majority.

You can't please everyone all of the time, the best you can hope for is to please most of the people some of the time, or some of the people most of the time.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

Brian #45

Yes, I can see why you would pick up on that comment of mine, it was poorly worded. I was thinking primarily in terms of justice being one of the very important roles that we humans being fulfil, (no one else, at least here and now, fulfils this for us) while at the same time being influenced by thoughts of ultimate justice and what that is, the 'religious' element.

Hopefully, without starting down a theological road, that explains my muddled writing. (Helio, of course, would say that theology explains all of my muddle, but perhaps I'll leave that comment for the 'Cabbage-meister!!)


Natman

What interests me about the relative nature of justice (and I don't simply mean that decisions have to be made) is that it seems to me that while this will be largely workable if people generally agree, it doesn't really take account of conflicting understandings of justice nor does it have anything to say about justice denied.

To be honest I'm not sure if you are interested in going down this line so I'll hold off for now save to say that from my point of view I also find it unsatisfactory to assume concepts like justice in a universe where we cannot show, "one atom of justice, (or) one molecule of mercy."

This still leaves me uneasy about the substance of the meaning of such concepts.

I'm always left with a strange feeling when some form of concensus is reached on a forum. I imagine it's little bit like riding a storm on a boat, when the storm passes and there's clear waters all around, it's almost a let-down. As if you were expecting to either ride into a port on the crest of a wave like some form of champion nautical surfer or come crashing to the bottom of the ocean, proud to know your defeat was at the hands of something titanic.

Or perhaps I'm feeling the injustice of not 'winning' an argument ;-)

Natman:

You say (47) that I seem to have a problem with rich people. This is to personalise the issue too much. I do have a problem with what I would consider excessive income and wealth in a world where millions are starving. The moderator axed my comment 48 because, although I paraphrased parts of an Irish Times article today, he must have thought I basically repeated too much of it. So I’ll cut it down. It was an article by Vincent Browne in which he pointed out that many people in the legal, medical, dental, accountancy and financial professioms who are ripping people off left, right and centre are foremost in a new campaign to have the minimum wage in the South reduced from its present level of €8.65 an hour.

He suggests that all professionals are paid on a per-hour basis and on that basis alone and that the maximum charge per hour should be related to the minimum wage. He proposes no more than 12 times the NMW. That would mean a maximum of €103.20 an hour working out at €88,237 per year (38-hour week, 48-week year).

He says that that is quite enough for anybody, and I concur.

So, yes, in terms of social justice, I think that there should be a legal maximum on incomes.

As for ‘wealth’ leading to a better education (don’t tell that to Parrhasios, for goodness sake! He thinks William, the man from Stratford, where the majority of the Corporation couldn’t even write their own names, was a well educated polymath who read Plautus in the original Latin and could write French), surely there is now much greater equality of educational opportunity than, say, 400 years ago. In any case, if it’s still true, you would surely want to eradicate such an injustice rather than accept it.

Brian,
"It is, though, a negative concept. It’s the same as saying freedom is what is left when all the restrictions have been removed or equality is what is left when all the inequalities have been removed."

Yes I think it is exactly the same. The issue I see is that justice, freedom, equality are concepts which are hard or impossible to describe,quantify, or feel. Injustice, restrictions, inequality can be described, quantified and felt.

If you are equal you do not feel it, it just is a benign balanced system, if you are unequal and the one in the second class place, believe me you feel it. It takes empathy and understanding for the first class place to recognise it.

I am not sure that I see that as a negativity, but maybe I missed the point.

Brian: the kingdom of God is within. But then everything is interconnected - all is one - there is no separation between you and me even though there appears to be. So perhaps there is no solid boundary in-truth between internal and external - but we have to go in before we can know who we are in-truth and live from there. The soul is the aspect of God/love that each of us is in expression - in truth there is just one soul but we talk about my soul etc as an individuated part of a greater whole. I use God and love synonymously - does love work for you?? All is energy and all is because of energy - the laws are the way it is.

