INDISPUTABLE Rational Proof That God Exists (Or Existed)

[Hufflechuff]

Then why do morals normally defy our "feelings"? Morals stand in the way of what I want to do more often than not. There is nothing moral about feelings (most of the time). Morality built on feelings would not resemble the moral systems we have. By your definition the murder of a million people was only an act contrary to someone’s feelings and not actually wrong in any way. Prove without God that killing everyone on Earth is actually wrong, or that right and wrong as categories of truth actually exist at all. This modern moral ambiguity is terrifying as it inevitably leads to the moral schizophrenia of abortion on innocent lives by the millions and the resistance to killing a convicted murderer. Modern secularists are like moral pied pipers leading us into chaos and calling it progress.

Firstly, you miss the point. You equated lack of proof in God with a lack of proof in the existence of love and morality. But they are not equitable. You make claims for God's nature that you do not make for the nature of love and morals. Maybe feelings was not the right word. They are immaterial concepts. But you say God actually exists. He has attributes, intelligence. You c;laim He exists in a very different way to people understand love and morals to exist.

When you say

Morals stand in the way of what I want to do more often than not

then I understand why you need a rule book to live by. We are very different people, as what I want to do is usually moral too. Perhaps this is the problem - you assume that everyone else would naturally do wrong because that is what you 'want to do'. I don't run around raping and pillaging because I don't want to.

Your argument for morals having no meaning without God is biased. Most humans, of whatever religion, creed, ethnicity or intelligence know that wanton murder, rape, theft etc are wrong. We see exactly the same in the animal world - animals do not generally wantonly attack others of their species. Has God instilled morals in them too? If you say morals are doing what God says then they are not right and wrong - just pleasing, or not, to God.

It is funny that you give the example of the murder of a million people as being immoral given the mass murders and genocide that the Bible attributes to God. (I'll not list all the verses - it's rather dull, and I'm sure you'll know them.) Was God immoral or morally shcizophrenic?

 

[PolyHedral]

So an act of murder is against my brain structure. How does that make it wrong?

It doesn't. I don't believe in an external, somehow-objective wrong.

Which molecule decided that the Taj Mohal is a beautiful building?

A bunch of them acting together.

Did three hundred thousand Christians agree to risk and suffer death to free 9 million slaves they never met because their olfactory lobe was telling them to?

They did it because their brain structure dictated it, yes. That's why anyone does anything.

Again this has noting to do with what i said you are talking about how the brains function under certain circumstances i am talking about the weight of those words and that science can't measure those things.

The words mean things to people; they're not some self-supporting edifice the universe cares about. The people are measurable.

 

[1robin]

It doesn't. I don't believe in an external, somehow-objective wrong.

Well at least you have the courage of your lack of conviction. Why do we punish these actions then since it was only some neurons that were offended? Are you a determinist or some other brand?

A bunch of them acting together.

That does not make it any more reasonable. So one atom can't evaluate a building but a few more and a sonnett or a Mona Lisa is possible. Why would atoms care about the shape of a building? I agree that these issues are probably dependent on matter but seem to be greater than the sum of their material parts.

They did it because their brain structure dictated it, yes. That's why anyone does anything.

What type of structure made freeing people never met worth it's own destruction? If evolution, survival, or reason found in molecules is what produces value and ethics then why would anything merit the molecules own destruction. Matter is not intentional and certainly not heroic nor self-sacrificial on purpose.

The words mean things to people; they're not some self-supporting edifice the universe cares about. The people are measurable.

This was for FOuad so I will leave it to him.

 

[1robin]

Maybe, maybe not. Medical technology has come a long way, and will continue to do so, thus increasing quality of life well into our 90s. On an anecdotal note, both of my grandfathers are well into their eighties and still remain productive members of society. In fact, one of them still runs a successful business and continues to work every single day.

My point still stands as a general claim but I do not like this point and have little reason to contend it so I will drop it for length.

Who says I can’t justify it? As I said above, I believe this is the only life we get, which in my opinion, makes life infinitely more precious than if I had the belief that this is just some holding place until the our more important afterlife begins in eternity. I think every minute of this life should be enjoyed. I don’t intend to waste any of it.

