When it comes to common sense many people have different opinions on it.

For me common sense says to not hurt or kill anyone just because I feel like it. This didn't require a religious document to teach me this, yet for some they claim they needed such guidance to stay good in this world. In otherwords, they would have been criminals or murderers if they didn't resort to a religious book.

What are your thoughts on common sense and why do you feel it is important.

hmm,,good question. I think common sense evolves with common experience. That is to say, what seems OBVIOUS and COMMON at forty may have been quite different at sixteen or at eight years of age.

My son is at a stage, where the extent of common sense is not to hurt others,,,but what is not so common is WHAT hurt is.

For instance, if he behaves inappropriately around his younger relatives. IF they seem ok with it, to him he has not HURT them. I know that the influence he has on them is significant enough for them to believe that that behavior is NOT inappropriate but instead acceptable because they have seen him do it.

So people , as I have stated before, have a 'sense' that evolves with their PERSONAL experiences moreso than any collective. People also seek out those with similar experiences and therefore a similar sense of 'common' sense.

I feel very bad for anyone who places the sum total of who they are on any ONE quality or any ONE event, or any ONE book, or any ONE mortal person. I Think we are a sum of the collection of ALL Those events and books and people and experiences which have been our life, and that the slightest change in any of those things would indeed cause a SLIGHT change in us,,but nothing drastic enough to cause someone who would otherwise not murder to murder or someone who would otherwise follow the law not to.

it takes a collection , not a singular item, to create the complete us

To me common sense says to stop spending money on wars, death and destruction and feed and house those around the globe who need such 'luxuries' as a home and food.

I would also agree with common sense being not to ever put your hands, mouth, feet or any part of yourself on another, yet that to would be justified by one who got angry and punched some one.

As a pacifist it really is that simple to me.

I reject all religion, religion doesn't keep anyone in check...
it was dumping the salvation theory that pushed me into the path
of non violence.

Because everyone's experience is different, everyone's perception will be different....therefore everyone's idea of common sense will be different.

Some people have no common sense of their own. That's why they need a "Fatherly Image" God. They have no clue how to behave if they aren't told. And worse yet, they seem to think everyone else is as lame as they are.

People don't know how to behave unless they are told. That is why we have different cultures around the world. Culture A tells their people that this is good, but Culture B says this is bad. Culture B say don't do this, Culture A says go ahead.

From the time you were born, you have been drilled with the culture surrounding you. Your parents, neighbors, other relatives, ect they all taught you how to behave. We all get our behavior "laws" from something else. That is till we get older yes. Some retain the "culture" they were raised with, some don't. But nevertheless for the majority of the people they were taught how to behave from the surrounding culture of their life, and if not after that a new culture they lived in.

Common sense, roughly speaking, is what people in common would agree,that which they "sense" in common as their shared natural understanding. Some use the phrase to refer to beliefs or propositions that in their opinion they consider would in most people's experience be prudent and of sound judgment, without dependence upon esoteric knowledge or study/ research, but based upon what is believed to be knowledge held by people "in common".

If you were asked about the key to a healthy and long life, what would you say? Most would say "exercise, diet, good air, and common sense." Common sense meaning to avoid dangerous practices. The Bible says a lot about diet and common sense. Jesus famously said in Matthew 15:11: "What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean,' but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean.'" Does this make diet irrelevant?

much you say is true. i was born into a christian family who taught me my early behavior. besides being "good christians" my parents were racist bigots who taught me about the superiority of being white and all of this was confirmed by the church in houston i was forced to attend each week. of course i learned my lessons well and it wasn't until i returned from vietnam that i'd finally shed not only my racism but any belief in god as well.

now that i think back on it all, i don't think my common sense ever really allowed me to believe all that i was taught by my parents. i was a good son who respected my elders and that respect led me down a very wrong path. i had to start over to develope a new moral compass based on common sense and i've found that i seem to have less problem knowing the right thing to do when confronted with an issue i've not thought of than many faithful who've had to be told how to behave. bibles, korans, etc., cannot predict every conflict that may come up in one's life and i think i'm better prepared to feel my own way when a new delema arrises. eighty five percent of convicted felons hold to a belief in god. i'm thinking that perhaps they've room in their life to substitute some common sense in place of their faith.

