February 26, 2010

Atheism vs. theism

MOUNT OF BEATITUDES, ISRAEL - JANUARY 11: US P...Image by Getty Images via Daylife


I believe that our (human) capability to know is limited. So to say there is a God is denying this limitation, as if we are sure about something we really have no ideas. And to say there is NOT a God is also arrogant because we really have no evidences to prove there is NOT a God.
So both atheism and theism do not make sense to me. We are limited. We are trapped. We have no help. And WE DON'T KNOW.

And what is worse (or better) is that we cannot give up our reason --- the only tool we rely on to know things --- no matter where it leads us.
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Good and Evil, the seeds of our nature

More thinking about this issue.
By saying that Good and Evil are both our Human Nature, I did not mean that we hold those qualities one way or another completely by our nature. I rather take it like this way: these qualities are more like seeds implanted in our spirits from the beginning. How we end up with these qualities depend on many complicated issues, such as how we are raised, what is our social environment, relationships, etc.. So, as individual, our moral standards are shaped by all these life experiences together. It is a combination of born nature and life experience.

Good and Evil, by nature and by Teaching

Ary Scheffer: The Temptation of Christ, 1854Image via Wikipedia

I think we human beings all have some moral standards by NATURE called "conscience". This means even without the teachings of Jesus Christ or Confucian or whatever, we should still be able to comprehend things such as "love", "understanding", "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", etc.. We also without teachings should be able to recognize "evil spirit", because we understand what hurt ourselves must also hurt others.
This is what I meant earlier "human beings are born both Good and Evil". They come to us as part of our Nature. And the morality created by such nature like "do unto others as you would have them do unto you", is something representing truth and we should never give them up.

However, there is another kind of moral standard made by MAN, usually under the name of "God", or "Saint", teaching us what is Good and what is Bad, such as pagan, adultery, homosexuality, abortion, divorce, etc.. These teachings were/are usually set up for certain purposes, and they all changing through history (I mean a history in a large picture, not history within hundreds or couple of thousands years). They may have done lots of "Good" but also lots of "Bad" at the same time, so they remain controversial to scholars or whoever asking questions.
These types of moral standards, are belong to what I said earlier as "Doctrine" (or someone help me to find a better English word please). They do NOT necessarily represent TRUTH.
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February 24, 2010

"Kind" people

You meet the nicest people on a HondaImage by gingerbeardman via Flickr


By Ping Hu, an contemporary Chinese philosopher:


"People always put the word 'kind' to many weak individuals, but they may not realize that the only reason these weak individuals appear to be so 'kind' is because they do not have chance to be evil."

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Good and Evil

Gustave Doré's depiction of Satan from John Mi...Image via Wikipedia


Human beings are not born Good, nor Evil, but both Good and Evil.

Doctrines can not make a good man better, nor can it turn an evil man good.

Doctrines are created for survival needs of human groups, so a plain truth for most people can be a total fault for a few, a noble creed for one group of people can be a devilish cult to another.
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Feel "English" again.

After writing in Chinese for a while, I feel "English" again. My English writing has to be very simple due to two reasons: 1, my vocabulary is very limited; 2, this shortage of vocabulary actually forces me to simplify whatever I have to say. So, it is like using limited tools working on some bigger project... not a bad thing I guess

February 22, 2010

Passion and reason

Passion without reason is chaotic and shallow, reason without passion is dry and boring.