You are simply redefining morality as equal to your value system which it isn't. If you value something, precious or not that does not make anything actually wrong or right. It makes it exactly what I have always said a preference based on a self-centered opinion. You claim your life is valuable yet you kill thousands of lives no less precious or valuable that in your worldview are just as valuable as yours. That is specieism and has nothing to do with morality, only preference.

And just so you’re aware, “evolutionist” and “atheist” are not synonymous terms.

That is not what I said. I meant that 95% of atheists only have evolution left as a method to produce moral codes. Without God you have arbitrary evolutionary ethics or preference and opinion available. Nothing else.

Wow, how did Stalin make his way into this? Oh I get it, you’re trying to obfuscate the fact that the Bible is full of war and destruction, much of it resulting from commands made by your god and much of it also actually carried out by your god. Nice try. Stalin didn’t do what he did in the name of atheism, and given that most atheists denounce Stalin as a monster doesn’t help. I would further assert that most atheists wouldn’t agree that human life has no inherent worth. In fact, you can’t really tell much about a person’s world view based only on the fact that they are atheist.

It was not my point to say that Stalin yelled go atheism and then killed 20 million people, nor was it my goal to distract from Biblical violence (I do not even remember that being brought it though it may have been). My point was that atheism removes the most significant hurdles to genocide and murder - the sanctity and value of human life, as well as slavery - the equality of man, or eugenics - the dignity of human life, etc....When you reject God you have left the door wide open to the eradication of millions of mere biological anomalies that have no inherent worth or value. You also remove any accountability and final reckoning, as well as a way to show murder is actually wrong at all. This is evident in the fact that it is always the Christian west that is first on the scene of global hunger and oppression. It is never atheistic Russia, atheistic China, atheistic N Korea, nor for that matter Islamic anywhere. I have no reason to avoid a Biblical violence verses atheistic violence comparisons (even with the wars fought by non-Christians claiming to be such thrown in the totals) because there is no comparison and God is the only being capable of making wars for perfectly justifiable reasons. It is an obvious fact that the murder of a biological anomalies is made much easier by removing the person's divine sanctity and worth, making law an institution of opinion only, and the absence of any inescapable and eternal accountability even if that was all false (but it isn't).

There does indeed exist a method of giving human life actual value without god. It is exactly what I described in my last post to you (and several earlier ones). I don’t know how much value your god really places on life anyway, given that he so freely destroys it.

That is how you assign value and there is no reason I nor anyone else should agree or even care. You only showed that you think precious equals valuable. Maybe I don't, maybe no one else does, maybe half do and half don't. Which half is moral?

Right, except that you couldn’t actually demonstrate that they knew things their ignorance doesn’t allow for. You haven’t provided any examples of anything at all that would indicate they actually knew anything they couldn’t have known just by learning it on their own without being “plugged into a source.” In fact, the Bible is full of exactly what we would expect to find from people living 2000 years ago who knew next to nothing, compared to what we know today.

I do not have to. Even if they only gleaned these things from experience and evaluation then the fact that science could not even do this much 4000 years later and killed hundreds of thousands in their absurd ignorance on a global scale is sufficient reason to take science from the pedestal it never earned. Whether God told them or they figured out sanitations role in health it makes science look no better.

Dawkins explains to us how biology works. Let’s see Paul do that.

Who do you think is read more and who will be around a thousand years from now? Much of what Dawkin's says is crap, and almost everything he says about theology is worse. Paul explained why what Dawkin's says about biology is relatively meaningless compared with salvation. This was a silly argument anyway. I could say "Oh Yea, Paul describes how to exist with God forever", let's see Dawkins do that. Sounds kind of silly but silly or not the implications and relative worth of their writings is certainly evident and acknowledged.

 

[1robin]

So what you’re telling me is that there is a context in which it is moral to own another person. I see nothing moral about it.

