Of course we can
Only the intellectually challenged would concluded that failure to believe in some "God" assures that a person is bad.
Its just too funny!
Posted on 11/30/2002 7:42:38 AM PST by A. Pole
This article is more general than religion. But if you post a link to this thread over there, it would be useful.
Distributed capitalism ala G.K. Chesterton is far more palatable to Christians of all stripes, IMO.
How do you know what ethical integrity entails? What standard do you use to judge your friends' behavior?
I know of no one who claims that idolatry or murder "is effectively redirected to the common good through the market." So I guess the writer is overstating the claims of capitalism.In fact the knock on Christian Socialists is, in my experience, a certain eagerness to ajudge others guilty of greed and envy. If wanting what others have is a sin, then any market activity convicts me of sin. No matter how well I pay or how amply I barter for someone else's goods--no, in proportion as I pay well for someone else's goods--I evince the desire for what someone else had. So the pharisee siezes upon that proven desire as proof of coveteousness.
No sale.
Standards that have been with us for thousands of years, both within religious contexts and without. Do you honestly believe that before Christianity - or before Judaism, for that matter - the ideas set forth formally in the Ten Commandments (among others) were completely alien to humanity? Pre-Judaic cultures were well aware that lying, cheating, stealing, not keeping one's word, etc. ..were WRONG, and they didn't need a formal, monotheistic religion to confirm this for them. And in today's world, atheists are no more or less likely to act unethically than people who are formal members of a religion.
Ask your atheist friends why killing children is morally wrong.
Completely alien? No, there is some vague sense and memory of divine image in every man. But alien in parctical sense, YES.
Now, to demonstrate it to you, no complex reasoning is need, but only simple facts generally known. Have a look at the societies like pagan Rome or Greece. In Greece it was considered a virtue to kill handicapped children. In pagan Rome the intelectual, moral, political and spritual elite was enjoying the circus where slaves were killed in ingenious and various ways to give pleasure and esthetic satisfactions. The general population and elite was enjoying this spectacle publicaly without any scruples.
This innocent enjoyment was spoiled later by "narrow minded" Christians, who brought the new awarness or gentle light of Gospel. It is true that the enjoyment of cruelty remained and pagan vices or false virtues persisted, but they went underground, covered with shame and hypocrisy.
Or see the example of Aztecs who saw it a virtue to practice their rituals (BTW the reason why few Spaniards so easily defeated a large Aztec empire, was that subjected Indian tribes preferred them over previous rulers).
Pre-Judaic cultures were well aware that lying, cheating, stealing, not keeping one's word, etc. ..were WRONG, and they didn't need a formal, monotheistic religion to confirm this for them.
Hmm, not really, in many cultures robbing and deceiving the strangers was seen as a good thing.
And in today's world, atheists are no more or less likely to act unethically than people who are formal members of a religion.
Well, let us not be blind to the facts. The first atheist state - Soviet Union falsified your claim. The first neo-pagan, post-Christian state Germany also was very revealing.
The first atheist state - Soviet Union falsified your claim.
But it doesn't falsify it at all. He allowed how as atheists are no more or less likely to act unethically -- therefore evidence of unethical actions in a antheist is is not proof that atheists are more unethical -- just as the Spanish Inquistion shows that Christians are capable of mass murder, does not mean Christians are all mass murderers.
"All great political causes have failed."
I don't believe that our cause, that of a Constitutional Republic, - has failed, - yet.
Most of the human race lives in crushing poverty because they ignore the political lessons of our society "where industrial abundance undergirds a preoccupation with material comfort and an atmosphere of spiritual inanity"
. -- Religion has no direct role to play in our government, by the choice of our founders, who knew its political dangers.
Let us all pray that it stays that way.
Of course we can
Only the intellectually challenged would concluded that failure to believe in some "God" assures that a person is bad.
Its just too funny!
I agree, but ask the question: why? What is the sorce of morals and ethics?
Inquisition guilty of mass murder ?! Are you aware how many thousands were sentenced to execution in Inquisition trials and how many millions died in Gulag? You are comparing aples and oranges, give me a break.
‘love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Matthew 22:39)
"A commission of public enquiry, conducted in a Western country recently, sounded a desperate note for the future of human relations. It warned: "The most pressing problem in this country seems to be for its people to learn to live again in a real community, where people are concerned for one another's welfare."
"Fyodor Dostoyevsky said: "I could never understand how one could love one's neighbor. It's just one's neighbors, to my mind, that one can't love-though one might love those at a distance. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular."
"The sad truth of human beings is, that they can... love the idea of love---but find themselves incapable of practicing it."
"We easily talk of loving our neighbor, but baulk like Balaam's ass when it comes to doing it. In the last 100 years normal human beings have murdered one hundred million of their fellows. Since the two world wars of last century, we have readied ourselves to a shocking level of preparedness, to violate and exterminate our neighbors on an awful scale. Karl Barth commented, that it only needed the atom and the hydrogen bomb to complete the self disclosure of human nature. In other words, the stark malignancy of human evil-our unwillingness to love-is now writ large."
"Over against the disease of lovelessness, stands the injunction: "Love your neighbor as yourself." We know this law asks more of us than we can give, but we also know that without it, we shall perish. Our only hope, is that God will love us in spite of our weakness, and that he will patiently fashion us after his likeness."
The question is very difficult for me to understand. I know we have all sinned but when Paul and Silas were shipwrecked on Malta, Paul said the people treated them with great kindness. These people had probably never even heard of Jesus yet were acting in a Christian way.
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