Re justice/injustice
How do we know injustice?
Do we know it because we have been told by someone or the law - that such an such is unjust
Or do we feel internally and know it is unjust ?
ie. does it come from external laws or words or from an internal feeling/guidance about what is just and unjust?
Whilst we have the former in the world - I suggest that it comes from the internal first.
What then is that internal guide - is it our minds, rational processes and thinking or is it our hearts and our feelings?
Whilst we do use both I suggest the true guide is the inner heart and our feelings - we feel injustice and we know it.
Where there is injustice - is evil present?


Perhaps a bit like Dave's post

darkness is the absence of light
cold is the absence of heat
evil is the absence of love
so is injustice also the absence of love?

So if we all lived according to inner love and wisdom of the heart - would injustice be eradicated and justice be a natural outflow of service with love? A long way off perhaps -but if we don't then who will?

A legal maximum on income? Seriously?

Are you postulating that a world-renowned surgeon should have his salary capped? That a businessman, who grew a business from nothing to an employer of tens of thousands of employees, should be told 'you can't earn too much'? That an inventor, who creates a device so useful and so simple that it is used in nearly every home in the country, cannot earn his rightful dues?

If you don't pay people what their skills are worth, somebody will. Your idea will only result in the departure from the UK of thousands of our brightest and best, to our detriment.

£88,0000 a year, enough for anyone? Perhaps, if you only want to live to a certain standard of living. £88k to support a family of four, in central London is not enough. For 88k a year, there would be no patronage of the arts, no venture capitalists, no adventuring spirits and no-one willing to take the responsibility of guiding a multi-national corporation.

You might not like it, but wealth drives demand, desire and the economy, it is because the wealthy exist that society is able to move onwards, for innovation and progress to be made. Do you honestly think we would've had the industrial revolution if the wealth was shared, or incomes capped? Do you really think the British Empire would've spanned the globe if the wealthy had had their fortunes squeezed, just to settle some sense of fairness?

In any aspect of society, it is the wealthy that lead, making what they do accessible to all - mobile phones, computers, air travel, motor cars, home ownership, the right to vote, emancipation - and that's just a short list of all the things we take for granted that at some point in our history, only the wealthy could obtain or were entitled to.

Is it fair? No, it's not. Is it just? Hmmmm, more tricky. On the balance - yes, but only so long as the wealthy don't abuse their priviledge.

Dave (52):

Dave:

I am not denigrating a negative concept of justice – far from it. I was merely being descriptive. In a famous lecture Isaiah Berlin outlined ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ in which he distinguished between the notions of negative and positive freedom. Negative freedom (‘freedom from’), he said, was the absence of obstacles or constraints on our activities: “liberty in this sense is simply the area within which a man can act unobstructed by others”. Positive freedom (‘freedom to’) is the ability to act rationally so as to take control of our lives and realise our fundamental purposes. While negative freedom is usually attributed to individual agents, positive freedom is applied to groups or collectivities. Berlin championed negative freedom but expressed deep suspicion of positive freedom.

He saw that, in seeking to establish ‘positive freedom’, its promoters inevitably present an image of an ideal or ‘higher nature’ which we strive to achieve, that it is always presented as being ‘rational’ and that it is always conceived as something wider than the individual. It is always a social whole of which the individual is a part: an organisation, a tribe, a race, a church, a state, a ‘great society’. This entity is then identified as being the ‘true’ self which, by imposing its collective will upon its ‘recalcitrant’ members, achieves its own, and, therefore, their, ‘higher’ freedom.

While Berlin’s distinction has many flaws, it has the merit of highlighting differences between the various classic accounts of freedom. Thus Locke and Mill could be taken as providing notions of ‘negative’ freedom where the aim is to allow individuals to develop their lives free from public coercion. Rousseau, Hegel and Marx, on the other hand, could be seen as developing positive accounts where individuals find their true freedom in a shared community in which common goals are sought.

As Berlin says, we often believe it is justifiable to coerce people in the name of some goal – freedom, justice, public health – which they would, if they were more ‘enlightened’, themselves pursue, but do not, because they are blind or ignorant or corrupt. Since I am being ‘rational’, I am doing it for their own sake, not in my own interest. For freedom, so the argument goes, is not freedom to do what is irrational, or stupid, or wrong. You do not make people free by leaving them alone but by bringing them to a position where they can make the right, rational choices about how to live.