I see you know very little about slavery in the OT. Since you would not go back and review what I wrote on it I will give you the basic facts.
1. Chattel slavery of any kind did not exist in Israel but did in every other ANE culture.
2. God found slavery in existence in Israel and his only actions were to make it vastly more benevolent and practical.
3. If the context was slavery or death, homelessness, debtors prison then servitude is a necessity as God in 99% of cases does not remake the broken world into what he wishes.
4. Almost all slavery (servitude) was voluntary usually for debt reasons.
5. The OT slavery laws are the only examples of benevolence demanded for slaves in any ANE culture. The Bible demands that a master is responsible for his slaves health and can be killed if abused, a slave must be set free (except in one case) after 6 years whether his dept. is paid or not, he may legally run away at any time but shouldn't, unlike even the Hebrews a slave could settle in any city he chose and could not be returned, a slave must be set free with gifts and money, etc..... etc......
6. Compare that with the code of Hammurabi for example that demands that all runaway slaves are killed or returned and that even not reporting them was a capital crime.
There is much detail I left out for brevity and qualifications necessary but all can be found at this very scholarly and in-depth site on OT slavery. It is one of the two most comprehensive sites on the subject (so I am sure it will be ignored).
http://bibleapologetics.wordpress.com/slavery-in-the-bible-25/
or
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2007/02/02/feedback-bible-slavery
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Torah/Deuteronomy/Biblical_Slavery.shtml

I mean, seriously, the people who brought the slaves from Africa to the US could have justified their actions in the same way, “Well, look how they live in huts and dirt, they kill each other and have no food. We’re actually doing them a favor by bringing them to our enlightened country and having them do all our chores for no pay, until they’re dead. They’re definitely better off.” Except that they have no freedom and have to answer to other people in making choices that affect their own lives, for which they are not the master of. Come on! Stop justifying this nonsense!

There were thousands of servants (slaves) in the OT that thanked God for the provisions in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. You would have left them to starve in the name of atheistic progress I guess. There are no Biblical laws applicable to what was done in the US by the British and the African slave masters 2000 years later or more. It was wrong and diabolical; however let's add some context to it. The slaves of that period produced the most affluent group of "Africans" on Earth, many had a life so much better than they originally had (most were former slaves of Africans) they would not leave their master even when freed, and the coup de grace is that over 90% of the very people that should have blamed God if he had anything to do with their slavery instead embraced him and looked to him for freedom which he along with 250,000 plus Christians in the North granted by giving their lives for a principle that does not even exist without God. Equality of man. This is cheap sensationalism, misapplied, and falsely hoped to be used to establish a moral high ground the atheist is ineligible for.

I’m sorry but you just admitted that slavery is in the Bible, and furthermore, you tried to justified it and put it into some kind of context in which you find it acceptable, but it exists there, nonetheless. Not to mention the part about where it indicates how you can beat a slave within inches of his life, so long as he doesn’t die within a certain number of days. The fact that you have to perform mental gymnastics to justify such an immoral act speaks volumes about the morality of your religion.

I put it in the context that existed. You are the one that seeks to subvert and rewrite history to enable a God who is recorded to have provided the most benevolent laws of any ANE nation to be called evil. Take your own medicine as you are the one with the symptoms.

Do. You. Think. Slavery. Is. Moral?

I think what is in the OT was very moral unless we could demand God to optimize all our faults and what they produce. Thousands lived that without God's provision would have died. Countless "slaves" servants chose to stay with their masters because they had it better than any other possible arrangement. NT slavery was horrible and was not regulated by God, but by the paganistic or secular Romans. Again this is inaccurate sensationalism, grandstanding, and the assertion of moral high ground by inaccurate historical conclusions based on preference and devoid of fact or merit. There is no better example of your claim’s utter failure than to note that the slaves in the diabolical slavery of the US looked to God almost exclusively for deliverance and God's people died by the hundreds of thousands to provide it to people they never met for reasons that atheism can't justify. No other argument is necessary. Hymnal’s are full of devotional songs to the Lord composed by slaves, one of the best by a slave ship captain whom God changed into a slavery fighter. In fact the man that did more to free the slaves in the US did so for theological reasons because of his faith. The massive benevolent acts of God's children and his own that fill the Bible makes claims that he is evil, preposterous and contrived for effect.

 

[1robin]

The cosmology contained in the Bible is not accurate and doesn’t line up with reality or science.

I think you you are not talking about cosmology (not that what you are talking about is correct either). The Bible says God created matter, space, and time in an instant a finite time ago. So does science. It also said stars were uncountable even though only about 3000 appeared and were counted in ancient times. I do not know of too many more versus about cosmology in the Bible.