IT is interesting that common sense is in any way tied somehow to someones faith or religion


religous and non religious are guilty of not having common sense, it really isnt about whether one is a christian or not

perhaps it is my current pained head which finds it comical that people continue to imply christians are somehow any less intelligent or logical than they are merely because of faith,,but anyhow

some people just 'dont get' calculus, and some just 'dont get' the bible, some will misuse the bible to advocate for violence and hate just like some will misuse their hammer to cause injury to a body instead of to fix things

people and our nature is where it all starts , and common sense, just like "IQ" are neither constant values nor attributes which are exclusive to any one faith, belief set, culture, upbringing, society,,,,etc,,,

That's the problem.....all the well intending people who love us telling us what works for them instead of letting us figure out what works for us. The domestication, others dreams being forced upon us as children, filling our head up with BS.
Our job as parents is guide our children, not turn them into little 'mini-me's.' So begins the issues......

To me common sense would mean be able to assess a situation and take appropriate action.

this thread is not about tieing religion and common sense, it's about tieing common sense to behavior. greeneyman even stated in his op that behavior has little to do with religion. it was a christian, cowboy i think, who tied behavior to religion yet i don't think he mentioned common sense anywhere. yes, people do think that christians and people of all religious faith are challenged when it comes to intelligence and logic. i define an intelligent person as one who understands that he can never know everything. that every time he answers one question it opens up several other questions that he's not even considered. the faithful on the other hand learn a belief, as cowboy, said and close their mind to any other possibility. i consider the term, "i believe" to be no different than the term, "to think that i know". of course as an agnostic i cannot know anything absolutely outside of my own experiences so anybody who tells me they know without doubt ANYTHING, god, heaven, big bang, creation, evolution, whatever, is less intelligent and logical than the many who don't have the answers to the universe.

and you're right. some, like me, don't get calculous and i readily admit to being less intelligent in the subject than an accomplished mathmatician.

I tell you "Common Sense" seems like a easy concept or really self explanatory, yet for some reason it is one of the hardest topics to discuss. It is a challenge!

Like I said before everyone has a different opinion on it due to the way they are raised and how they think.

I think if we can find a middle ground on the concept of "common sense" we might find a better way to understanding how we can deal with future dilemmas that we suffer around the world.

There are anthropologists that study their entire lifetimes trying to figure us humans out and why we act or react the way we do. It is not as easy as it sounds, yet I am sure one day we will find a middle ground on it worldwide.

I guess to me common sense is being able to make decisions that will keep me alive and well.

Where I live if visitors dont have common sense they die.
Whether it is just from being bitten by something poisonous, going where somthing will eat you, or just going somewhere without enough provisions or knowledge to survive.

However when I visited america, I found that I didnt have enough common sense for over there to see that things where dangerous and would have been oblivous to things that people would say,

"If you had any common sense you would know that.""

Well obviously I didn't as it wasnt obvious to me that there could be places that you really shouldnt go and that there would be people that didnt want to make friends with you.. Honestly how are you supposed to know those things..

so for me here I have heaps of common sense.. But I see heaps of visitors who seem to have none.. But in their own natural environment they probably have heaps as well.

So I think we can only judge common sense on our own knowledge..

sorry that you have that impression of america, josie. but there's nowhere in the country that i "really shouldn't go."

For me, common sense is killing people, starting wars and supporting the economy with the war effort.

You see, the only way for us to stop destroying the Good Mother Earth is to limit our numbers on her face. There is just no two ways about that.

What I hate about wars, modern wars, is the hypocricy of them. Nothing else, other than the cruelty of them. Wars these days make people fear wars, and then the population suffers terribly, and in the end they are killed.

There has to be a better way of reducing the population. Maybe birth control. Maybe killing people. It is just that we have to face the music one day, sooner or later.

Maybe the music will come when Momma Earth is on her death bed, and we are fighting for a survival of limited term. Like a billion people fighting another billion people, and fully knowing that after a five years the victors will die too.

I say start a war now, while it's not too late. Teaching the populace to not make children is a good idea, but I wonder if it can lead to success. It takes generations to teach the uneducated or the fanatically religious, and maybe the threats by overpopulation will catch up with us before voluntary baby-control can be successfully established.