Berlin saw that a preoccupation with the positive concept of liberty can lead to the Gulag or Auschwitz. ‘Communism’ and ‘Nazism’ were philosophies which claimed to be establishing the higher, more ‘rational’ freedom of which Berlin writes. They, too, felt the need to force people to be free, all in the cause of the ‘great society’.

The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany are often cited as examples of the destructiveness resulting from atheism. Apart from the fact that Nazi Germany was not atheist, the analysis is totally wrong. It was not atheism that led to totalitarianism: it was the positive philosophies of communism and Nazism. If Soviet and German societies had been characterised largely by the negative philosophy of atheism, they would have been far more humane.

Berlin is right: if you constantly seek to blunt the quality of negative liberty in order to seek common ‘positive’ values, you are in danger of ending up with people who are indoctrinated – the very thing you seek to escape.

In all of the above, substitute the concept of ‘justice’ for that of freedom, and I think a similar point applies. Let us remove injustices, inequalities and restrictions on freedom without seeking some nirvana of perfect justice, perfect equality or perfect freedom which may in fact turn out to be the epitome of their opposites.

Of course, if you believe in some over-arching concept of justice in the universe, that there is a mandated fairness to the universe ordained by some higher being (like a god), then it must be very challenging to see events like the tsuanmi in the Indian Ocean, the earthquake in Haiti or even the shootings in West Cumbria, without suffering some prickles of doubt about that justice. How can a god allow such things? Surely if there was justice, evil would be punished, goodness repaid, that there would be some tangible evidence that fairness is held to.

If you don't hold to the fact that justice is built into the universe that, like me, you believe the universe to be a random, chaotic and capricous place, with little regard for the anamoly known as life, then none of these doubts occur. I can look on a terrible occurance and at least be secure in the knowledge that no one deserved it, that it was a consquence of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and that, especially with the case of natural disasters, no one was to blame.

I'm the one here with the more confident view of justice. There's no doubts in my mind.

Natman: in my view your system says these things just happen and we have no part to play, no responsibility for them and it's just down to luck or lack of it whether I happen to be caught up in a disaster or am a victim of some sort. Hence people can just carry on living as they do and hope they are not caught up in it. Everyone potentially is a victim and is disempowered by being a pawn or a puppet in a cruel universe where there is no God and no way to understand or heal from such events. As you can tell this is not a view I support or agree with.
In my way of understanding - everyone is responsible for everything - we are all part of a greater interconnected whole. Evil exists because we feed it by our own lovelessness and choices. Understanding this calls each person to live with integrity and responsibility according to the ways of love such that evil can be eliminated. No-one deserves suffering of any kind - all deserve only love. All events can be understood from a healing perspective but this also requires a shift in understanding re death and the realisation that we all have many lifetimes and that there are consequences to absolutely everything we think, say and do. Whilst it might seem far fetched - we are not divorced from natural disasters - we are interconnected with everything.
So whilst you have no doubts in your mind - I have no doubt in my heart that God is love, that we are love, and that we are doing this to ourselves by our own loveless ways. :-)

Eunice - far from being disempowered, an atheist is the most empowered of all. All an atheists actions can only be accounted for by one person - themselves. There is no higher power to ascribe good attributes to and to offer thanks for perceived blessings, no evil power to blame for temptation and the darkness seen in the world.

If atheists lived as they should - in making -this- world matter, making it a better place, not because of some higher authority mandating it with the thread of punishment, but because -they want to-, then incredible things could happen. Without an afterlife to subscribe to, you have to make the most of the life you have.

Religion offers an excuse for many things, but most of all, it offers an excuse for henious crimes done in the name of a god. At least the atheist has no one to blame but themselves.

Brian: thanks for your piece on freedom. You say that positive freedom is associated with a community and not the individual. Is it not possible that there is an individual freedom - where the individual knows they are free to create his/her own life - master of their own destiny if you like?? And this can occur irrespective of what the community is doing??
Freedom is one of those paradoxical things - we are free and we are not free at the same time. True freedom for me comes from within - such that one could be in a physical prison but still be free. Whereas many of the non-physical prisons we find ourselves in are self-created.

Eunice:

Yes, up to a point, though we are never completely free. Berlin was warning of the danger of absolutes, particularly when applied collectively to a nation or a group.

I agree with Natman - the universe is a capricious place with no regard for the strange occurrence called life. We are on our own, at least on this earth, and we have to do our best to make it a happy place for as many of us as possible and care for the planet and the other creatures that share it. A big burden, don't you think?

