Re: Do you ever think

No, I think about influencing one person at a time. I think about being quiet and allowing God to give me notice to who that person might be and bless me to know what to say and how to say it so they will come to know God's love. For we love Him because He first loved us.

We think about what we call blessing each day as we give thanks to God for them and tell Him we love Him. What we sometimes forget is the joy of God's presence, His Holy Spirit, because we forget that joy of knowing that He loves us and our children, friends and spouses more than we do.

We forget that God's love is a giving love and not a taking love. We can give Him nothing but our trust and obedience. Life sometimes confuses us causing us to forget that 'blessed,' means happy. It isn't founded on our relationships with one another, our friends or family. Happiness is founded on our relationship with Him who love us.

Fordtunate Son

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Jun 3, 2022, 11:19 AM

Man, you are full of philosophical atomic bombs, P6. The biggest of the biggest questions. <img border=

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Now we're into the concepts of "good", along with do we have any impact on things, like free-will vs. predetermination. Do our decisions matter or are they pre-recorded?

It also ties into the concept of intent and what value, if any, intent has. Whew.

Add to that the impact of unintended consequences and you've got a big 'ol tangle going on.

Just to pick a random example which I think I've used before, take the TVA project from the 30's. It brought power to millions and put thousands of people to work in the depression. Most would say that's good.

But of course, it also destroyed a lot of wildlife, relocated or destroyed a lot of small towns, and put a lot of mom and pop power shops out of business. Not unlike when Walmart comes to a town and torpedoes the small businesses. So most fols would say that's bad.

In a similar fashion, some of Mrs. Fordt's family was basically forcibly relocated when the Savannah River Plant was built, so we could build bombs to blow up Russians. So they had to give up their historic homesteads for a hypothetical that never even happened. They DID move, but we DIDN'T drop any of those bombs.

One can always fall back on the "greater good" argument for a lot of this stuff, but even that has limits. There's a famous psychological test that illustrates the problem.

Say a train is coming down a track to a split in the rails. You are standing at the lever. On one track is 2 people, on the other track is one person. The train must go on one of the tracks, thus killing either 1 or 2 people. The lever is set to the one person track.

Most would say, well, it's better for only one person to die than two, so the right, or good thing to do in that bad situation would be to not do anything so the train only kills one person. You are just a passive observer, though you believe the "good" or at least better, thing will happen.

But then there are a lot of interesting variants on that example. Going with the premise that 1 dying is "more good" than 2 dying, what if the train is heading for the two people and it's not a passive choice?

Suppose you have to physically push the lever to the 1-person track. Now YOUR action is altering the train's path, and dooming the 1 person to save the 2. Now that you have to actually do something, is it still "good?" Your action will cause that death.

And to further complicate it all, suppose the one person is a mass-murderer. Now is it better that two people die so that 1 mass murderer can live?

Or suppose the one person is your mom. Is it still worth the "greater good" of killing just one person to doom your mom? Or is "greater good" not such a good argument anymore?

So any position you take, really, can be undone by more information or other circumstances. "Good" isn't always simply "good."

And though your intent may be good, you may not even be aware of allof the the consequences of taking a "good action".

It's another great topic worth more way more thought and discussion than my 2-minute spiel here.

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Do you ever think