Generational divide on Israel vs Hamas

[Oscar_Kipling]

Please don't be obtuse.  One doesn't have to cite chapter and verse, (pardon the pun) to worship of man's intellect and reasoning to point out one's objective allegiance and reliance upon it.  Are you always that pompous an ass, or do you have to practice at it?  I for one, acknowledge that I am a pompous ass and yes, I work at it.

I gotta be honest, it's not exactly clear what you are trying to say...but based on your tone I'm guessing it's something I said. I don't work at it, this is who I am. 

I could not care less as to how you have arrived at your presuppositions.  But grift?

You're right, I misread your post, my mistake. However I do maintain that many Christians do hold that position and it is a grift, or I suppose if I were being generous it is motivated reasoning imo.

What a ridiculous accusation.  You don't even see in yourself your demands made on God, even in your hypotheticals.

The only thing i've ever asked of God was to reveal himself to me. Tango asked me essentially what I think God should do to resolve misinterpretation issues in the church, that is to say if it is as some folks claim that God wants people to understand and abide his will, then I think he should be a whole lot less ambiguous with his messaging and interactions. The stated goals of God and the apparent actions of God are at widdershins imo. If you want to characterize that as demanding something of God then ...well you already did so....

If you don't believe in the existence of the supernatural, then you are an idiot to waste your time in this forum trying to convince us of how brilliant you are and how stupid we are by comparison.

Is that what i'm doing? I think that your notion that I'm trying to belittle your intelligence is more based in your own insecurity than anything that I actually care about. If I was trying to show off how smart I was through these little debates i'd be chasing Athanasius around, with you it just shows off that I can be petty, catty and childish.   

What is your point, really? 

That if God were a human father he would be an absentee father.

Does being contrarian bring you some strange pleasure?

I mean, yeah sometimes, who doesn't?

I recognize that you see the world differently.  I have an opinion as to why you see it differently, as do you, and both are likely true expressions of our beliefs.

uh huh...I think my main issue is with those that must insist that my view was dishonestly
acquired..if that isn't you then good on you.

Sincerity is a lousy arbiter of reality.

It is a lousy arbiter of reality, but i'm not appealing to sincerity to validate the veracity of my view, i'm merely asserting that I arrived at my view sincerely. it's veracity is up for debate, but I do not think it is fair to dismiss it as insincere by virtue of the conclusions therein like some do.

[RabbiKnife]

I fear that sometimes our demands on God that He "reveal Himself to us" are clouded by our subjective expectations of what that looks like.

I pray that you are not someday the drowned man...

An old, well worn story.... I stole this version from wiki...

________________


    A storm descends on a small town, and the downpour soon turns into a flood. As the waters rise, the local preacher kneels in prayer on the church porch, surrounded by water. By and by, one of the townsfolk comes up the street in a canoe.

    "Better get in, Preacher. The waters are rising fast."

    "No," says the preacher. "I have faith in the Lord. He will save me."

    Still the waters rise. Now the preacher is up on the balcony, wringing his hands in supplication, when another guy zips up in a motorboat.

    "Come on, Preacher. We need to get you out of here. The levee's gonna break any minute."

    Once again, the preacher is unmoved. "I shall remain. The Lord will see me through."

    After a while the levee breaks, and the flood rushes over the church until only the steeple remains above water. The preacher is up there, clinging to the cross, when a helicopter descends out of the clouds, and a state trooper calls down to him through a megaphone.

    "Grab the ladder, Preacher. This is your last chance."

    Once again, the preacher insists the Lord will deliver him.

    And, predictably, he drowns.

    A pious man, the preacher goes to heaven. After a while he gets an interview with God, and he asks the Almighty, "Lord, I had unwavering faith in you. Why didn't you deliver me from that flood?"

    God shakes his head. "What did you want from me? I sent you two boats and a helicopter."

[Sojourner]

I fear that sometimes our demands on God that He "reveal Himself to us" are clouded by our subjective expectations of what that looks like.

God did reveal Himself, and did not meet the expectations. After being rejected by most, He was betrayed, arrested, crucified and arose from the dead 3 days later. He will reveal Himself again in the not-to-distant future, and the circumstances will be drastically different from the first time.

[Oscar_Kipling]

I fear that sometimes our demands on God that He "reveal Himself to us" are clouded by our subjective expectations of what that looks like.

I pray that you are not someday the drowned man...

An old, well worn story.... I stole this version from wiki...