How do we deal with the randomness of life? I am reminded of the film 'The Pledge', in which Jack Nicholson plays retiring Nevada cop Jerry Black, who vows to a grieving mother to catch a serial killer who has raped and killed her eight-year-old daughter. Although a mentally retarded Indian has confessed and then shot himself, Black believes he was innocent and, forgetting about retirement, devotes himself to finding the true killer. It is as if his obsession can give meaning to an existence that seems to have run out of purpose.

Eventually, he follows a strong lead and lays a trap with the help of a sceptical police team, using live bait. The twist is, that unknown to all, the killer himself is killed in a collision with a tanker en route to the scene of the sting. When he doesn't turn up, the officers leave Black, convinced that he is senile and that the Indian was guilty all along. Black finally turns to drink.

So, if you are looking for justice in this world, you may have a futile search, as of course Joseph K discovers in Kafka's 'The Trial'. He is arrested by the state but has no redress or argument to make because the charge is never stated as the officials are only humble subordinates who act unders orders from a higher, impersonal authority (the state? or 'God'?).

So the world too is a capricious place. We can only try our hardest to make it less so.

Natman: I agree religion has been responsible for heinous crimes. I also do not subscribe to doing things for a higher power that punishes if we don't - this is completely false in my view. It is also not about the 'afterlife'. I also agree that there is no-one to blame but ourselves for the condition and circumstances of one's life. For me it is about learning how to be empowered to make the best choices or the truest choices that do make a difference and lead to making the world a better place and eliminating evil. For me this is effected by knowing what my true nature is and making choices in accordance with that rather than the false mis-beliefs and misperceptions that we as humans tend to carry about ourselves both conscious and unconsciously that drive our behaviours.


Brian: in my view we are all part of the universe and we all contribute in small and large ways to everything that goes on in it. FOr me the universe is not capricious - yes there is evil but there is also an infinitely healing and loving presence and it is to that that I align or try to! Of course I haven't always thought this and it has required quite a shift in understanding and perspective aided by experiences that have transformed what most would consider awful tragedies to be seen in a totally different way. Of course I still get challenged by what goes on in the world and I'm not living in some rose tinted bubble - I am fully aware of the reality of evil but know it need not be that way.

brianmcclinton,

I should have chosen my words more carefully, I wasn't suggesting you were denigrating anything.

The way you have expanded your thinking I would agree with. Aiming for a utopia for a group of people is social engineering, an extremely dangerous activity. Removing restrictions and injustices at the level where they impact people makes their lives better, and the grand designs will take care of themselves, they will evolve.

I think that is what you were saying.

In the search of justice one thing many of us forget is that each vision or thought you may have of what constitutes it is shaped by your upbringing, belief, religion, social background, influences, BBC blogs, you name it etc etc. What you may feel is justice may not be what the supporters of the minister who was executed last week in China believe. One mans justice is quiet often another man's horror. I am sure there is a fair few people around who feel quite justified waging a holy war on you all!!!

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

Oh dear, what did I say?
Am I allowed to say that I am interested in the concept that you can work for justice only by chipping away at injustice - which is, after all, more easily recognized?

Can I say this puts me in mind of an old joke?

The joke itself is well known and would be an anticlimax to include now. (Though the point was to make comparison with the justice theme.) The problem for the house rules must have been to say it had been told to me as an 'Irish' joke.

Hi all. On the relationship of God and Religion to in-/justice, firstly, it's important to distinguish that as two distinct questions. There may be some conflation of the two notions in discussion.

Religion is about institution and the social link between creed and action. It reflects one side of the line between ourselves and the grand, inaccessible fact in reality about God (whether He/She/It exists or not) - namely, that side that we have control over. If justice is to be investigated in these lights, it must be through the lens of construction. How do we build organisations, principles and protocols that reflect the justice we want to see in the world? Such investigation ought, I think, be primarily _positive_ in character - we want to explain justice in terms of proaction, what we can go out and do to facilitate discussion and development for people of every background, status, race, (species?) and belief. That is, if such things are what we wish to see; I'm bringing my own opinions to that formulation, of course. Failures of religion in this regard are of their success or lack thereof to go out and make a contribution towards Justice, not of their inability to appropriately account for it.

God, on the other hand, lies on the other side of that line. At least, the interesting aspect of the idea of God concerns what of it is on the other side - we can make up stories all we want, but the Truth of those stories is what's really mysterious. And the analysis of the Justice of the divine is, inevitably, going to be _negative_. Why? Well, for the same reason all science is fundamentally negative in character. The inaccessible world of the "Real" isn't definitively known, by virtue of the finite nature of human cognition. What we do in Science (following Popper's characterisation) is create constraints on how things are known not to be, and have to try to infer the remaining structure through constraint satisfaction. As always, however, God, Justice, Physics and the Universal Truth are more complicated and harder to pin down than our prior constraints fully account for. We might have this instinctive understanding that torturing innocent civilians is injust, but what would we say to torturing innocent civilians for the sake of getting information related to saving lives (which, if Guantanamo reports are to be believed, probably happens)? What would God, if it exists, say? An inability to provide a set of possible answers is a failure in the Theology of Justice, not of Religion.

The two questions are "How does God / The world express features that reveal a notion of justice/injustice?" and "What are the organisable features that we desire in society/religion that we express in a notion of justice/injustice?". Both indubitably important; it's the age old doxis/praxis division. That they are distinct questions might be in question, since we might say "The answer to the latter is the appropriate maximisation/minimisation of the former", but that's a statement of purpose, not an answer to the problem. The theoretical project of Justice, as suggested in Rawls, is Positive, and such, I think, is what Religion really aims at, even where the negative conception is important in _informing_ the positive.

I wonder where our sense of justice and injustice comes from.
How do we know what is right and what is wrong?
Is their a higher source of morality?

Did our sense of justice and injustice just evolve with the monkeys?!!
Why do we have them and not animals?!!

I know what I believe...perhaps you answer these questions!

"How do we know what is right and what is wrong?"

We work it out, it is what we do with our intelligence and empathy

"Is their a higher source of morality?"

No

"Did our sense of justice and injustice just evolve with the monkeys?!!"

No, we have our evolutionary path and they have theirs, we have common ancestors not necessarily common paths.

"Why do we have them and not animals?!!"

Why do you think that animals have no concept of justice or fairness. Many other animals have very highly developed senses of community and sociality, all elements of justice, or injustice. We are animals, we just believe we are special.

"I know what I believe...perhaps you answer these questions!"

No accounting for taste !!!

"How do we know what is right and what is wrong?"
Perhaps this is the wrong question to start with - right and wrong are judgments that we make and whilst there may be clear examples there will always be situations where one mans right is another mans wrong.
Perhaps one day we can use use what is loving and non-loving. This can be based on the true energetic nature of love that can be felt and thus the motivation/agenda behind any action can be felt to be coming from love or not love and 'how it is' rather than a judgment about whether it is loving or non-loving which would run into the same issues as right and wrong if just a judgment. This takes the ability to feel energy clearly and whilst we all can do that many of us have shut down that ability - but for those who can it can be clearly felt what is truly loving and non-loving.

There is no 'right' and 'wrong', there is no 'justice', there are no subjective concepts at all.

Unless, and this is a big unless, we assign worth to the terms mentioned above.

To assign some divine source for these worthwhile and necessary fundamentals to humanity is to lower our achievments as a species, belittles the tremendous philosophical work done over the millenia and attributes the greatest accomplishments of us, humans, to an invisible, unprovable, distant, cruel and vindictive Overlord who demands we live by his rules else suffer for all eternity.

We should be proud that we've created these things, not degrade them by pretending they were never our idea in the first place.

It's interesting to see that the answers I received weren't all the same...I'll stick with what I believe....God is sovereign!!

Brian Thomas (69);

You ask where our sense of justice and injustice comes from. This is a silly question. Where does our sense of anything come from? Why single out justice or morality? The answer is that they come from our own brains. There is no higher sense of justice or morality apart from human thought. There is nothing mysterious about these ideas, so there is no point in bring a deus ex machina into the discussion.

Our senses of justice and morality come from a combination of reason and desire. We think it is 'reasonable' to behave fairly and generally we 'want' to behave in this way, though by no means always.

There is NO higher source of these concepts. They did indeed evolve 'with the monkeys'. They too have a sense of fairness and right behaviour, as scientific studies indicate. Stop denigrating monkeys, please!
You are being unjust to them.

They evolved in the sense of an expanding circle. Primitive man was largely concerned with his family. Later he extended his concern to the tribe. Then came his loyalty to the nation. Then came our relationship with other nations. Now comes our concern for the natural world, which includes other species like monkeys.

That is the evolution of morality. But your attitude to monkeys suggests that your own thoughts haven't evolved very much.

BrianMcClinton: re*The answer is that they come from our own brains. There is no higher sense of justice or morality apart from human thought. *
I would disagree with that and propose that the heart and the mind together are a wiser combination for discerning justice than the mind alone. Of these 2, the heart and the mind, the heart is superior, wiser, in my view. We are somewhat deluded by the so called intelligence of the mind - it can lead us up the wrong path for sure as humanity has shown (eg building weapons of mass destruction). Those embued with the wisdom of the heart would take a different route, for the benefit of the whole.

I find it slightly amusing that concepts like justice, love, mercy and kindness are all attributed to god, that only he is the source of all that is good in the world.

However, hate, evil and other negative concepts are either sourced from the devil or somehow attributed to the 'fall'. Surely, if god is the source of all, he created all the bad things as well?

It smacks to me of double-standards.

NAtman: to my understanding you could say God created all - but the all that God created then went on to create in separation from God, from love and thus the manifestation of evil. So whilst all is contained within God, not all comes directly from God - much is created in separation to God - hence evil is not from God. When we create with God, with love, we co-create, when we create in separation to God we just create, without God. It is the latter that is responsible for 'all the bad things' - not God, in my view.

Does anyone read the Bible or just offer their opinion?

Natman,Satan was created by God...he was an angel.. but he chose to rebel against God.

We, also have the choice...God is not a dictator or a creator of robots.

If you have a negative opinion of God....Why?

He offers each one of us the choice and He's hardly going to expect us to worship Him if we regard Him as evil...does He?

You can't expect to know God through a few selected pages of the Bible.

It's important to get a little more insight and understanding....spend a little more time...perhaps start reading the New Testament gospels to begin with.

Brian Thomas (#78),

I must've missed the bits in the bible that tell me all about Satan and his fall from grace, could you show me where they are?

Oh yes! It's based on old Hebrew mythology transferred across outside of the OT and touched upon only briefly within the NT.

I've read the bible, almost from cover to cover, I've been to many hours of bible study, gospel meetings and their like. I'm well aware of both the content of the bible, and it's interpretation.

I don't have a negative opinion of god, why would I waste my time harbouring negative opinions of a fictional entity? However, why would he create a race of thinking, choosing beings and then, when they used that choice to decide something he didn't like, torture them, forever?

By removing god from the equation, justice, and other concepts like it, become more profound and special as they have no relative worth whatsoever.

NAtman: *I've read the bible, almost from cover to cover, I've been to many hours of bible study, gospel meetings and their like. I'm well aware of both the content of the bible, and it's interpretation. *
Now I understand why you have the views you have. Is it possible that all that you have been told about God re torture, hell, damnation etc is completely false and nothing to do with God?? Is it possible that you and many others have unfortunately been sold a lie or many lies about God as I was also??

It's not very different for me than from Natman. I've read it and read what it says, rather than what christians would like it to say. A good example of the latter is Brian Thomas saying

"It's important to get a little more insight and understanding....spend a little more time...perhaps start reading the New Testament gospels to begin with."

In other words, please just do like him and pretend that the old testament with it long series of horrors and recipes for immorality doesn't exist.

Peter:

That contradiction struck me too. Brian Thomas, you tell us:

“You can’t expect to know God through a few selected pages of the Bible”. So he recommends reading ‘the New Testament to begin with’.

Now, if you were selective, you might stop there and you would know a fairy decent god, albeit with some blemishes (e.g. you will go to hell if you don’t believe him). But if you weren’t selective and continued by reading the Old Testament, you would logically discover that your image is shattered by the appalling crimes of the deity in the Old Testament.

So, there you have it, Brian; God is damned by your own logic.

Your responses are interesting..you're getting away from the point.

By all means read the Old Testament..mine was only a suggestion to read the New Testament because it helps us understand what the Old Testament is about.