I hate the stupidity of it all. In Canada the general consensus is, that since everyone pays 5% of their income to support the old (that is, 5% goes to a fund that supports the outgoings of "old age pension" and "canada pension plan"), we always need a steady population increase to keep the old alive and in relative happiness.

Nobody thinks that it'd would be healthier for the general good of people and for the planet, if we increased the individuals' contribution to 7% and forget about the need for population growth.

That's the bs I am fighting. It means that the planet will die in Italy and in Afghanistan and in Latin America because there are moral reasons to make more and more and more and more children, and in North America and in Western Europe, because we have a faulty and very easily fixed accounting principle.

Accounting principles are certainly easier to fix, even on a national scale, than moral convictions, fuelled by the influence of world religions.

But we don't change the accounting principle, because we are stupid, and we call those stupid who don't change their morals.

This is so stupid.

So, yes, I want war. For one thing, it will clear the air, there will be some more breathing space (and breeding space, literally.) For the other thing, everyone is stupid, useless, ignorant, and lacking in common sense, so I don't mind people like that going to waste. Yes, mow them down with machine guns, and blow them up with neutron bombs (which destroy people but not property). We don't even have to discriminate by looks, race, religion, ideological stance, IQ or financial or emotional stability -- because we know EVERYONE is stupid who is not fighting the moral influence to stop making babies galore, and everyone is stupid and worthy to be slaughtered who support the accounting principles which drives us to the brink of killing Mother Earth.

this sort of reasoning is so incredibly lame, and full of holes, that it tires me just to count the logical errors. I can't bring myself to identify them, and shoot them down, each and individually, sorry, it is tiresome work. It'd be like, and I don't mind saying so myself, asking Shakespeare to identify the ratio of consonant letters in the English bible to the vowel letters.

I am sorry, I know I sound stupid and arrogant, but cowboy is a man who has a very good sense of tiring my logic, by his being so illogical and yet his being so full of confidence. On top of it all, he repels nonchallantly and with incredible ease any logic that comes his way. I give it to him: I lose, and he wins, by saliva.

I really admire him. He does not want to see the logic, and so he is able to repel all the logical attacks. But he does not get faltered by the relentless opposition by three or more people on the boards, which are friendly, all right, but still opposition, and they don't tire him.

The cowboy feller has determination, the blind and stubborn determination of the ox that pulls the wagon and he is resilient to the bows and arrows and whips, and gunshots, he just pulls the wagon.

I admire him for that, but boy, his so-called logic pulls me down like the dead weight of a thousand dead bodies of christian martyrs.

well china's got the accounting down, limiting each couple to two children. the aids virus is doing it's part to pare the human population. but the planet will live on just fine whether or not we destroy ourselves.

Josie... so Crocodile Dundee was a true movie? It was not fiction?

Wow... the things I learn at fifty-seven.

I believe you, Josie. I am just aghast. I thought American commons sense (money is God, God is Christian, and Blacks and Hispanics are tolerated, but despised across the board, and loaded guns are good to have for everyone, so long as nobody shoots any of them, at least not at each other) was self-evident. (I am being sarcastic here.)

"the planet will live on just fine whether or not we destroy ourselves"

This is unprovable conjecture; even if it is true, its prediction is inconsequential to the human race.

And China.. oh boy. You people are ever so stupid. China introduced the two-child rule in 1958. I remember, from the news. Then they were 600 million.

After they introduced the two-child rule, the numbers say they were over 1.2 billion by the year 2000.

Which means they DOUBLED their population in 42 years.

That, my dear friends, can NOT be done when each couple has zero, or one, or two children only.

So obviously, very, very, obviously, Mao Ce Tung counted on the gullability and poor math skills of the world, and his calculations were correct.

You can't f-ing double a population, in forty-two years, if you have couples in it who on the average produce fewer than two children each.

And yet the entire world believed them.

And then nobody wants to accept the inevitability of war for the reason of population control.

The two are connected. In a big way. In a very-very big way.

Try Harlem, or the Watts, or any number of places where a blonde woman alone would be eaten alive, literally, her flesh being ripped off her bones by raw teeth of individual American citizens.

JR, I think you live in an America that either does not exist, or it is an image of itself that is fed to you by American common sense.