Note to self: Don't make fun of teenaged sister on the bobblog, because it pisses off the fundies.

How in the world does one insignificant post about the terrifying nature of thirteen-year-old girls end up sparking the most heated debate thus far on this site? Enough of that. Most everyone reading this knows how I feel about what was being discussed on that thread, and I know I'll never get anywhere trying to convince some of the people I care about and love a great deal that what they believe at their core is wrong. Certainly not in this forum, anyway. My final comments on the matter are as follows...

I tried to avoid talking about my own personal morality in my previous comments, and I think I did so with good reason. I was trying to point out that as I see it, there is only one "fundamental" law that human beings ought to follow. That law is: The freedom of any given individual extends only so far as the freedom of another individual. That is to say that I should not infringe in any way upon the freedom of someone else. By freedom I essentially mean the will. I don't think this law really needs much further explanation...if it does, let me know.

Further moral rules can, and do, exist for each individual. It is necessary, by my view, that if these are to be truly moral rules, those rules cannot (by definition) contradict in any way the fundamental law of freedom. My personal morality dictates that when I have children, I will attempt to pass on to them the same core of self-respect and respect for humanity that I have realized myself. Mom and dad and Unk Gil and Louise and Brian and Augie and Lori and my countless other teachers in this life contributed in their own very specific ways to force me to question myself and my beliefs, and I am greatly indebted to all of them for helping me realize my own belief structure. I aim to become that teacher figure to my own children...and ULTIMATELY... THE WORLD. Bwahaha. (Insert evil, world-dominating laughter, dim lights, play string instruments loudly, generally heighten dramatic mood ten-fold.)

I haven't outlined a personal morality here (beyond that one law) because I can't argue for it, I can't support it, and I can't claim that it should apply to anyone but myself. I will in the future hope that my children respect my morality and adopt chunks of it themselves, but hope in one hand and shit in the other and never, ever touch me again, please. The problem is that far too many people believe they have found the answers to every moral question that exists and that their moral laws should be everyone's moral laws. I won't even begin to play that game here by setting myself up by outlining my morality. Hell, I doubt I could if I tried, anyway.

I've been accused here of having a warped view of christianity, and my only response to that is quite simply, no I don't. When I talk about christianity, I'm not talking about the teachings of Jesus Christ, because I don't believe that the majority of christians are actually following what Christ taught. Jesus himself would have agreed with the fundamental law of freedom I mentioned above--in a less distilled form the law could be explained as "love your neighbor as you love yourself". If he actually believed he was the son of god to any greater degree than you or I are sons and daughters of god, then he was delusional. I'd rather believe that the people who followed him saw his life as an opportunity to create a religion around a man, and did so rather successfully. But maybe he was nuts. A very enlightened nut, but a nut nonetheless.

I don't think I have created a "straw-god" either. The god I refer to in the previous comments page is indeed a god who, according to his most ardent supporters, allows some people to suffer in hell for eternity. This is not a god I could ever believe in, or respect. I am not exaggerating when I say that I'd rather spend eternity separated from such a god (if he existed) in hell than with him in heaven. I cannot put this any more bluntly. In believing that an infinite god would punish, that god could hate (straight from the most hardcore christians I know), you have created god in your image and, unfortunately, your own self-image is not pretty.

But I really, really, really, don't want to turn the bobblog into a running debate about christianity. By all means, within the context of comments on this post and the last one, please keep it up. And I will no doubt return to the subject, but I don't want to make this site about that. Believe me, it is tempting--not only can I talk about it endlessly, I actually see it as a goal of mine to change people's minds about those beliefs. But I'm not yet fully equipped to do so.

I think that's all I have to say for now. Philosophy papers need finishing, and at some point I should probably get some sleep. I'll be done with the most overwhelming part of the schoolwork I have to do by next Tuesday or so, and by then I hope to get back to connecting the will thing with the all possible worlds thing with the rest of my philosophy.

Note to Augie...thinking about the interconnectedness/network thing. Will devote a post to it soon...