And yes, I do have a frame of reference to judge the morality of the Bible – my own moral judgment. Same as you and everyone has and uses on a regular basis.

That is sufficient to determine whether you will go along or agree, it does not even have the theoretical potential to determine whether it is right or wrong, nor good or bad.

Its teachings are not the most valued moral instruction in human history, especially given the fact that every human throughout history (and presently) have not been Christians, and arguably have not even practiced the particular brand of Christianity you adhere to.
And the very fact that there are hundreds, if not thousands of Christian denominations supports my assertion that the Bible is not nearly as clear as you claim it is.

90% of all denominations agree on 95% of the issues. Though shall not murder is not open to much debate. They differ on whether music should be allowed, or whether the wafer is actual flesh (stupid) or whether it is symbolic, whether or not women are to preach. The Bible fortunately is not so democratic. It says we must all be born again to be Christians and get to heaven. I defend the Bible and that teaching. No one is a Christian or not based on what denomination they belong to and only by their relationship to Christ. Everything else is commentary. Your claim that no one in history is a Christian is meaningless and strange.

These are mere opinion claims.
I don’t cherish it as anything other than a book, and neither do billions of other people.
The Bible didn’t convert anyone – human beings did that. And quite forcefully in many instances.

First no they are not opinions but every single claim you have made is, or at least almost all. I never said anything about what you cherish. I said the most cherished book in history and it is. No one can possibly convert anyone. When Cortez invaded Mexico in search of Gold he had a priest with him named Cabot. Cortex was a Catholic and did do a lot of good but he was more interested in getting to the gold. He would destroy the temples where thousands of hearts were cut out daily and build Churches instead. Because of his haste he would force "superficial conversions" and keep going. Cabot told him that no one can possible be made a Christian by force. Cortez stopped that practice and the entire forced coercion of south America was stopped for theological reasons. The only time a conquest was stopped for theological reasons in history that I know of. You can't force anyone to believe though some have tried and I condemn them. I defend God not men, and I defend faith not the abuse of it.

People don’t generally center their lives, their worldview and their morality around Caesar’s Gallic wars so the point doesn’t make much sense.

So, I meant just the teaching of the historical aspects of the Bible which are vastly more accurate and comprehensive. I did not mean teach doctrine in college, that is why I stated "history" so many times.

The originals of the Bible cannot be virtually certain. Most of the scholars you love so much would agree with that. Fragments that go back to within 30-50 years of the supposed originals aren’t equivalent to the originals.

That is completely false and a matter of common sense but am not wasting my time explaining it again unless necessary, and I got the concept from those scholars.

And just another note, why did god allow such mistakes to occur in the first place? I mean, if your god’s whole thing is that we need to follow the Bible in order to be moral human beings who live on in some afterlife based on what the book tells us, why did he allow for any changes or errors at all?

God acts in very consistent ways in history. He gives us a pure X and then let's us do what we will with it. It is kind of like a parent giving us something to cherish and keep or ruin and lose. I do not know why, I just know it is very consistent. That being said the Bible is almost (if not actually) supernaturally textually accurate. No other text of any kind in the entire ancient period is even close. It is so extraordinarily accurate that it appears to be protected by a power greater than our pathetic track record allows. 2000 years later and exactly what you need to be saved is perfectly preserved. Even Ehrman admits that all essential doctrine is unaffected by any meaningful errors of any kind. In fact 98% of the 5% of textual errors that do exist are known and indicated in modern Bibles. It is also a well established fact that all original texts are still in the Bible. The problems are additions not losses and we know virtually all of the additions and when and why. What more could possibly be asked or needed?

The Bible is not extraordinary and impressive in every way, in my opinion, or in the opinion of billions of others who don’t follow it. That’s merely an opinion claim, on your part.

No, that is an obvious fact and by the way why do you complain about my opinions in the same statement you make your own? There is no academic method by which ancient texts are evaluated where the Bible is not at the top in virtually all categories.

