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927
Many people claim that being extremely rich imposes moral responsibility on a person to address poverty issues. Yet, other people disagree with such an attitude toward being rich.
Nobody, regardless of their wealth, is supposed to resolve problems that occurred due to actions of governments, economies, and societies throughout centuries. Being rich doesn't make money public property.
Often, people say: "Well, why does he not donate all of his wealth to poor people?" In fact, most of the billionaire's wealth is not the amount of money on his bank account – it is his ownership of companies. Giving up his wealth will not necessarily lead to elimination of poverty, since selling it may result in loss of its value.
Additionally, there is a double standard in society. People do not require other people, who are not billionaires to donate all of their savings. Thus, such an expectation cannot be applied only to extremely rich individuals. If the act of donating money is a moral duty, this should apply to everybody based on their ability.
It is quite fine to criticize someone for the way they spend their money. However, assuming that just the possession of great wealth automatically makes the person evil is not right. A person's moral values can be assessed only through the prism of overall behavior, not the amount of money in his bank account.
The discussion about what the rich are supposed to do is a reasonable moral discussion. Transforming it into hatred of the person is oversimplifying a complex topic.
And It is easy to spend someone else's fortune in your imagination. We speak as though wealth becomes public property at the moment it becomes extraordinary, forgetting that ownership doesn't disappear at the same time. To ask people to be generous is normal, but demanding complete sacrifice is different. If morality requires a person to give away until they are not wealthy anymore, when does this requirement stop? The line is rarely defined. The reality is that outrage is directly proportional to success. It is easier to criticize one wealthy individual than to criticize political, economic and social system that created poverty.
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One philosophical objection against Christianity is the hiddenness problem. As a loving God seeks for his creature to recognize him and enter into a personal relationship, it is questionable why God should hide himself from those seeking the answers. Another philosophical dilemma for Christians is the problem of religious disagreement as there are thousands of different religions and denominations claiming various revelations of ultimate reality.
Moreover, critics bring up the issue of inconsistency in the sacred scripture. The Bible is written by many authors through many centuries under different conditions and cultural circumstances. Thus, differences between stories, problems with translation and choosing the parts of the Bible to be a scripture indicate that it is a human work created within the historical context. It does not seem likely that the perfect divine revelation could have been left so inconsistent.
Another issue that skeptics bring up is the problem of miracles. Christianity relies strongly upon the idea of the miraculous nature of some actions performed by God, and even on such an important one as the resurrection of Christ. But skeptics think that the claim of supernatural phenomena requires supernatural evidence, and whether the historical reports written years later could prove something supernatural?
Science has a number of objections towards Christianity too, as the ideas of the supernatural in Christianity can be seen as a kind of appeal to the miracle. Critics say that it is hard to test, repeat and observe supernatural explanations, whereas scientists succeeded in explaining many mysteries with the help of natural explanations only. Thus, the necessity for supernatural explanations seems to diminish.
But these objections are not the mathematical proof against Christianity, as they belong to the sphere of philosophy.
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Christianity has a lot of facts about reality, but some of its core beliefs have to be taken on faith because there is no independent evidence of them. The presence of suffering and evil is considered a philosophical problem in the concept of God who possesses infinite power, knowledge, and goodness, which raises the question of how unnecessary suffering may take place when such God exists. Religious texts may raise doubts among critics, as those documents were created by people and were transmitted through generations under interpretation of different groups. The concepts of miracles and other supernatural phenomena are hard to test in the scientific approach due to the fact that they violate laws and principles of observation of science. Nevertheless, these statements pose questions regarding certain features of Christianity, not to disprove it altogether, as religious beliefs are usually based on philosophical assumptions.
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"Science and theology deal with different types of questions. Big Bang explains the evolution of the universe from an early hot and dense state on the basis of empirical observations. Existence of God and his creation of the universe is a philosophical/theological question, which science does not prove or disprove."
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The Big Bang Theory is "not just a guess." Scientific theories are well-proven models which have many independent lines of evidence behind them. The Big Bang Theory explains the reason why the galaxies move away from each other (expansion of cosmos), predicts the presence of the cosmic microwave background radiation (which was actually detected precisely in the place where it was expected to be detected), and correctly calculates the abundance of the light elements such as hydrogen and helium. These independent discoveries all lead us to the same conclusion.Scientific models rely on the ability to explain something. The Big Bang Theory provides explanation to the things which the alternative models cannot explain.
A good model should be falsifiable. The Big Bang makes some predictions. Had the cosmic microwave background radiation not been discovered or had the galaxies not been expanding as observed, the theory would be disproved or would have needed revision.
