Original Sin?

Quote: FrGamble

Let me ask you, why can't you actually live by these moral codes you yourself have made up?

You have absolutely no idea how I live.
I have no idea how you live. For all I
know you break 11 of your gods rules
a day and are forgiven. But I would
never presume to guess..

It is no guess to say that I can be absolutely certain that you do not live exactly as you want to.

Quote: FrGamble

It is no guess to say that I can be absolutely certain that you do not live exactly as you want to.

Actually, I pretty much do. I make a point
of it, always have. I would say it's no guess
that you live exactly as others want and
expect you to. I could do that for less than
5 minutes and then I'd be gone.

Quote: Evenbob

Actually, I pretty much do. I make a point
of it, always have. I would say it's no guess
that you live exactly as others want and
expect you to.

I try very hard to live as I believe God wants me to but I am far from perfect in that.

Quote: FrGamble

I try very hard to live as I believe God wants me to but I am far from perfect in that.

You mean you live how the Church wants
you to, they are the only god in your life.
There are no rules of god, but there are
plenty of rules from the Church.

I'm a hedonist.

'engaged in the pursuit of pleasure; sensually self-indulgent.'

There are all kinds of ways to be hedonistic
that don't involve drugs and young women.
Mostly it involves being your own person
and pursuing your own way. It's a religious
life of sorts, but there's no deity involved
to mess things up.

Quote: FrGamble

I try very hard to live as I believe God wants me to but I am far from perfect in that.

How would you know how god wants you
to live, there is no god. So at best you're
just guessing what god wants from you.
You live like you think you should live, just
like secular people do. Only we understand
we are guiding ourselves, we don't think it
comes from some outside force. Same result,
though.

Quote: Evenbob

You live like you think you should live, just
like secular people do. Only we understand
we are guiding ourselves, we don't think it
comes from some outside force. Same result,
though.

As a professed hedonist I don't think you will understand. You are not guiding yourself at all. You are letting your stomach or your penis or your emotions guide you. You are imprisoned by them. If you let truth guide you then you would realize that truth does not depend of you or what you want. Please don't insult me by saying I live like a hedonist when everything I try to do (admittedly not perfectly) is meant to by guiding by something much more true then my own whims and desires.

Quote: FrGamble

You are not guiding yourself at all. You are letting your stomach or your penis or your emotions guide you.

When I was 14 this was true. I'm no
longer 14, I grew out of letting my
base desires determine my life.

Quote:

Please don't insult me by saying I live like a hedonist .

Where did I say that. What I said was,
I tell myself what to do, you think you
do what god wants you to do, and the
result is the same. We both end up doing
what we want. You live the life you do
because it's what you want. If it wasn't,
you would do what my friend the ex priest
did, resign. He even had his name removed
from the baptismal record, that's how serious
was.

Quote: Evenbob

I tell myself what to do, you think you
do what god wants you to do, and the
result is the same. We both end up doing
what we want. You live the life you do
because it's what you want.

It sounds like we couldn't be more different. You end up doing what you want and you can tell yourself over and over that it is not following your base desires, but it is. I strive to conform my life not to my wants but to the will of God.

Quote: FrGamble

I strive to conform my life not to my wants but to the will of God.

No, you conform to what the Church tells
you to do, not god. Again, you're doing
what you want, just like me. You think it's
different because our methods are different,
but it's not. You choose how to live your
life, I choose how to live mine. The problem
is, you can't tolerate that, you think everybody
should be like you and that's your goal. To
get them to do things your way through
manipulation and intimidation and guilting,
putting it all under the banner of some
kind of twisted 'love'.

But people aren't falling for it anymore, the
Church has been outed. Catholics are staying
away from mass and confession to such a
degree that you can barely call it a church anymore.
They may still believe in a god, but it's no longer
the god they were told by the Church existed.