Your're clearly resigned to what you believe...and that reflects your own self righteousness.

Sorry If I offend you...but it's reality to me and to thousands of others.

Brian (#83), I don't believe in anything supernatural and I'm certainly not 'resigned' to the things I do believe. Unlike the closed-minded and dogmatic strictures enforced by an established church, I quite happy to adapt my opinons based upon the evidence as it presents itself and I'm wary of any faith based opinions that proclaim themselves as 'truth'. To suggest, somehow, that I am 'self righteous' is ignoring the plank within the eye of a good majority of religous devotees.

You've quietly ignored the fact that I've pointed out that Satan as a concept is not established in the bible. The New Testament is vastly different to the old, some might even consider that they refer to entirely different beings when talking about god.

"reality to me" is hardly Reality, Brian. If you're prepared to relativise Truth at the drop of a hat, to what extent are your assertions meaningful?

Believe what you will, but do it _honestly_. Trying to hide behind subjectivity belies a lack of confidence that your aggressive response tries to deny. Acknowledge that lack or stop hiding; such will empower you one way or the other in the engagement of the task assigned to you.

Like most, you identify what you believe with what must be seen first..

There is no 'faith' in your vocabulary!!

I do not intend to be in any way aggressive but try looking at your own comments!

Brian (#86),

I have faith that your faith, to you at least, seems very real.

However, to continue to believe in something against all the observable evidence is not faith, it's delusional.

If you had never seen the sky and believed it was green, that is an acceptable statement of faith. After seeing it was blue, to continue to say it's green is not a statement of faith, it's an attempt to deceive both yourself and others.

What if, in my own life, I have witnessed what I can only describe as an act of God...I'm not talking about some weird experience or set of circumstances...I'm talking about an act of God.

You may say..well that's great for you or why have I not witnessed something that would prove God exists.

I believe there is one very important reason why not and that is simply a closed mind and a persistent attitude to prove he does not exist.

God does not force anyone to believe in Him...but He does say that if you truly seek Him with an open heart you will find Him.

I often read how people think that God is some sort of sadistic dictator...I would not be a Christian if i believed that were true.

It was pointed out to me that I refused to encourage people to read the Old Testament...please, please read the Old Testament.

When you reach those passages that speak of God's judgement against sin...then go back to the book of Genenis and you'll understand why.

Instead of God judging us...we are judging God.

When you come to the New Testament, God's love for us is revealed by the sending of his Son to die for our sins on the cross.

Why should God love us? Why should he punish Jesus instead of us?

If he is a sadistic dictator then why would he do that?

Brian, you're missing the most obvious point - why punish us at all?

If he created us with free will, and he knows and sees all, then he knows who'll choose him, and who won't, ahead of time. The fact he then chooses to punish people for not choosing him, even when he knows they will, strikes me as sadistic.

"You can choose anything, so long as it's what I want."

Natman/BT:According to my understanding, God does not punish anyone - those are all false teachings. He did not punish Jesus nor did Jesus die to save us from our sins - that is impossible - the only person that can 'save' us is ourselves. Jesus was killed by those who did not recognise that he was a true soulful master.

BTW Natman I am curious to know if you feel there is any such thing as 'Truth' in the Universe or do you feel it is all random chaos with no order, structure or laws applying in the universe?

Eunice,

The universe is a chaotic, disordered place, completely uncaring, immensely vast with the only laws and structures are those required for the universe to function. To look into the night sky is to realise just how enormous the universe is, and how insignificant we are.

However.

This makes the life that the Earth holds all the more precious, like a tiny oasis in a desert so hostile that it kills anything within seconds. It makes intelligent life an astounding occurance, and we should revel in our sentience as much as we can, being the only creatures that we know of that can comprehend all of this.

Don't for a moment think though that it's not an accident, because we are. But that doesn't make us not special.

(apologies for the double negative ;)

Oh, don't apologise for the double negative, Natman, but it is a lot harder to say that the accident *makes* us special ;-)

Sorry Eunice..I don't know what book you read but it's certainly not the Bible.

Natman..As I grew up I knew very little about God...my family weren't Christians and I did not go to church.

I was invited to go to an evangelical church when I was about nineteen and I started to attend regularly.

I then began to study the Bible because I had never done so before.

As time went on I began to really understand the fact that i was a sinner...I deserved God's judgement against my sin...which is death and eternal separation from him.

But because God loves me so much he sent his Son Jesus to take the punishment I deserved.

God also raised him from the dead so that I could have eternal life.

I believe this Natman....it is the greatest hope that man has for life beyond the grave.

I know that in your heart you may believe all of this is rubbish...and although you don't me personally I would plead with you to look more closely at it for yourself and not dismiss it.

If I were not thoroughly convinced of it's truth I would not say this to you.

Brian,

I'm sure you're well meaning, and I'm also sure you do believe in all of that, however, I was raised in a church-going household, I've read the bible, I understand most of the theology and concepts behind christianity.

However, the story has too many flaws, the ideology of a god who needs some form of blood sacrifice to be appeased in a warped sense of justice for a crime he not only allowed, but created in the first place, is enough to convince me that if a god does exist (which I'm not convinced about), then it's not the god that you can read about in the bible.

Talking about sin, and gods love and studying the bible is all well and good, but it implies I believe in a) god b) sin and c) the bible is telling the truth.

Natman: thanks for your reply and explanation. I would have probably signed up to that a number of years ago but things have changed for me since then. It's funny isn't it how 2 sentient beings on this oasis can have very different views and understandings re how they got here and how the universe runs. For me, there are no accidents including us - it comes down to choice.

Brian T: I have read wider than the bible -yes.
When I read your response to Natman - I was internally screaming 'no, no, no'. Of course I understand you feel this is true but for me it is a crime and the work of evil (evil being that which separates you from your essence of love) that you have been convinced that:
a) you are a sinner - you are not.
b) that you can ever be separated from God in -truth ; you cannot although we live as if we are separated
c) God does not Judge - God is love and love can only love - nothing you can do or say can make God love you more or less : ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
d)God did not punish Jesus - he was killed by those who did not recognise he was a soulful master
e) you are love and that love is eternal - it is by making choices in separation to that love (you may call that sin) that we bring all our suffering upon us : the answer in my view then is to live according to the ways of love, to be self loving, to love other as self - to know love is your fundamental being - not being a sinner.

I know you will prob not agree with anything I have said. But why would you not want to know or accept that you are love?

ps I realise I said 'you have been convinced that':
and then went onto make statements not based on that lead in ie. c) d) e) ......but I'm sure you'll get my drift!!
So c) would have been that God is a judge, d) that God punished Jesus and e) you are a sinner (again) ! Sorry for the error - too much rushing!!

Eunice:

'Soulful master'. Hmmm. I agree with you, though, that Brian Thomas is probably no more a 'sinner' than you or me. It's an annoying term, worse even than 'soulful master', which sounds like a Karate description.

Sinners and soulful masters are way off topic, which is why I've given up on this thread. As usual, Christians cannot resist twisting it away from a relevant secular discussion into an irrelevant and meaningless advertisement for 'God' and 'Jesus'.

Just in signing off from this blog...

Natman...I believe there is something that has truely embittered you against what the Bible teaches and you have determined to turn your back on what you know deep down is true.

Eunice...If you really have read the Bible you would not use the terminology you use. You are amazingly far from the truth.

I think you must be reading Marvel comics instead.

Brian (#98)

I know deep down to be true? Are you honestly, entirely, serious? That kind of subjective arguement is totally pointless and guaranteed to achieve nothing.

I'd laugh, but you won't hear me.

BrianMcClinton: Re Soulful master - don't worry no karate chops coming - just a term to describe someone who embodies the love and light of the soul - as Jesus did in my opinion - nothing scary or freaky about it. We all can do this - we just choose otherwise. But I agree - perhaps we should get back on topic!


Brian Thomas: I do not use the bible as my reference point for Truth as I find it contains many untruths. I recognise it does also contain truth and wisdom but it requires discernment to know what is and what is not true truth. I understand that from your perspective I may seem to be far away from the Truth as you understand it - but that's OK - I wouldn't swap my truth for your truth for ANYTHING. (And of course there cannot be 2 truths!) By the way, you never answered the question - why would you refuse to accept or know that your true essence is love and that you are not a sinner?? (and don't say because the bible says .... what do you say???)