Hey everyone,

I know there are plenty of arguments that can contradict this statement and am interested to explore any you can come up with on both sides of the fence.

All laws from western christian countries and states have come as a result for people in power to justify the breaking of the 10 commandments, or rather in my view, the one true teaching...Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

What say you?

What a good point you make!

I better love myself more first of all so I can be more understanding of my neighbours

Hi sweetie.... Long time no hear......Missed you.....

In theory it does sound so simple......Love the person next to you but in reality this is not the case.......

I disagree and think you are starting from a false premise. Only a very small percentage of US code reflects any of the ten commandments. In fact, the only commandments reflected in US code are laws against stealing and Murder.

There's also no law against hating your neighbor or everyone else in existance. There's no requirement to love God or even have a god or religion either.

Laws are made to insure a safe and sustainable society, not to justify breaking any of the 10 commandments, which have no place in US law.

I am not a Christian, I brake the first commandment and several others every day. Religion is not a good bases for a government. There are many different religions and for everyone to be able to follow their own beliefs or non beliefs a secular government is a must.




I agree.

Interesting topic NN23,
For those that are spiritual lets examine the first law of creation.

The heart, soul and mind is the trinity of absolute Agape.

To love some one with all thy heart is to forsake all others and dedicate all their encompassing devotion to a single source. No mortal is worthy of such affection and fidelity. Such love is so powerful that it will radiate from the spirit of an individual and surround all others that are near to them and spark the flame of love within the hearts of others. True love is contiguous and benefits all that witnesses it.

To love some one with all thy soul, the soul is the eternal extension of our mortal creation. To love with it is an everlasting commitment that has no boundaries or limits. Again this is a love that transcends our mortal existence and such love can only be directed at one who exists outside of the realm of space and time, some one that has always been and always will be.

To love some one with all thy mind. Now this one I find is the most fascinating of the three loves for although it is outside of the emotional level of the heart and soul. Yet it still encompasses compassion and empathy. The mind is the tool of reasoning the part that understands how important the creation is to the creator. The mind transcends the boundaries of passion and sentiment. The mind is the core element of the image of God; not a physical image but the power and ability to create or destroy and the wisdom to know the difference. The viable proof of the existence of free will.

All three loves reflect the trinity of the Creator: The heart is the physical = The Son
The soul is the spiritual = The Holy Spirit, and the mind is that that binds them all into a central being of unconditional love; Agape = God.

Irish

Hey MUM, thanks WOW, you christened my thread

Yeah, i am thinking that although it sounds more simple than it looks, this is perhaps the reason all other laws have been made, to justify peoples inability to live up to perhaps (only perhaps) the most crucial thing in life.

________________

The world has become such a state of conflict with laws. Laws and rules that people do not agree with in their hearts. This is what causes much division in society.

Tolstoy expresses an irony when he speaks of the contradiction between our life and our Christian* conscience:

....We are all brothers, yet i live by working in a bank, or mercantile house, or shop at making all goods dearer for my brothers. We are all brothers, but i live on a salary paid me for prosecuting, judging, and condemning the theif or the prostitute whose existence the whole tenor of my life tends to bring about, and who i ought not to be punished but reformed....

....We are all brothers, but i will not give the poor the benefit of my educational, medical, or literary labors except for money. We are all brothers, yet i take a salary for being ready to commit murder, for teaching men to murder, or making firearms, gunpowder, or fortifications....

Now, to avoid this being taken off topic by some i shall just say, that these are excerpts taken from a paragraph of "The kingdom of God is within" and i left out the parts that did not apply to this day and age. I acknowledge that the judicial system aims in this day and age in its treatment to reform and not punish but my focus is on the point that ties in the capitalist gain with the existence of poverty and crime. Kinda Marxist conflicts and stuff init!

This is not a guilt trip either, i just suddenly thought some may look and think with reference to "We are all brothers, but i will not give the poor the benefit of my educational, medical, or literary labors except for money." that i was trying to point out that we're all bad for not being more helpful to the needy.

This is, as i presented it, a well worded example of the irony between the way we live and our conscience regarding an ideal that i feel most people would agree with that i stated at the beginning of the thread. The ideal has been distorted by the way we live. The way we live is governed by laws designed by the parliament elected that creates them to fit in with the living circumstances of society. Hang on .... but the living circumstances of society have much suffering and inequality heavily influenced by the conflicts written above. So the laws are prescribed to deal with conflicts created by circumstances that stem from a deviation from the one ideal that almost everyone (if they are to be completely honest with themselves) could agree with.