________________

And see while i'm sure it isn't your intent imo it sure looks to be teetering on the edge of "If it didn't work then you didn't approach it honestly", which I think is closely related to the assertion that if I'm a non believer then it must be because I have arrived at my conclusions dishonestly or insincerely. Idk if you remember but I was on the old forum for years, and I didn't try for years because I thought it pointless, but eventually after some years I was worn down by the fact that nearly every conversation I had ended with a Christian telling me that if I GENUINELY asked for God to reveal himself to me then he would and that this does not fail. I had nothing to lose but the principle of not talking to a being that I didn't think was actually there, which when I thought about it wasn't really something that actually mattered. I tried it, and all I had as an expectation was that if God was listening then however he revealed himself to me it would be in a way that it at least made sense for me to notice and consider that it could be God....then I continued about my life. I cannot honestly say that i'm still waiting but its not like I took some effort to official revoke my invitation or anything, the years just passed and while no one put a time limit on it i'm not holding my breath.   

    A storm descends on a small town, and the downpour soon turns into a flood. As the waters rise, the local preacher kneels in prayer on the church porch, surrounded by water. By and by, one of the townsfolk comes up the street in a canoe.

    "Better get in, Preacher. The waters are rising fast."

    "No," says the preacher. "I have faith in the Lord. He will save me."

    Still the waters rise. Now the preacher is up on the balcony, wringing his hands in supplication, when another guy zips up in a motorboat.

    "Come on, Preacher. We need to get you out of here. The levee's gonna break any minute."

    Once again, the preacher is unmoved. "I shall remain. The Lord will see me through."

    After a while the levee breaks, and the flood rushes over the church until only the steeple remains above water. The preacher is up there, clinging to the cross, when a helicopter descends out of the clouds, and a state trooper calls down to him through a megaphone.

    "Grab the ladder, Preacher. This is your last chance."

    Once again, the preacher insists the Lord will deliver him.

    And, predictably, he drowns.

    A pious man, the preacher goes to heaven. After a while he gets an interview with God, and he asks the Almighty, "Lord, I had unwavering faith in you. Why didn't you deliver me from that flood?"

    God shakes his head. "What did you want from me? I sent you two boats and a helicopter."

yeah yeah, I've heard some permutation of this story a million times...again the insinuation is that my approach wasn't genuine enough, or sincere enough, or that I've just ignored or been to thick to notice a bunch of very obvious signs...either way the failure is mine because if I did the thing correctly then I'd be a Christian therefore obviously I screwed it up somehow because anyone that does it right has God revealed to them so God revealed himself to me but i rationalized it away because i'm dishonest because and honest person would be a christian right now because.... Do you see how you will always have a 100% hit rate if you exclude every shot that missed the target as a weapon malfunction?

[RabbiKnife]

You assume a lot

I was expressing my fears for your future, not making insinuations about anything

Your relationship or lack thereof between you and God is outside of my control, but not outside of my concern

[Oscar_Kipling]

I for one, acknowledge that I am a pompous ass and yes, I work at it.

When I first read this I thought you were just being sarcastic. I saw in the other thread that you mentioned being a lawyer. When I found this site again I thought that you were the same guy that I remembered being a lawyer on the old forum, but your temperament was completely different than I remembered so I assumed that I must have mixed up your name with someone else. Anyway, So was I right in remembering you as a whole lot less abrasive, as a person that had an overall much cooler/ more approachable demeanor & temperament? Am I to understand that you have become this person today with (so far as I can remember) the same beliefs, but with an almost total lack of your former charm & conviviality, and that you did this on purpose through conscious effort & practice? If so, why did you do that? if not, apologies for misremembering you as anyone but this.

[Oscar_Kipling]

You assume a lot

I was expressing my fears for your future, not making insinuations about anything

Your relationship or lack thereof between you and God is outside of my control, but not outside of my concern

Alright, I take it back then...it just looked that way to me.

[tango]

Given how much time is spent discussing peace it is remarkable how many wars we still have going on, no?

again idk, it is one thing to discuss peace and something else entirely to invest the sort of time, effort and resources it takes to be about peace. I won't disrespect the folks that have suffered and died in wars by claiming that peace is easier than war because it is extremely costly and we pay for it sometimes for countless generations, but war is easier to understand in many ways and what we think it will cost is often immediate and visceral whereas peace I think has fuzzier edges and requires a kind of trust, unity and emotional depth/maturity that rarely whips masses of people up into action and never in perpetuity. To me it's not unusual that the rhetoric of peace has not translated into the discouragingly long, difficult and often thankless work of peace. TLDR i'm not surprised because actually doing peace is super hard.

Doing peace isn't actually that hard. I manage it pretty much every day. I simply make a choice not to hurt other people. If you wanted to be more specific it's not really all that much of a choice, it's pretty much the default position that I don't harm others. It takes an active decision to initiate hostility with someone else. At a national level it's a specific choice to invade a country, to fire missiles, to drop bombs, to launch rockets, you get the drift. It doesn't just happen as a default position leaving people wringing their hands and wishing the tanks would just stop rolling into the country next door.

