Quote from: sporket on April 19, 2014, 10:45:02 AM

@Newfeeling: In the secular sphere, laws could be circumvented with creative interpretations, like your car example.* The thing with Christianity (I'll stick with Christianity for convenience) is it's a religion of intent. What's behind the deed is more important than the deed itself. You'll agree that an omniscient God won't be stumped by your car example, though many "religious" people would like to think He would.

Sure, and an omniscient and omnibenevolent god would surely never leave such loopholes included in the first place right?

People might get really confused and unintentionally do something wrong by doing things literally by the book - especially when he says we need to be careful and follow all of his rules in James 2:10 AND Deuteronomy 28:1-12. I mean god is such a swell guy that if he didn't like what I'm doing he would have said so - he even told me that in 1 John 2:18-29. On top of that, I have to recognize passages like Matthew 5:42 that say I need to let my fellow man borrow from me. I can't charge interest to secure my loan, but Psalms 37:21 gives me some hope because it says that you're wicked if you don't pay me back and that it's good to be generous in general! So if I lend you the money to get your car - you'll surely pay it back and be righteous enough to pay me back a little something extra as a sign of goodwill! Or better yet - I don't even have to get involved in the messy business of lending money to you and trying to work with very complicated rules, I can just buy the car and you can rent it from me and once you've made 11 payments of $500, I'll just go ahead and give you the car Wink

. In the end we'll both walk from this happier and in a better position than we started - me being up $500 and you being up a car! How can the lord be upset with us improving each other's lives simultaneously?

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@Newfeeling: Ayn Rand is as moving and impressive as Christian Rock Undecided

Which is to say - not very moving or impressive at all while at the same time being overrated and unoriginal.

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Also:

Quote from: sporket on April 18, 2014, 10:56:18 PM

... I personally love money, don't get me wrong, but money is intrinsically evil, and those who have it can not be saintly by definition, or Christian-saintly at least. Christ tells a rich young man to give away all of his possessions to be more like Him.

I'm confused as to why you think money is intrinsically evil. What makes that so? How it's used? How it's produced?

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*Though not quite to the extent many here assume. IRL law, unlike its theoretical ideal, also looks at the intent, not the letter. They don't think it be like it is, but it do Cheesy

What a relief, because that means all of these pyramid sch... I mean multi-level marketing businesses will get shut down by the government because they're totally violating the spirit of the law even though they follow the letter of the law!

**sees that Amway has been in business since 1959 and had the FTC rule in 1979 that they're not doing anything illegal**

Oh, nevermind..