1 Peter 2:18:
Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.

As I said NT slavery is a different animal. It was Roman not Hebrew and the Romans had since Spartacus ruthlessly punished runaways or even the hint of slavery rebellion with death and torture. It was an instruction to keep these people alive. God's primary purpose is to save us out of the world not fix the world. He operates within the evil we produce many times and does not fix it most of the time. He has condemned this world to destruction because it is corrupt however he saves tha slave out from it. He also knew that if the apostles were tobe known to free slaves everywhere they preached they would have been hunted down and killed. You are saddling God with an optimality requirement he does not have. He guarantees to raise up on the last day not provide every comfort or remove any situation we do not like. Evil is left to be evil most of the time as an object lesson. Why stop with freedom, why not say God is evil if we ever get sick, or if we need a house and do not have one, or if he does not give us all IPODs. God is obligated to do that which he promised, nothing more.

What kind of moral instruction is that?

A benevolent but less than optimal one. It was we who created this slavery not God. Jesus never enslaved anyone. He set captives free and he is the purest revelation of God we have. The rest is tangled up with our massive fallibilities and errors.

Again, I will point out, this is not a system of morality. It is a system of obedience to authority based on fear of that authority.

There is one teaching about slavery that is Roman not Biblical and this justifies some strange authority motivation. The apostles teaching the message enslaved no one, set captives free, and never gained any worldly possessions worthy of mention and many died and all suffered terribly for the message that you say was intended to justify authority they never accepted or desired. Amazing. Your basis for the Bible requires more faith given less evidence than mine.

 

[1robin]

I pointed many of the great scientific discoveries of the 1800s because you were trying to tell me that the ancient Hebrews knew all kinds of things they couldn’t have known without some kind of divine intervention or knowledge passed down to them from your god. In actuality, they knew what we would expect people living in their time to know, and not much more. You tried to denigrate science in comparison to what you claim the Hebrews knew when in actuality the comparison is absurd.

My point was and is that the Hebrews knew things they should not have 4000 years before people who should have but didn't and killed millions in their ignorance. It is an example where faith triumphs by leaps and bounds over science. Not that science is any less dependent on God.

Um no. I look around and see that we don’t enslave people anymore, that we don’t treat women and children as chattel anymore, that we have medical technology that saves and prolongs life. That in itself, is progress.

On what planet has slavery been eradicated? It was eradicated in the US by predominantly Christian efforts; however a new form of it is being re-instituted by secular politicians. On this planet it is alive and well plus we have added the murder of millions of babies a year, and the capability and moral insanity to wipe all life as we know it out. You call this progress? I agree that progress does exist; I do not agree that secularism has led to a net gain.

Which men of science were killing tens of thousands of people?

Every doctor that existed prior to about 1863.

What did the Hebrews know about sanitation that they couldn’t have known without divine authority?

Well they said, and they are the ones who would know that they were given instructions about sanitation and health from God. Even if they got it by reason then doctors 4000 years later had actually gone backwards. In no context is this flattering for science.

I just did.

Where?

By mine. The one I described above. Why would I use Hitler’s standard?

Well now we have it. You are the moral standard by which all law and convention is determined. As neither said when we finally kill God we will become God. I think you are a little early.

You don’t think as human beings we’re more moral than we were 5000 years ago? 2000 Years ago? 1000 Years ago?

In some ways yes in many others no. We sure have not made any progress worthy of the name.

How about the actual life span?

I forgot the question? Sorry

What stuff did they know? You keep saying this without citing any examples.

They recorded the accurate description of Big Bang cosmology and even included the only cause that is currently available. It took us 4000 years to get where they were without any telescopes.

I don’t find anything about what they knew remarkable or at odds with what we would expect of an ancient civilization at all.

I gave two examples, until those are dealt with sufficiently there is no need for more and even if your right about where they got sanitation from (and you aren't) that is still an indictment against science. I like science and think it valuable and faith based, but I am arguing in the context of sciences undeserved omniscient status in secularism and I work in a field where scientist’s fallibility is all too apparent. We are going to have to shorten these posts up some how. Perhaps you could simply agree with me on all counts.

 

[1robin]

I didn’t say the amount of surgeries was a measure of a society. You keep talking about scientists killing tens of thousands of people (where you got that number, who knows) by performing surgeries on people I guess implying that if they had just known what the ancient Hebrews knew, never would have happened. So I want to know, how many surgeries did the Hebrews perform? You know, since they were such an advanced society and all.