I noticed you didn't address much of the rest of that section. Sure, people have wanted their ears tickled since there were ears to tickle. But in the early days of the church people were imprisoned for their faith. These days the church, in the west at least, likes to think it's something special and will never face persecution. Never mind the inconvenient bits that Jesus said about how the world hated him and will hate us. But, you know, we're good Americans with the good old First Amendment to protect us, because we're just too good to suffer for the sake of the gospel. And that's not necessarily what our future holds. But it's more comforting to hear how the Western church will be raptured and not have to face any of the nasty inconveniences of being beaten and martyred, like people in the more primitive parts of the world.

I really didn't have much to say on your other points, i'm actually more or less fine with them. To me you described a bunch of problems in the church and their root causes about as I would have, save a few that I would add because I do not believe in supernatural forces and you do. All in all its not that we disagree that humans are imperfect and therefore the church is imperfect, we disagree that there is some spiritual mechanism that will guide a genuine believer (or however you would describe it) along the righteous path (or whatever it is that is supposed to be good and useful about christianity).

If you don't believe in supernature then anything describing supernatural things is - ahem - naturally going to fall a bit flat with you. I guess in a way I'd echo what the good Rabbi asked - if you don't believe in anything supernatural and aren't really interested in believing in anything supernatural it seems like most discussions on a forum like this one will ultimately come back to the same sticking point, namely that we believe in God and you don't.

This is the bit where I find myself thinking about the discussions we've had about unicorns and what it would take for you to believe in unicorns. Can you be specific about exactly what it would take to convince you that God was real? Here you're kinda talking about some comical old guy coming down from the sky to chat with you over a coffee, assure you that he was God and he was real and it would be awfully nice of you to start believing in him, only to then float back up into the clouds while you debated with yourself whether it all really happened or if you'd eaten too much cheese right before bed or something.

I don't know why god would need to appear as a comically old guy, but yeah a cup of coffee with God imo isn't too much to ask. What I meant by showing up is that god could just be around and he's having billions of coffees or breakfast's or morning jogs or whatever with billions of people all of the time. I'm amused by the theatricality of parting clouds and moonbeams, but if God was just hanging out with everyone all of the time, was there to unambiguously answer questions and it was as common as pie to come to thanksgiving and see jesus playing with your nephew, then it would be like denying that your uncle Carl exists. I'm not saying that people don't deny that their uncles exist or lose touch with reality, but I feel like the idea of limiting contacts with God to special moments that are invariably internal makes them indistinguishable from supernatural contacts that we would likely both agree sound super fake and made up. It's not as if God doesn't have the time or ability to show up to everyone, everywhere all at once. Nothing actually prevents God from being a common fixture in everyone's life in as visceral and tangible a way as uncle Carl is. No one has to genuinely ask that uncle Carl reveal himself to you because you grew up with uncle Carl. Uncle Carl teased you when you had your first crush in the 4th grade. Uncle Carl taught you how to change a tire. You've looked through uncle Carl's old photos and laughed about how much hair he had in highschool. Why all the cloak and dagger with God? What purpose does the ambiguity serve? He may answer you, but you have to recognize the signs or whatever, like why? When I order an Uber I don't have to really believe that the uber app will send me a sign and perhaps through the giggle of a child or the way the sun filters through the leaves of an old oak tree will I then know that my Uber has arrived...nope I get a notification. Claiming that I or anyone would simply deny it if God was always bopping back and forth through the clouds all of the time for all to see is fine, but it hasn't happened so neither of us know how that would affect the faith of the human population. It's a safe way to claim that a thing that hasn't happened didn't happen for reasons that you just get to baselessly assert and then you get to claim that this whole thing that didn't happen is just more evidence for the thing you believe. I'm sure that you would be able to see the grift in that if the context were different, but not with God.

Sure, from the outside it can often seem like it's a bunch of random stuff that "means something to me". And some people like to over-spiritualise everything to the point everything becomes meaningless. You've probably heard stories, verified or not, of people who got fired for being perpetually late for work because they were seeking God's guidance on what to wear that morning or which route to take to work or whatever else (apparently in their mind God didn't think it important they honor their commitment they made to their employer)

I'm not sure there's much mileage in the claim "God didn't show himself to you the way you expect, therefore God exists". It might be the kind of lame thing that passes for reasoning in a book like "The God Delusion" (which was hugely disappointing in the weakness of the arguments it presented, given the presumed intellect of an internationally published philosophy professor). I think it's still a valid question to ask just what you are expecting God to do, over and above "I don't know, just Do Something".

It has been said that an atheist cannot find God for the same reason a burglar cannot find a policeman. Finding God can be inconvenient to say the least.