The laws created to accomodate the circumstances that stem from a deviation of the original push us further from realising the fruits of the original commandments and the true challenge of life. And so modern men cannot believe that obedience to civic or political laws can satisfy the demands of the reason or of human nature. Men have long ago recognised that it is irrational to obey a law the justice of which is very doubtful, and so they cannot but suffer in obeying a law which they do not accept as judicious or binding ~ Tolstoy

Not only must those who obide suffer, but the criminals/ lawbreakers that have developed from the society created upon the deviation of the original law that kind of had it all sussed.

Yeah well, thats been my line of thinking anyways

*when Tolstoy refers to "christian" he actually believed that a true christian was more than somebody that went to church, infact church was irrelavant. He believed that a Christian was someone that lived and practiced with those commandments and principles taught by Jesus and upheld them out of comprehention rather than routine, fear, blind faith, indoctrination and/or ignorance. He did not think that anyone without these aspirations/attributes should be graced with the title.

EXCELLENT POINT!!!

I believe to love your self is to love your neighbour

But some find that a little abstract ....

Hey Neognosis,

Yeah, my main point in this is that if we were to aspire towards simply to love ourselves and to treat our neighbours as we would have ourselves treated which is to be loved, then none of the other laws would be needed.

The thing is, law as a societal construct originates from the Bible. The reason you have law in the US is because it was brought over when qwesterners settled there, the reason westerners have laws is because the bible inspired people at the time to create more to suit their needs. Their needs contradicted that of what the bible taught because they were ignorant and so they invented laws that allowed them priviliges by disallowing things which they did not desire.

mmm...yeah...hehe

I still disagree. There's too many grey areas in a modern society that aren't covered by simply loving your neighbor. copyright law? Euthanasia law? adoption law? Traffic law? None of these derives an answer to the many questions they pose through simply "loving your neighbor."



I vehimently disagree with that. If any one place can be said as to be the origin of LAW, it would be Hammuraibi's law, the first recorded codified law, which predates Jewish culture and history. And law exists in societies that never heard of the bible and codified law independant of the bible or of a "god."




Are you an American?
Our law is distinctly independant of any and all religions. I can't make any sense out of your last sentence. Can you elaborate?

WOW Irish, cheers for all that, that was a lovely insight and beautifully written

Yeah man, well i did not mean specifically mean the bible, but religious text. But you are right and when i started this thread i was well aware that there is much i do not know, and i am very flexible and eager to learn. And Hammuraibi's law? wow, that sounds interesting man, i shall give it a wiki

However, i do believe that "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." can be applied to all those examples you gave. I believe that all of those issues are "problems" that have arisen from the lack of the above. Would we even have or need traffic/euthanasia/adoption/copyright if we did the above? I do not know the answer to that question it is one i pose to myself aswell as you and anyone else who wants to take it up

no ...

Well yeah, thats what the front cover says, but the story is always more complicated. I am interested though, i am honestly not being a smart alec, do you, or can anyone else tell me whether the guys who wrote up your first laws/constitution were religious? Or their parents who reared them with the values that helped to shape their beliefs that underpin the constitution were religious? Or their friends that supported them and the people who first settled in America which influenced...well, everything that happened were religious?

aaaah i honestly dont mean this in a bad way, i looked at what i wrote and i dont think i can simplify it any more

Yeah, perhaps if you explain a little of what/why you dont understand about it then i can formulate some analogy, failing that someone else who knows what i'm on about might reply to you later

NICE ONE

I say if one does not love his brothers , right here on Earth first he is not Honoring, or loving Our Father (and Mother) God, .

Because this brother which we hurt while incarnate, is actually God's other child.
Love Omnaka

Who has the right of way at a four way stop sign? let's see...love god, love my neighbor... I give up. Who goes first at a four way stop sign? Do all four of us just sit there giving up our turns because we love each other? No. there has to be definitive rules for conduct that go beyond love god and your neighbor. for things like right of way, speed limits, copyright law, etc.

Can I make copies of a cd and give them to a friend? Well, if the artist loves me, he shouldn't care if I do. But if I love him, I should want him to make more money, but if I love my friends and giving them music makes them happy....

See the rub? Laws are necessary to give guidline for human conduct in a complex society that need to go beyone "love your neighbor" and into specific rules of conduct. Otherwise you would have chaos. A very loving chaos, but chaos.



