Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site pyuxd.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxd!rlr From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) Newsgroups: net.religion.christian Subject: Re: Re: Is General Goodness just a moral principle? Message-ID: <1529@pyuxd.UUCP> Date: Sat, 17-Aug-85 09:04:36 EDT Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1529 Posted: Sat Aug 17 09:04:36 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 23-Aug-85 21:08:46 EDT References: <852@umcp-cs.UUCP> <360@utastro.UUCP> <879@umcp-cs.UUCP>, <1235@pyuxd.UUCP> <2134@pucc-h> <2199@pucc-h> Organization: Whatever we're calling ourselves this week Lines: 138 >>Is there something wrong with "getting hurt"? Must we always seek the >>ultimate protective sure-thing environment? Why? [ROSEN] > There's a difference between 1) doing what you believe is right (not just > allowed, but right and best) and being hurt for doing it (as usual, the prime > examples are Jesus and many of the apostles and prophets) and 2) asking for > trouble by doing something that may be far from the best thing for you (though > nothing says it isn't allowed). You're probably right. There probably is a difference. I'd still like the opportunity to go through both (1) and (2) and learn from both. Why do you assume that (2) is "asking for trouble"? Must you always choose some "optimum" (by what standard) route? > As to most of the rest of the discussion (unrestricted sex vs. marriage), it > becomes apparent that much of your (Rich's) views of marriage come from your > own observations of what was apparently not a very good marriage between your > parents, as per this: Stop. If I ever hear Jeff Sargent project things onto other people that have no basis in reality except his own mind, I'm going to scream so loud it will be heard in California! >>More people get married with unvoiced preconceptions and expectations of what >>the other partner is "supposed" to be (it worked like this in my parents' >>family, the Bible says that a spouse is supposed to do this...) than we could >>care to count. And more of THEM wind up either in divorce or bitter twisted >>marriages as a result. How the hell you get "not a very good marriage between my parents" from this is beyond me. My parents have been married for 30 years, thank you. They may have their faults, but the basis for my statements comes from experience with quite a lot of married people in very different situations. The examples I gave of people citing their own parents' lives or the Bible as "proof" of how marriage is "supposed" to be is pretty widespread. > You're right that exceptions can fry a marriage (this was brought out in the > series I recently posted to net.singles from a seminar on Preparing for > Marriage), but haven't you ever known any good marriages? Yeah, the ones in which each party overcame or shirked preconceived expectations for the other ranking high among them. > Or is there some reason you always emphasize the worst side of everything > that most people consider basically good? I thought that was you who harped on how horrible people are, how the worst examples like Stalin and Hitler are the basis for judging humanity. No, I'm wrong, those were other Christians. > Sure there are problems in marriage. Sure people > should be warned about them -- but not in the spirit of throwing out the baby > with the bath water (i.e. implying [as you SEEM to] that marriage should be > tossed out entirely). Where did you see words implying "tossed out entirely". If marriage works for certain people, fine. You are the one who is insisting that it is a MUST for successful relationships in the specific religious form you depict. It is NOT a necessity for solid relationships. That is the point. > For that matter, the same could be said about being a > Christian; there are lots of problems along that road, but that doesn't mean > it isn't a good road. But I think you need new tires, Jeff. :-) >>Christians have no monopoly on proper perspective about things like marriage. >>.... My point was that Jeff need not listen only to the Christian perspective >>on requirements about marriage, that ... a lot of assumptions are made within >>it. I doubt that he wants to hear anything but that perspective, but that's >>his business, and his problem. I'm just offering a different perspective >>from a different and perhaps less biased vantage point. > What good is there in the atheist's (hardly unbiased) perspective on marriage? A lot. I think I've just presented some of it. Did you read any of it? In fact, it is much more unbiased. Nowhere did I say (as you repeatedly and maliciously imply) that marriage as an institution is worthless. I *have* repeatedly said that many people who view marriage as a "given" (I grow up, I get married, I buy a house, I raise kids...) treat human relationships in the shabbiest way (as do some non-marrieds), as described above, with preconception and expectation. Marriage is not a cure-all, a magic potion that makes two people learn about relationships. In that sense, it is just as good (and just as bad) as any other relationship arrangement between people. Not some glorious ultimate better thing tht you depict it to be. (And why do I get referred to as an atheist?) > For example, a marriage "until we don't feel like it any more" is hardly a > marriage in the full sense of the word, because it does not provide the > secure commitment that "so long as we both shall live" does. So? Maybe both people would be better off in a closed-ended (or open-ended) relationship. Who are you to say that it MUST be a lifetime commitment? There are other relationship possibilities. > The idea of > staying married only so long as both feel like it implies that each partner > *has* to work at being good to the other or risk losing him/her, which > implies somewhat of a loss of freedom built right into the very fabric of > the arrangement. So, what's wrong with that? I don't understand why you consider simply treating another person with common decency to be work. In any form of relationship, if you treat the other person badly and maliciously on a continuous basis (if the other person has any sense)---BOOM! Fini. Are you proposing that marriage should keep such relationships together? > The idea of staying married no matter what allows, and I > hope encourages, the partners to love each other because they want to, not > because they dare not do otherwise; i.e., lifelong commitment fosters fuller > human growth if the partners choose to grow. And of course this gets back to the head of the article: why must the so-called best path be chosen always? > Love given freely, by choice > (as in the second case) is far better than love given from fear of loss (as > in the first case); indeed, fear-based "love" probably couldn't be called > love at all. I'm not quite sure what planet you come from anymore Jeff. If you see a relationship in such a negative way, if you see it as "If I don't love her she'll leave me so I'd better love her or else", you make it sound like it's some kind of ordeal loving this person. If it's so hard to offer that person love, if you make such a big deal out of it that you see it as hard work, then perhaps you don't really love this person at all. > Perhaps this "until we don't feel like it" isn't your particular approach > to marriage, but it is that of a fair number of people nowadays; I'm just > pointing out that while they may think they are freer by not committing > themselves for life, they're actually less free. I don't see how you reach that conclusion. -- "to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting." - e. e. cummings Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr