1.1.01.01.016: The Ishihara test is final and cannot be reviewed, nor retaken

[needshumility]

If the only way you could have total freedom within a society is to be literally invisible to that society, would you consider it worth it? If it took to technically not exist to be able to live by your own rules, would you want that

Comments

[Eddie-friendly Warden Filter] Bertie is not a theologian.

[helpmejeeves]

Well, God is the Father of humanity. And the Father of Jesus, who is also God. God from God, Light from Light, True God from true God, begotten, not made.

There is only one God, and he is the Alpha and the Omega. But he comes in three parts. The Father--that's God. The Son--that's Jesus. And the Holy Spirit--that's...I'm not sure what the Holy Spirit is, really. But I think it's the bit of God that people eat during communion and then lives inside them like the tenant of a flat. As the Good Book says, "know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?"

But there is quite definitely only one God, and those who say they are gods and goddesses are mistaken.

[Eddie-friendly Warden Filter] This could go nothing but horribly wrong.

[19centconstable]

Oh no: the Eucharist is God's body. The Holy Spirit is a Paraclete.

[Eddie-friendly Warden Filter] Or horribly AWESOME.

[helpmejeeves]

I don't know about this Parawhatsits business, but if the Holy Spirit isn't in the Eucharist how does it get inside people?

[Eddie-friendly Warden Filter]

[19centconstable]

A Paraclete is...well I think it's a sort of bird.

But anyway: it's a spirit. They can go through anything or anyone they'd like. Spiritually.

[Eddie-friendly Warden Filter]

[helpmejeeves]

Oh, that must be what those white birds in the stained glass windows and the like is about! I'd always wondered. So the Holy Spirit a ghost bird that flies into a person?

[Eddie-friendly Warden Filter]

[19centconstable]

It could do, yes.

Although I think non-bird ghosts can fly as well. Or float, at least.

Re: [Eddie-friendly Warden Filter] somewhere, sunday school teacher howie is shaking his head.

[needshumility]

So... is that the right answer, or is that just what that guy up there said about everyone having a different answer?

[Eddie-friendly Warden Filter]

[helpmejeeves]

Oh no, it's against the Commandments to believe in a god who is not God. Therefore, it must be the right answer, because God said so. And since God is omnipotent, or omniscience, or one of those omni- words...well, He'd know, wouldn't He?

Re: [Eddie-friendly Warden Filter]

[needshumility]

[strangely, Bertie, this helps him get it.]

Oh. I... I think I understand a little more.

Is everything God says infallible, no matter how ridiculous? If God said spoons could not be manufactured, would people stop making them?

[Eddie-friendly Warden Filter]

[helpmejeeves]

[Bertie is glad to be of help and happy to offer more words of socio-religious insight.]

Yes, God is never wrong. And if God said, "Thou shalt not make spoons" no one would make spoons.

Well...no God-fearing man would make spoons; he would spurn everything that smacks of spoonishness. Other less God-fearing sorts would continue to make spoons and would thus receive much scolding from the God-fearing crowd. Still others would use the spoons while still decrying the immorality of the spoon-makers. Meanwhile brainy chaps would ponder the exact meaning of the word "spoons" as God meant it and call into question whether He really meant "flatware, best used for soup and other liquids" or something else entirely.

Re: [Eddie-friendly Warden Filter]

[needshumility]

But nobody would be punished for... making spoons, for example?

[pause]

I know the last type, though. [loopholing at it's best.]

[Eddie-friendly Warden Filter]

[helpmejeeves]

If God commanded there be no spoons, a state might write laws against spoon-making on the grounds that the making of spoons is immoral. Although I can't see politicians on the Anti-Spoon platform gaining much popular support.

Re: [Eddie-friendly Warden Filter] - this is cracking me up. eddie takes it deadly seriously.

[needshumility]

So... God doesn't give your government rules to work by? But people who believe in god can make them... act towards those... rules?

[HE'S GETTING THERE. HOW IS BERTIE WOOSTER THE ONE WHO MAKES THE MOST SENSE?]

What would happen to someone if their state did decided spoon-making was immoral, and they made spoons?

[Eddie-friendly Warden Filter] - Me too. And Bertie thinks of this as Very Serious philosophy talk.

[helpmejeeves]

Quite so. Politicians make rules for the government, but sometimes they use God's rules as guidelines to make their rules.

So if God said, "These spoon-whatsits are no good; I don't like them." and the politicians, hearing God's words, decided that spoons were bad for the moral well-being of the population and made spoon-making illegal, spoon-makers might be thrown in chokey or even given the noose, depending on just how bad spoon-making was to the soul.

Re: [Eddie-friendly Warden Filter] - this reply took forever. eddie had to look up politician.

[needshumility]

And are all the rules that... stringent?

Is it the politicians deciding how bad the spoons are for you, or God himself?

[Eddie-friendly Warden Filter]

[helpmejeeves]

Not all of God's rules are always followed. Fellows in Britain have mostly given up on the rules on not eating pork and stoning women for infidelity and the like. They dismiss them as God having an off century. And breaking some of the very minor rules might just carry a fine, but breaking the big ones, like "Thou shalt not kill," will put a person in the hottest soup.

[Bertie takes a while thinking about the second question.]

God decides that the making of spoons is bad. Then politicians decide to agree with God that spoon-making is bad, and create laws that determine whether the making of spoons ought to be punished on the same level as murder or theft or something else entirely.