As someone else already mentioned in the thread, God did come down to earth as a man. People expected a warrior, a king in the conventional human sense, but got something very different. It's easy to follow a ruler who preaches a message of throwing off oppressors, of turning the tables and dominating those who once dominated us. It's more of a challenge to follow someone who preaches a message of turning the other cheek (which, to go back to an earlier point, is helpful in preserving peace) and serving others rather than looking to be served.

[Oscar_Kipling]

Doing peace isn't actually that hard. I manage it pretty much every day. I simply make a choice not to hurt other people. If you wanted to be more specific it's not really all that much of a choice, it's pretty much the default position that I don't harm others. It takes an active decision to initiate hostility with someone else. At a national level it's a specific choice to invade a country, to fire missiles, to drop bombs, to launch rockets, you get the drift. It doesn't just happen as a default position leaving people wringing their hands and wishing the tanks would just stop rolling into the country next door.

Edit: Apologies i've added stuff in the hopes of further clarifying my position, this has made it a longer post but hopefully it serves to head off any misunderstandings.

Edit 2 electric boogaloo: Made some more changes to various parts of my post for correctness & clarity... I think i'm done now. 


I see, I think we might be looking at this a little differently from each other, or maybe I should say that I would not consider you as an individual refraining from personally, directly & intentionally harming people to be the entirety of what I mean by doing peace. Of course if every individual avoided direct and intentional harm to every other individual then we would be at least much more if not completely successful at peace. I think that at the heart of my concept of doing peace is the idea that peace is threatened by anyone that doesnt have peace. I'd wager that as a Christian this is something you'd agree with or at least you might say something about the peace of the lord.

Either way, I think that one of the ramifications of being a person that doesn't have peace is that it may actually be difficult to contain that inner lack of peace and difficult to control or even predict how that turmoil might express itself. We are all, at least those of us that can reasonably be considered able to understand the consequences of our actions, responsible for our actions, but the idea that all of humanity is in a position where controlling rage, desperation, shame or other emotions that can contribute to violent behaviors takes the same amount of effort or in your case very little effort is in my opinion/expirience not an accurate statement. I do not believe that it is an overstatement to assert that folks without peace can struggle with violent tendencies, harmful behaviors and mercurial dispositions that make dealing with common everyday situations without lashing out, escalating or resorting to practices that may harm others can be more difficult than you've portrayed or expirience. I believe that the dulling or suppressing effect on empathy that can result from not having peace is something that cannot be ignored when considering how easy it is to make decisions that affect others. This is not me absolving folks of the responsibility that we all have to police our own actions, I just want to impress upon you that the effort that must be summoned to do that is not always the same and not always trivial. Anyway, I believe that another place where I agree with some Christians at least philosophically is in the idea that helping those who do not have peace to find their way to peace is also a part of doing peace. So to put it another way, I believe that doing peace is not only about being accountable and responsible for yourself, but also taking responsibility in the wellbeing of others. It does, at least for me, begin to get somewhat tricky when you really think about how one goes about this, imo some ways are extremely obvious and immediate, others are not.

Edit #1
So, to be clear I do not outright reject your assertion that doing peace is as easy as everyone everywhere forever refraining from harming each other, I do have to push back on the notion that this itself is easy to execute given the broad spectrum of circumstances & conditions that people face. I suggest that it is easier to refrain from engaging in any behaviors that may harm others when you have access and opportunity to fulfill your basic human needs, which for many people is not the case. I believe that it is unrealistic to think that even if humans that are active in causing harm to some of these folks were to suddenly disengage from their harmful activities that this alone would necessarily lead to peace because the damage as they say, is done. While I believe that helping oneself is absolutely paramount to recovering and thriving after suffering harm/trauma/injury, we know for certain that cessation of the trauma does not itself always arrest negative behaviors that were learned or cultivated by the trauma. This isn't because traumatized people that have amassed destructive behaviors love these behaviors, or cannot see that these behaviors often lead to undesirable outcomes any more than a person whose broken limb healed without ever being properly set cannot see that the way they must contort to pour a cup of tea with their mangled limb is less than ideal, however they are often similarly limited in what they can effectively do about it. Unlike a broken limb that healed improperly, behaviors developed as a consequence of trauma can be passed down to the next generation, both intentionally and unintentionally. I do not want to disrespect people that have found direction after being set adrift on vertiginous seas by trauma by failing to mention that however they managed to find a way forward it was them that put in the most crucial and difficult work to get there. Instead I wanted to highlight the fact that the  deck is stacked against such folks, and that failing to find your way out from trauma is something that can happen to any of us especially without assistance or support. In this way I believe that an aspect of the business of doing peace is not simply ceasing any active harm, but actively repairing old damage, healing old wounds and providing guidance and assistance to those that still live with the effects and damages of past harms because these things can have a much longer tail than many folks are willing to acknowledge. Again I say, the dilemma of how best to approach this undertaking has some solutions that are obvious and straightforward and some that are not. Either way, it is a much more costly in time, thought, effort and frankly compassion than I feel you have suggested, so I maintain that doing peace as I see it, is in fact hard.
/Edit #1