They mentioned God a lot, but a good deal of them were Deists and they specifically made it illegal for congress to make any law respecting any religion.

They also did not include the 10 commandments in anything they wrote, and they were rebelling against a popular religious idea of the time...the "divine right of kings."

One argument is that the idea of diving right of kings was so strong in colonists minds, that the frequent invocation of God in our revolution was necessary to justify what we were doing in a time where the belief was that if God didn't want people subject to a king, he wouldn't have given that king power, thus to rebell against a king was to rebell against God's will.

Why did no one tell Hammurabi that?!?!

Didn't see that Neo mentioned this already! Sorry, Neo!!!

I don't quite get what you are "getting at" ? But.....(ooh you got me started)



People sure like to toss the word love around like it's just some frisbee. Or as if love is a pill you take and presto you have "instant love".


There is not a shred of evidence for a god> so I can't help but doubt the Lords existence>which makes it impossible to love something you don't believe in not alone know. Plus the bible is not the best propaganda for god is it ? Bad advertising to be sure.

There has to be a REASON for loving someone . Same with my neighbor> I can respect my neighbor>treat my neighbor well>have EMPATHY for my neighbor BUT love ?? This takes time. Love is based on knowledge & trust -it is earned. I need to know my neighbor (not in your biblical sense ) first.

RESPECT YES BUT LOVE TAKES TIME

Love your enemy --another good one. Yeah god sure loved his enemies> loved em to death.......loved em to pieces


I read your post again and now I get your point.

True indeed but people and their emotions are not so simple. Would be great if everyone loved their neighbor ,yes.

Love can be contagious.

Good post. However just for arguments sake, one could say that loving thy neighbour as oneself can be summed up in the law ' do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. If everyone kept to this command whether atheist, buddhist or christian how could that result in chaos? And if it was loving chaos then why would that be bad? When was loving chaos (whatever it is) something to fear? Playing with words here, loving chaos could be defined as liberal artistic expression or peace.

Just curious but what is the fundamental difference between respect and love?

They are two different emotions. I respect you but i love& respect my husband ?

BNW I don't love you ...............yet

I respect a tornado but i don't love it.

I respect a tiger but I love my kitty

I completely agree. Playing with words, tossing the frisbee. Love is not to be taken lightly. Love is a BIG word for me with great meaning

because without a code of conduct, people would not have an orderly protocol for driving cars, conducting business, building structures, the economy would collapse, it would be chaos.

The golden rule, while an excellent philosophical guidline, is too vague to be practical in a society.

Who interprets what it means to love your neighbor? can I water my lawn durring a drought and still love my neighbor? Can I listen to pirated music and still love my neighbor? Can there even be pirated music without a law defining what that is? How am I going to get to work if there are no traffic laws indicating when to stop, when to go, when to merge, etc? What happens when I die and try to leave my estate to a relative? If there's no estate law, what's going to happen? He tries to give it away to all the people he loves, but htey refuse it because they love him too much to accept it, etc. etc.

CHAOS.

Then along comes a society that is ordered by a set of codified laws. We would get left behind or probably slaughtered, as there are no laws for conscription or military service, and even if there were, there are no traffic laws so there's a never moving traffic jam on the way to the army barraks as everyone tries to yield the right of way perpetually.

Respect in my view is a form of love. Everyone we respect we love and everyone we love we respect. However some would say that they love some more than others.

Definitely, it's what I always tell myself and the people around me. If you truly, absolutely love yourself, how could you not love the world and everything in it. Therefore, loving one's self to the fullest is one's duty, really! It can be very infectious. I can't even imagine its consequences, but I have a feeling that it's simply wonderful, miraculous, marvelous, and sexy(?).

And that wouldbe bad because. . . . . . . .

People would drive careful without a law telling them they had to if everyone looked out for each other.






Depends. For some yes and for others no. I dont think it is but I can understand where others are coming from who would say it isnt enough.



Your conscience I would say.




Depends. Would you want to water your lawn during a drought? Would it be necessary? Are you thinking of the greater good in your actions? Conscience is very effective for answering these questions.



If we all loved each other then would we care about who owns land or not? Who would be left in the cold?




If they refuse it when out of his heart he wants to give it how is that CHAOS? It would simply mean that no one takes the land. Circumstance would also dictate the situation.



And if everyone was being respectful to each other then these issues would never arise.

But thank you for answering my question.

