Posted on 05/27/2007 9:43:00 AM PDT by wagglebee
I would bea hypocrite to condemn you for”sleeping with your girlfriend”.
However,where do you draw the line in situations of sexual morality?Adultery is not illegal in most states.Nor is homosexuality.Are those OK,also?If not,why not?You admit to fornication.What about the guy that prefers golden showers?Nothing illegal about them but is there a moral objection?
Just wanted to put that on your mind.Food for thought since I don’t have the answer myself.
I'm curious...How do they threaten you?
That may be. Of course, he's right...
The Christian God does give you the freedom to make that choice.
Here’s why. Biblegod has slaughtered the firstborn children of the Egyptian nation.
Well that is what happened after Pharaoh said in Exodus 5:2 ...."Who is the LORD, that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I know not the LORD, neither will I let Israel go." Not quite the painting you picture with your slaughtered, paint job.
Joshua 7:15
".....And it shall be, that he that is taken with the accursed thing shall be burnt with fire, he and all that he hath: because he hath trangressed the covenant of the LORD, and because he hath wrought folly in Israel''"
Now the burnt with fire = burnt up, but not necessarily alive, check out the meaning of the Hebrew word used.
Once again not quited what picture you attempt to paint, because those of Israel under that covenant were WARNED not to be playing with heathen gods.
He kills all the living beings on earth except for a few. Genesis 6:7, 17
Well again you leave out the reason, found in Genesis 6:2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of the Adam that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
He sends 2 virgins to get raped by a mob. 19:7-8
Outright LIE. Lot offered up his own daughters NOT the Heavenly Father and the brutes were NOT interested in the daughters but the male house guests.
And many more brutal things done by this Biblegod can be read in Genesis. I would say more, but I have to go buy some groceries in a few minutes.
Maybe your grocery shopping was more successful than your unlearned and ignorant attempt in describing the Scripture.
Anyway, back on topic, non-theists should recognize the many benefits derived from the Judeo-Christian moral code organically passed down over generations. The West did not expand and science did not blossom IN SPITE of this morality, but BECAUSE of this morality. Whether rooted in myth or true divinity, these morals have proven wildly successful in propagating the human species, and strengthening its dominion over nature. History was not shaped by one culture marching unopposed through time - history consisted of hundreds of cultures bickering and slaughtering eachother, suffering through disease and genocide, fighting tugs of war between liberty and authority, between order and anarchy, between abundance and poverty.
Through all that, cultures based upon the Judeo-Christian ethic emerged in front. Why? Whether the fount of this moral code is divine or profane, it is asinine to assume that it can be supplanted wholesale (or even blindly in part) without disastrous profane consequences. Memes, like genes, do not get continuously passed down by accident. There is a strong selective process at work that ferrets out the projections of these memes along different incarnations of fitness, iterated over thousands of years in a variety of conditions, throughout a sensual dance with genetics.
There are secular reasons to respect the traditions of success, and to endorse, at most, local gradual deviation from this tradition from generation to generation (allowing the fruit of that deviation to be used to judge the merit of the deviation itself, with local adoption of any deviation accorded organically, not centrally). This (the essence of classical conservatism) is in contrast to the mechanics of progressivism - where the non-immediate consequences of deviation are not taken into account. Under non-welfare state conditions, the vast majority of those endorsing such extreme deviations will not persist; in the welfare-state, those that conserve successful tradition are forced to insulate those making these inevitably poor decisions from negative consequences. Recognizing this should provide justification to even non-theists to not denigrate, and perhaps even to actively promote, explicit Judeo-Christian tradition.
Scroll down to the Prisoners dilemma. No higher power is needed.
” Without the constant, eternal, revealed word of God, what is a moral code? “
Something that facilitated Chinese civilization for thousands of years without recourse to ‘God’?
Who says the Bible is archaic? If one takes away only one thing from reading it, it’s how remarkably little human personalities have changed in (at minimum) the last couple of thousand years.
“From the perspective of the creator, if he brought something into existence he can remove it from existence just as easily.”
Kind of raises a question about abortion, doesn’t it.