I believe that there are further, deeper and broader implications to my above beliefs, that is to say that actually living a life that in a way that is cognizant of and serious about actually effectuating peace, then stewardship of the planet and the environment cannot be dismissed either, in fact I've never found an end of ways in which the business of doing peace as I see it is relevant when considering almost any human endeavor or interaction. It is probably one of my most favorite things to think about, but being unable to escape the idea that something as simple as buying a hershey bar is not entirely irrelevant to doing peace can be crazy making. Perhaps you don't agree with me, it would not be the first time someone has told me that i'm making a simple thing complicated or overthinking, but I hope that you can at least see the reasoning behind my assertion that there are degrees of nebulousness, ambiguity and significant difficulty in what it really means and actually takes to do peace as I see it.

If you don't believe in supernature then anything describing supernatural things is - ahem - naturally going to fall a bit flat with you. I guess in a way I'd echo what the good Rabbi asked - if you don't believe in anything supernatural and aren't really interested in believing in anything supernatural it seems like most discussions on a forum like this one will ultimately come back to the same sticking point, namely that we believe in God and you don't.
 

haha, that is not what Rabbi said or meant, but you've got a generous spirit. I don't even know what it would mean to be interested in believing in something...that is outside of the notion that i'm interested in knowing the true things that I am able (actually, if I'm honest I'm fascinated by false things too). Anyway I'm interested in the subject, so usually If someone is up for talking about it, then frequently I am too...does that make sense to you? That said, not every long conversation that i've had has ended in either party concluding that our disagreement is rooted in supernature. As you said, some folks think that everything that can be discussed is related to or is ultimately explained by some supernatural gewgaw or another while other folks can tolerate or even embrace the idea that our disagreement has it's basis in the natural.

Sure, from the outside it can often seem like it's a bunch of random stuff that "means something to me". And some people like to over-spiritualise everything to the point everything becomes meaningless. You've probably heard stories, verified or not, of people who got fired for being perpetually late for work because they were seeking God's guidance on what to wear that morning or which route to take to work or whatever else (apparently in their mind God didn't think it important they honor their commitment they made to their employer)

I'm not sure there's much mileage in the claim "God didn't show himself to you the way you expect, therefore God exists". It might be the kind of lame thing that passes for reasoning in a book like "The God Delusion" (which was hugely disappointing in the weakness of the arguments it presented, given the presumed intellect of an internationally published philosophy professor). I think it's still a valid question to ask just what you are expecting God to do, over and above "I don't know, just Do Something".

It has been said that an atheist cannot find God for the same reason a burglar cannot find a policeman. Finding God can be inconvenient to say the least.

As someone else already mentioned in the thread, God did come down to earth as a man. People expected a warrior, a king in the conventional human sense, but got something very different. It's easy to follow a ruler who preaches a message of throwing off oppressors, of turning the tables and dominating those who once dominated us. It's more of a challenge to follow someone who preaches a message of turning the other cheek (which, to go back to an earlier point, is helpful in preserving peace) and serving others rather than looking to be served.

Haha, I mean yeah, there hadn't been any consensus on what God would do, or even what I could ask God to do or what to expect if I did...so yeah it was more like... if you don't mind, please reveal yourself to me...whatever that actually means because I don't actually know and none of your followers can tell me but i'm assuming that if you do it i'll be able to tell or else like was it a revelation if I can't, so i'm just going to function as if i'll know it when I see it. I mean criticise my approach if you must, but it was earnest and a reasonable synthesis of the not quite  intercompatible recommendations, instructions, definitions and constraints provided by a number of my Christian dialogists. I do not know that it would be inconvenient, but it is true that I have no particular desire to be like any of the Christians I've come across because I do not see that this would advantage or improve me in any way as there are not any negative traits or behaviors that i'd like to eliminate in myself that I have not seen on full display in Christians that appear to be as much a real christian as anyone else. IOW It doesn't appear to require that I actually behave any better than I do now or feel any more regretful about my flaws, so that isn't so much an intimidating proposition as it is a functionally superficial and impotent one. I think that the scariest part of being a Christian to me is that God might ask me to go hang out in a room with a huge crowd of people who insist on eye contact, hugging and touching me....but like John the baptist got to live alone in the wilderness so there is precedent for people like me.