We have our own interpretation of what it is to "love ?" our neighbor. I interpret it through empathy, possible consequences of actions I decide to take (for myself and my neighbor) in regards to my neighbor, knowing that respect,helpfulness, friendliness and courtesy are often contagious. I mix this with a dash of healthy ,logical selfishness and everyone wins. Everyone is happy.

I am not selfless and never had the goal to be. I refuse to play the martyr. I have the responsibility and the right to achieve my own happiness without stealing it from others.

I agree. When one loves oneself he naturally loves his neighbour.

You have to love yourself to love I can agree with that but...

for me that depends on which neighbor. Some neighbors I have had you couldn't have loved >believe me

My mother has breast cancer. She is alive today because we live in a society with an economy and rules of conduct that faciliated the treatments she received that kept her alive and cancer free for 7 years now.

So yea, I think that an orderly society in which people have protocol that guides their behavior in light of medical research, commerce, etc. is good.



I disagree. Even in an environment where people love and respect each other, some discourse is bound to occur, and we need protocol (laws) that dictate how that discourse is to be handled.



What? Clearly, we're on a different plane of existance here. I've seem people who definitley love themselves but treat other people badly. It sounds like you are defining "love" as some mystical force that turns people into perfect beings. It sure is possible to love yourself and treat others badly. Surely....

See it depends on one's interpretation of love. For some love is unconditional and so they believe that you can love all neighbours no matter how much harm doing they have done to others. Buddha and Gandhi for example are good exemplars of this. Cicero once wrote:

We have a natural propensity to love our fellow man and that is the foundation of all law.

He was around before christ and has loads of cool quotes and piece meal sizes of wisdom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero


You come across as a respectful person and I dont wanna judge you and say stuff like "well you could love your bad neighbours you just choose not to" etc. I myself find it a very difficult law to carry it out. No mystic or saint says it is easy. It takes hard work and I myself havnt worked very hard. It is possible in practice but for average guys like me it is quite a hard ideal to sustain.

Ideally though, if everyones heart was full of respect, forgiveness and love for one another then ultimately how could any intentional harm come to any man/woman through any other man/woman?

So is Christ. Intersting, the similarities in philosophy.

And that wouldnt be able to be maintained if we had no rules of conduct but mutual love? If a loving society has loving doctors who love their patients and have more money for medical research because none is spent on weapons of war then are you saying that we couldnt help people with cancer?



It all goes without saying if you 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you'.




If we love one another then mercy and forgiveness will ensure. Where is your faith in the human soul? Also if discourse did occur bewteen lets say two people and the two peoples hearts were full of compassion then surely the discourse would never result in violence or hatred.



Loving oneself as in respecting oneself and learning to understand oneself gives one empathy with others and to acknowledge that others also are going through more or less the same battles as oneself. One cannot love what one doesnt understand. Some who loves themself but is nasty to others doesnt actually love themself but has a big ego and is usually nasty to others to compensate for that security.

Yes I do believe that love is a mystical force. However this mystical force is actually the most natural force in the cosmos.

I most definately agree

How do those doctors get to the hospital and their labs whith no traffic protocol?

How are hospitals and labs even built with no building code?


I would have everyone let me go first at a 4 way stop, so I guess I'll let THEM go first. But they aren't going, because they want ME to go first. We really need a protocol here about who is supposed to go first.....shoot, it's 5:pm already.

You cannot have a society without laws, unless you completely erase human nature. If you are going to pretend we can do that, then we could pretend anything.

Actually all laws stem from the Seven Universal Commands that God gave Adam and then gave Noah later on.

And what are those commands?

mmmm ...perhaps you also missed my reply which was:

And at the beginning when i said:

The only reason i quote myself is that i feel perhaps my intentions for this thread may have been mistaken.

no, it's an interesting idea, to examine whether or not secular law is derived from biblical law. i submit that it is not, but it's an interesting discussion.

I submit the idea that the bible WAS ITSELF the law for one society. So that societies law was not derived FROM the bible, it WAS the bible. In other words, the old testament is ancient judaism's law, meaning the ot is a very early collection of codified laws and stories to reinforce those laws and to bind that society together.