Intuition is not as valuable as evidence. The universe works in a non-intuitive way; therefore, it should not be considered a reason against it.
Naturalistic approach to studying the universe. Science researches natural causes because they can be tested. Science does not assert that supernatural causes are impossible; however, it cannot study them.
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A refusal to believe in the Big Bang since it contradicts the religious viewpoint misses both science and religion.
Firstly, the Big Bang theory is not concerned with the idea that the universe emerged out of "nothing." It explains how the universe evolved from the very high-temperature and dense initial state. As for what happened before that – it is an unresolved scientific problem.
It is not true that scientific theories are mere conjectures. In science, theories are well-evidenced explanations of some natural phenomenon. The Big Bang is based on various observations including galaxy expansion, cosmic microwave background radiation, and light elements abundance. It is currently the most well-established theory of the early universe evolution.
Secondly, embracing the Big Bang does not mean abandoning God. Actually, the Big Bang theory was proposed by a Catholic priest who was a physicist at the same time.
Whether the Big Bang proves God or refutes him is a wrong question. Firstly, this theory cannot do either. The Big Bang theory is about "how" the universe developed while many religious traditions are interested in the question of "why" the universe exists.
Refusing to believe in a scientific theory because it conflicts with a particular interpretation of scriptures is not going to enhance one's religious conviction. Truth has nothing to fear.
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When goodness depends on punishment that awaits after death, it is not goodness at all but submission.
An individual who restrains himself from committing evils just for the fear of retribution is not in control of his darkness; he has just restrained it. Strip him off the fear, and what will be left? Virtue or chance?
One does not have to have a holy scripture to understand the significance of someone else's pain. Empathy came into existence long before there were commands to follow. It doesn’t take heaven to make one feel good or hell to make one feel bad.
The troubling thing is whether or not we believe in God but whether or not we can have any moral values without the promise of heaven or the threat of hell.
Do we do good things because goodness lies in them or because we are being observed by God?
The ultimate form of morality comes through freedom – the time when one acts in goodness even in the absence of a god, a law, and a crowd to observe.
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However, there are times when the craving for death does not signify the quest for annihilation but rather the resistance against overwhelming burden. In other words, the craving for death has less to do with dying per se than with escaping from a form of existence that no longer seems tolerable.
A weary mind finds salvation in the silence, which fails to solve any problem but promises an answer that words cannot provide.
The true tragedy is not that a person contemplates about death but rather that life itself has moved away to such an extent that death speaks to him in a more gentle voice.
The real question may be not "why should I die?" but "what in me should die so that I could go on living?"—pride, deception, fear, dependence, self-centeredness, or perhaps even the false self which imprisons one inside—these are all forms of death which give a person life.
After all, the end of a false self does not mean the end of a person—it marks his rebirth.
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He was not weak because he craved love. He was weak because he trusted that love meant that he was worth loving.
He craved love the way deserts crave rain. One single word could brighten his whole day; one single ignored message could shatter his whole existence. Every silence became an accusation. Every distance was a judgment. He needed to get attention; without it he felt disappearing.
However, a harder question lingered:
Who has ever taught you to put your soul under the power of somebody else?
The sensitive boy created his own altar out of people's acceptance. He worshipped it every day, praying to be told that he is enough. However, the gods he prayed to were mere people who give their affection whenever it suits them and withdraw it without giving any reasons. Every time they did that, it cut into him because he confused love with air.
It wasn't the lack of affection that made the sensitive boy suffer. His suffering originated from the fact that he depended on it. The invisible shackles he wore weren't put on him by some cruel people – he had chained himself by his need to be selected.
It was a subtle sort of slavery.
Yearning for love is normal. To depend on it to be able to stand up straight means to renounce one's freedom. The boy's heart was so delicate that even the slightest shadow could leave a bruise, but delicacy without strength makes imprisonment.
The thing wasn't about learning to become cold and insensitive. It was about gaining the roots strong enough for affection to become a present rather than a necessity. To love, without begging; to care, without falling apart; to bear silence without thinking of being unworthy of being loved.
Then only he would be able to meet somebody not as a poor creature begging for scraps, but as a full-fledged soul ready to share what he had.
The sorrow of the sensitive boy wasn't in his deep affection. It was in the inability to turn himself into the source of the love he expected from the others. And until he creates his own fire, each winter will feel like betrayal.
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Human have true emotions while said in the bible "He's never overwhelmed by unsettling emotions"