[tango]

I guess I missed your reply one time I logged in and it didn't show on "unread posts since last visit" so I overlooked it. Thanks for the reminder in the other thread...

Doing peace isn't actually that hard. I manage it pretty much every day. I simply make a choice not to hurt other people. If you wanted to be more specific it's not really all that much of a choice, it's pretty much the default position that I don't harm others. It takes an active decision to initiate hostility with someone else. At a national level it's a specific choice to invade a country, to fire missiles, to drop bombs, to launch rockets, you get the drift. It doesn't just happen as a default position leaving people wringing their hands and wishing the tanks would just stop rolling into the country next door.

Edit: Apologies i've added stuff in the hopes of further clarifying my position, this has made it a longer post but hopefully it serves to head off any misunderstandings.

Edit 2 electric boogaloo: Made some more changes to various parts of my post for correctness & clarity... I think i'm done now. 

.... or I could blame you for editing your post as the reason I didn't reply, giving you chance to settle on a final version

I see, I think we might be looking at this a little differently from each other, or maybe I should say that I would not consider you as an individual refraining from personally, directly & intentionally harming people to be the entirety of what I mean by doing peace. Of course if every individual avoided direct and intentional harm to every other individual then we would be at least much more if not completely successful at peace. I think that at the heart of my concept of doing peace is the idea that peace is threatened by anyone that doesnt have peace. I'd wager that as a Christian this is something you'd agree with or at least you might say something about the peace of the lord.

My experience is that most situations can be resolved without resorting to force. Not every situation admittedly, and there are times when the only options are to apply force and potentially lots of it, or accept potentially serious harm. But if more people took the view that they won't use force unless threatened with force themselves, a lot of those problems would go away. It's much like the discussions about concepts like the castle doctrine where people ask if my stuff is really more important than the burglar's life, and the standard response is that the burglar clearly valued his life less than my stuff because he presumably knew what risks he was taking the moment he broke into my house. The use of force against the burglar (or the street robber, or whoever else) is a response to the credible threat of force coming from them rather than something I just decided to do because reasons.

At a lower level where things like the slow checkout assistant cause me to lose patience because I'm already running late and - you know - can't you just get a move on and stop chatting with Every.Single.Person in the line ahead of me, the not-at-all-spiritual approach of just taking a breath can often help. It takes an effort to take a breath and chill rather than to get annoyed but even then the use of harsh words is a decision. Maybe one made in the heat of the moment but a decision nonetheless, and there's nothing to say I can't make a different decision and either put up with it, or abandon my shopping, or make a mental note to be more organised next time around.

Either way, I think that one of the ramifications of being a person that doesn't have peace is that it may actually be difficult to contain that inner lack of peace and difficult to control or even predict how that turmoil might express itself. We are all, at least those of us that can reasonably be considered able to understand the consequences of our actions, responsible for our actions, but the idea that all of humanity is in a position where controlling rage, desperation, shame or other emotions that can contribute to violent behaviors takes the same amount of effort or in your case very little effort is in my opinion/expirience not an accurate statement. I do not believe that it is an overstatement to assert that folks without peace can struggle with violent tendencies, harmful behaviors and mercurial dispositions that make dealing with common everyday situations without lashing out, escalating or resorting to practices that may harm others can be more difficult than you've portrayed or expirience. I believe that the dulling or suppressing effect on empathy that can result from not having peace is something that cannot be ignored when considering how easy it is to make decisions that affect others. This is not me absolving folks of the responsibility that we all have to police our own actions, I just want to impress upon you that the effort that must be summoned to do that is not always the same and not always trivial. Anyway, I believe that another place where I agree with some Christians at least philosophically is in the idea that helping those who do not have peace to find their way to peace is also a part of doing peace. So to put it another way, I believe that doing peace is not only about being accountable and responsible for yourself, but also taking responsibility in the wellbeing of others. It does, at least for me, begin to get somewhat tricky when you really think about how one goes about this, imo some ways are extremely obvious and immediate, others are not.

If you don't have inner peace you're less likely to exhibit outer peace but the fact remains that escalating (whether verbally or physically) is a choice. I won't dispute that some people are wired differently, affected by trauma in ways that make their amygdala take over in situations where most people would maintain control. But even then everybody else involved in a situation has the choice to escalate or let something go. Sure, if you've got two highly traumatised people coming together under suboptimal situations where everyone is under stress things might get out of hand very fast but I suspect most situations don't involve multiple people with that level of trauma.