Hank
You write of things you seem to have so little knowledge about. Suggest you study to prove yourself worthy.
Morality and all of its associated ideals are rooted entirely in the presupposition some higher power defines what is correct for human behavior.
Scroll down to the Prisoners dilemma. No higher power is needed.
If you cannot refute it here I am not going to bother... arguments from anecdotes are informal fallacies and not deductive.
Categorically, an atheist telling me I am immoral is no different than any preacher or rabbi saying I am a sinner.
If morality is defined as that which facilitates civilization then Rome was one of the most "moral" societies of all time.
Basically the atheist moral code can be summed up as “Might Makes Right.”
Civilization can’t occur in the absence of some form of morality. That’s the point.
Confucius’ philosophy emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and sincerity. Ergo, enduring civilization without the Jehovan god’s morality, is perfectly achievable.
I am an atheist, and am not at all bothered by what other’s say about atheists, or about me—ever. But for Christians, I am ashamed that this smut-mouthed pile of hubris, Giles, is tolerated for moment as a representative of Christianity. I would not allow anyone to us the kind of language and expressions used by this vile writer around anyone in my family.
I spend a lot of time defending Christianity, for example these two recently:
http://theautonomist.com/aaphp/articles/article80.php
http://theautonomist.com/aaphp/articles/article89.php
If this slime-ball represents Christianty, maybe I’ve made a mistake. Why aren’t any Christians saying this?
I normally would not bother to address the content of his disgusting tripe, but there is a philosophical issue that has been raised which is important. The fact is, moral codes are bad things—they actually discourage morality. I’ve explained exactly why this is the case and what is wrong with the 10 commandments, here:
http://theautonomist.com/autonomist/articles6/religion_ten.html
Even that is very sympathetic to the Christians and their views.
Since most people will not be interested enough in their morality or questions of import to read that, I’ll pose a question here.
Would murder, theft, and fornication be perfectly OK if God had not said they weren’t? If you could know that it would be wrong to murder, steal, and be sexually promiscuous even if God did not say so, there must be some objective reason why they are wrong. If there is no Objective reason they are wrong, then they are only wrong because of God’s whim, so are not absolute laws at all.
If you cannot say what is wrong with these things, than your so called “morality” is just blind obedience. The question is, what other things are you obeying blindly? The fact is, I think most people do understand what is wrong with these things, and why people who have never heard of or been influenced by any religion frequently live by these principles.
Hank
First off, there has been no enduring society yet - whether there will be remains to be seen. No current "civilzation" has been here since the beginning but plenty have died out. Your argument seems to be that as long as we continue to exist we have all the morality we need. or in other terms, might makes right. In addition, personal morality is reduced to whatever works best for you. (everything you can get away with and not suffer the consequenses.) If being altruistic works then do it, if being a cad works, do it. If there is no God what does it matter. If a more virulent form of Nazism ends up providing a long term, stable but repressed "civilization", say 5,000 years, is it more moral?
Morality, the success of which provides for civilization, is shown to not be Judeo-Christian specific, given the endurance of civilizations that, in the absence of any form of J-C morality, would not have otherwise been possible.
Or is the contention that civilization requires J-C morality not what is at stake? Maybe we’re arguing different things.
Golden Rule, edited version. “Do unto others, before they do unto you.”
bump
If a more virulent form of Nazism ends up providing a long term, stable but repressed “civilization”, say 5,000 years, is it more moral?
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It would be if successful is defined in terms of longevity, and morals are inextricably tied to the concept of success. This is what I would call “Moral Darwinism.”
Athiests want to have their cake and eat it too. They want the Judeo Christian moral code but since they reject God they have to concoct alternative non-religious support for it. One method is to point to ancient pre-christian civilizations that practiced it (or something close to it).
What they forget is that Christianity is based on the idea of the Fall of Man....i.e. the willful disobeying of God’s law written into the heart of Man at his creation. The fact that many civilization’s have recognized this law in one form or another is not evidence against Christianity, but evidence for it...i.e. evidence that the law is indeed written into the heart of all Mankind.
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