I found this in wiki>

The history of law is closely connected to the development of civilizations. Ancient Egyptian law, dating as far back as 3000 BCE, had a civil code that was probably broken into twelve books. It was based on the concept of Ma'at, characterised by tradition, rhetorical speech, social equality and impartiality.[62] Around 1760 BCE under King Hammurabi, ancient Babylonian law was codified and put in stone for the public to see in the marketplace; this became known as the Codex Hammurabi. However like Egyptian law, which is pieced together by historians from records of litigation, few sources remain and much has been lost over time. The influence of these earlier laws on later civilisations was small.[63]
The Old Testament is probably the oldest body of law still relevant for modern legal systems, dating back to 1280 BCE. It takes the form moral imperatives, as recommendations for a good society. Ancient Athens, the small Greek city-state, was the first society based on broad inclusion of the citizenry, excluding women and the slave class from about 8th century BCE. Athens had no legal science, and Ancient Greek has no word for "law" as an abstract concept.[64] Yet Ancient Greek law contained major constitutional innovations in the development of democracy


source: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law

mmmm...i think perhaps you missed part of the quote and therefore the point of my statement which was indeed a lead up to a question.




mmm...interesting stuff Neognosis cheers

Do mean building code as in ground plans for a building? I am referring to social laws. If we do unto others as we would have them do unto ourselves then we would all be respectful, mature and considerate and very likely to make room for the doctor to get to his lab so that he can help others. We would do this because we would expect this of ourselves.

A great roman senator and historian called Tacitus once wrote:

The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.

I agree with this statement because good people dont need laws to be good. And people who are less good only truly need to reflect and follow the law:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.





No, in real life people arnt like that. We would more or less just naturally and intuitively go with the flow of things with mutual pleasure.



I never said that you can have a society without law (though I do believe it is possible). I said that we only ultimately need one law which is:


Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Abraham was from Ur which was in southern Babylonia. I am sure if he lived there he had heard of the Code of Hammurabi as well as story of Gilgamesh on which the story of Noah was based on. The authors of the Torah more than likely had knowledge of these ancient texts. Just because it was lost us doesn't mean it was lost to the ancients. I bet is was all there in the library of Alexandra.

http://www.bible-history.com/babylonia/Bab...f_Babylonia.htm.

If everyone freely loved each other she may not have gotten cancer in the first place. I firmly believe that the large rate of cancer and other ills is a direct result of the huge amounts of pointless stress todays order and ego based society forces on people.

WHOA! Brilliantly put Sepet nice one, i TOTALLY agree

I say laws are rules made to be bent.

I can't "force" myself to love someone. Someone must earn my trust FIRST to be loved. Is this so difficult for you to understand ??? I'd be a fool to trust everyone. i give them the benefit of the doubt though. I leave my door slightly open but not wide open.

Love and respect go together, yes, but they are not one and the same .



But IF things really were like your last statement (everyone loving everyone-and I agree w. this statement) things would be much easier.

But in the "real world " this is not possible. There are alot of sociopaths/emotionally messed up people out there and all the love in the world won't help because they are different from you and I.

Some people have NO conscience.Period

I can agree with this >that this has much to do with it. Too much stress disrupts immune response. Stress also makes you smoke,drink, overeat & addiction to junk foods which again stress your immune system.

Plus enviroment,pollution,food additives,exposure to viruses, and insufficient sunlight exposure,not enough exercise (which helps relieve stress) and genetics play a role.

Cancer is like a seed> give it the right thriving conditions and it will grow. We always have cancer cells in our body

I never said it was difficult to understand. I only stated that there can be other interpretations. Some interpret love as something which must be given and recieved unconditionally and others dont. I wasnt saying your approach is better or worse but that your approach is just one of many.



To me respect automatically goes with love. If we love anything we respect it. Love and respect can be seen as the same thing from one interpretation and from another it can agree with what you are saying. In this sense we are both equally right.





I believe the "real world" is what we make of it.




See I have faith that love can change these people.



The inner light is within all people and can be reached if one only knows how (I myself wouldnt know how though I could try).

I half agree with you. If I love something, then yes I will respect it. But if I respect something, it does not mean that I love it.

I think we interpret love differently but agree on alot of things too.

But people with biological brain anamolies which can result in psychotic or sociopathic behaviour "will not " be cured by love.

The real world is what those in power and ourselves have made of it .And we had "unconditional trust" in them.

Lets just say we respected them and trusted them and we can see the results of that, can't we ? But it's some of our own fault.

Is it because we did not give enough unconditional love to those in power (our so called neighbor/bros. sister) ? i think not

Sadly people that love their neighbors unconditionally are seen by many as weak or fools.

If one can loose ALL his fears & have true peace of mind possibly then unconditional love will be possible.

But in todays world -peace of mind- is no easy task- unless you can block almost everything out around you >I mean look at the world around you.

Even the bible says "do not cast your pearls before swine".