Edit #1
So, to be clear I do not outright reject your assertion that doing peace is as easy as everyone everywhere forever refraining from harming each other, I do have to push back on the notion that this itself is easy to execute given the broad spectrum of circumstances & conditions that people face. I suggest that it is easier to refrain from engaging in any behaviors that may harm others when you have access and opportunity to fulfill your basic human needs, which for many people is not the case. I believe that it is unrealistic to think that even if humans that are active in causing harm to some of these folks were to suddenly disengage from their harmful activities that this alone would necessarily lead to peace because the damage as they say, is done. While I believe that helping oneself is absolutely paramount to recovering and thriving after suffering harm/trauma/injury, we know for certain that cessation of the trauma does not itself always arrest negative behaviors that were learned or cultivated by the trauma. This isn't because traumatized people that have amassed destructive behaviors love these behaviors, or cannot see that these behaviors often lead to undesirable outcomes any more than a person whose broken limb healed without ever being properly set cannot see that the way they must contort to pour a cup of tea with their mangled limb is less than ideal, however they are often similarly limited in what they can effectively do about it. Unlike a broken limb that healed improperly, behaviors developed as a consequence of trauma can be passed down to the next generation, both intentionally and unintentionally. I do not want to disrespect people that have found direction after being set adrift on vertiginous seas by trauma by failing to mention that however they managed to find a way forward it was them that put in the most crucial and difficult work to get there. Instead I wanted to highlight the fact that the  deck is stacked against such folks, and that failing to find your way out from trauma is something that can happen to any of us especially without assistance or support. In this way I believe that an aspect of the business of doing peace is not simply ceasing any active harm, but actively repairing old damage, healing old wounds and providing guidance and assistance to those that still live with the effects and damages of past harms because these things can have a much longer tail than many folks are willing to acknowledge. Again I say, the dilemma of how best to approach this undertaking has some solutions that are obvious and straightforward and some that are not. Either way, it is a much more costly in time, thought, effort and frankly compassion than I feel you have suggested, so I maintain that doing peace as I see it, is in fact hard.
/Edit #1

It may take an effort to overcome situations - as you say trauma can manifest in all sorts of ways. In many ways the deck is heavily stacked against people with trauma, particularly people who grew up in abusive or neglectful homes, got shifted from home to home in foster care and the like. The fact remains that it takes two to - ahem - tango, and if there's nothing for them to push back against they can only push something so far. You are right that repairing old damage takes active effort rather than passivity, which in turn typically requires some kind of therapy and therapy costs money and all that.

All that said, and without looking to trivialise your point (which is a very good point), most people aren't carrying around that level of trauma.

I believe that there are further, deeper and broader implications to my above beliefs, that is to say that actually living a life that in a way that is cognizant of and serious about actually effectuating peace, then stewardship of the planet and the environment cannot be dismissed either, in fact I've never found an end of ways in which the business of doing peace as I see it is relevant when considering almost any human endeavor or interaction. It is probably one of my most favorite things to think about, but being unable to escape the idea that something as simple as buying a hershey bar is not entirely irrelevant to doing peace can be crazy making. Perhaps you don't agree with me, it would not be the first time someone has told me that i'm making a simple thing complicated or overthinking, but I hope that you can at least see the reasoning behind my assertion that there are degrees of nebulousness, ambiguity and significant difficulty in what it really means and actually takes to do peace as I see it.

You can think about things to whatever degree you want, and life overall would probably be better if more people thought about consequences rather than meeting an immediate desire. Perhaps your choice of a Hershey bar rather than an organic fair-trade alternative does help oppress the poor downtrodden cocoa farmers in Ghana or something. But then the organic fair-trade option probably doesn't help them as much as you might hope, as their employers probably do the absolute minimum to get the guy with the clipboard to tick the boxes saying they treat the staff acceptably well.

Even then you going to buy a candy bar is a decision you make. I don't imagine you find yourself walking down the street munching a tasty treat wondering how you came to have a tasty treat in your hand and $1.49 missing from your pocket. So whether your preferred candy bar is made by well-treated indigenous people who live like royalty thanks to a hugely generous employer, or made by children forced to work 29 hours a day, you decide which one you are going to eat today.

If you don't believe in supernature then anything describing supernatural things is - ahem - naturally going to fall a bit flat with you. I guess in a way I'd echo what the good Rabbi asked - if you don't believe in anything supernatural and aren't really interested in believing in anything supernatural it seems like most discussions on a forum like this one will ultimately come back to the same sticking point, namely that we believe in God and you don't.
 

haha, that is not what Rabbi said or meant, but you've got a generous spirit. I don't even know what it would mean to be interested in believing in something...that is outside of the notion that i'm interested in knowing the true things that I am able (actually, if I'm honest I'm fascinated by false things too). Anyway I'm interested in the subject, so usually If someone is up for talking about it, then frequently I am too...does that make sense to you? That said, not every long conversation that i've had has ended in either party concluding that our disagreement is rooted in supernature. As you said, some folks think that everything that can be discussed is related to or is ultimately explained by some supernatural gewgaw or another while other folks can tolerate or even embrace the idea that our disagreement has it's basis in the natural.

Some (many?) aspects of life are purely natural. Many concerns people have within Christianity (and probably other faiths too) are largely or entirely natural. Christians still have to maintain homes, go to work, repair the leaky roof at church and so on. Where matters of faith are concerned a large part of it is by its very nature supernatural because that faith is in a supernatural being. If you don't believe in supernature, if you don't believe that God even exists, you'll naturally struggle with things relating to God.

If I might borrow the unicorn example from elsewhere, if you don't believe I have a pet unicorn you'll struggle to understand my concerns that unicorn food has gone up by 15% this year and it's putting a strain on my budget. In the meantime, as I feed my unicorn, I feel the pinch of the rising prices. It's not a perfect analogy by any means, but I suppose a loose comparison is that if you don't believe in God you won't be concerned about the way God tells us to live, you won't be concerned about an afterlife, so your focus is more likely to be on the here and now.

Sure, from the outside it can often seem like it's a bunch of random stuff that "means something to me". And some people like to over-spiritualise everything to the point everything becomes meaningless. You've probably heard stories, verified or not, of people who got fired for being perpetually late for work because they were seeking God's guidance on what to wear that morning or which route to take to work or whatever else (apparently in their mind God didn't think it important they honor their commitment they made to their employer)

I'm not sure there's much mileage in the claim "God didn't show himself to you the way you expect, therefore God exists". It might be the kind of lame thing that passes for reasoning in a book like "The God Delusion" (which was hugely disappointing in the weakness of the arguments it presented, given the presumed intellect of an internationally published philosophy professor). I think it's still a valid question to ask just what you are expecting God to do, over and above "I don't know, just Do Something".

It has been said that an atheist cannot find God for the same reason a burglar cannot find a policeman. Finding God can be inconvenient to say the least.

As someone else already mentioned in the thread, God did come down to earth as a man. People expected a warrior, a king in the conventional human sense, but got something very different. It's easy to follow a ruler who preaches a message of throwing off oppressors, of turning the tables and dominating those who once dominated us. It's more of a challenge to follow someone who preaches a message of turning the other cheek (which, to go back to an earlier point, is helpful in preserving peace) and serving others rather than looking to be served.

Haha, I mean yeah, there hadn't been any consensus on what God would do, or even what I could ask God to do or what to expect if I did...so yeah it was more like... if you don't mind, please reveal yourself to me...whatever that actually means because I don't actually know and none of your followers can tell me but i'm assuming that if you do it i'll be able to tell or else like was it a revelation if I can't, so i'm just going to function as if i'll know it when I see it. I mean criticise my approach if you must, but it was earnest and a reasonable synthesis of the not quite  intercompatible recommendations, instructions, definitions and constraints provided by a number of my Christian dialogists. I do not know that it would be inconvenient, but it is true that I have no particular desire to be like any of the Christians I've come across because I do not see that this would advantage or improve me in any way as there are not any negative traits or behaviors that i'd like to eliminate in myself that I have not seen on full display in Christians that appear to be as much a real christian as anyone else. IOW It doesn't appear to require that I actually behave any better than I do now or feel any more regretful about my flaws, so that isn't so much an intimidating proposition as it is a functionally superficial and impotent one. I think that the scariest part of being a Christian to me is that God might ask me to go hang out in a room with a huge crowd of people who insist on eye contact, hugging and touching me....but like John the baptist got to live alone in the wilderness so there is precedent for people like me.

Sadly one of the things that puts a lot of people off Christianity is Christians. I think it was Ghandi who was quoted as saying something like "I like your Christ. I don't like your Christians, they are so unlike your Christ."

This is where I encourage people to look at the original. I don't know if you're old enough to remember the days when music came on cassettes and people would copy cassettes for their friends. You'd start with an original recording that sounded pretty good, and by the time you were listening to a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy you'd find the tones were muted and the background hissing was louder than the music. If you heard that tape you might be forgiven for wondering why anybody bothered listening to music at all because it sounded muffled and most of it was hiss. But if you heard the original you'd get it the way it was meant to be. So many people pick up bad habits from all sorts of sources, see other people and figure that's the way it should be done, copy things they see the preacher doing, and so on. It's easier to copy someone else than learn how to do it properly. And sometimes, as I think I've said before, people seek out the teachers who tickle their ears with the words they want to hear.

God might ask you to do all sorts of things but if it happens you'd be surprised how you find yourself moving in the right direction, sometimes without even noticing you're doing it until things start to fall into place. If you're supposed to be in a room full of people hugging you the chances are by the time you get to that point you'll have become comfortable with it, even if right now you can't even begin to fathom how you'd ever be comfortable with it.