I have been an amateur military historical for the past 30 years. See any war prior to 1863 especially the US civil war.

And again, thousands of Africans might not be dying if a certain church would keep their abstinence-only, no birth control crap to themselves.

You had a choice between them not committing sexually deviant acts, not saddling the burden of their actions on others, or them adopting Christianity that where ever it is practiced has produced advanced medical capability, but you chose Rome's resistance to contraception. This is truly desperate. Never blame the ones who actually do the acts when the Church is such a ready target, seems to be a modern mantra. However I do not defend Catholicism so I will leave this train wreck here.

I’m replying directly to what you said, not what the Bible says (which apparently you are claiming the Bible says).
Yeah, I think it’s weird to punish people for using the brains you gave them.

This is as bizarre and invalid as saying I think it wrong for a father to punish his son for using the rifle he gave him to shoot his sister.

How do you know?

I will restate, the God of the Bible is not. There may be a God who is different than the one I believe in (however there is little reason to think so) and he may think stereo lithography is important. There may also be a planet where that would make for a meaningful point but it isn't this one.

This is the world your god created. Maybe he should condemn and punish himself.

Once again this is as inaccurate and a meaningless as saying that God gave me a 59 Barachetta and I drove it into a coal mine and it exploded so God should be ashamed.

What instructions are those?

I cease to credit your fanned ignorance as accurate at this point.

Another reason why such a system is immoral. It’s based on obedience and acceptance, not moral actions.

Not even close. The Bible's "system" is based on our acceptance and admission of truth. It also gives moral laws and principles that "should" be followed but that is not the primary focus nor what gets us to heaven. There is nothing as universally associated with morality than the Bible. Many times human law is completely independent or opposite to moral law.
Can the following be said about any other person or even the collection of the cumulative "wisdom" of man?

"The character of Jesus has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive to its practice, and has exerted so deep an influence, that it may be truly said, that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind, than all the disquisitions of philosophers and than all the exhortations of moralists."
William Lecky One of Britain’s greatest secular historians.

He was the meekest and lowliest of all the sons of men, yet he spoke of coming on the clouds of heaven with the glory of God. He was so austere that evil spirits and demons cried out in terror at his coming, yet he was so genial and winsome and approachable that the children loved to play with him, and the little ones nestled in his arms. His presence at the innocent gaiety of a village wedding was like the presence of sunshine.
No one was half so compassionate to sinners, yet no one ever spoke such red hot scorching words about sin. A bruised reed he would not break, his whole life was love, yet on one occasion he demanded of the Pharisees how they ever expected to escape the damnation of hell. He was a dreamer of dreams and a seer of visions, yet for sheer stark realism He has all of our stark realists soundly beaten. He was a servant of all, washing the disciple’s feet, yet masterfully He strode into the temple, and the hucksters and moneychangers fell over one another to get away from the mad rush and the fire they saw blazing in His eyes.
He saved others, yet at the last Himself He did not save. There is nothing in history like the union of contrasts which confronts us in the gospels. The mystery of Jesus is the mystery of divine personality.
Scottish TheologianJames Stuart

I used to be a Christian. I stopped buying it when it stopped making sense to me.

That is one of the most self-refuting statements I have ever heard but it takes time to dissect.
#1 Why do you think you were a Christian at some point?

Big deal about the pork. They probably figured that out that the way humans have always figured things out: by experience and learning. In the same way we learned to avoid poison ivy without divine knowledge having to be handed down to us.

I do not think I mentioned pork as an example of extraordinary knowledge. I think it was to illustrate the practicality of rules most people do not have the context for.

 

[1robin]

I just made it. And I will do it again, and again, and again. I find your god to be immoral, arbitrary and cruel. I’m not saying that to offend, that’s just how I feel about it. I do not find slavery moral. I do not find genocide moral, I don’t care what your god says about it.

No you don't, It is impossible to actually derive an evil verdict from the Bible. You simply force it into an pre-existing evil mold no matter what must be chopped off, ignored, or changed to make it fit. You even theoretically do not have the slightest capability to judge God even if he was evil. You can judge that you do not agree with a God (I do not agree and Hate Allah even if he exists, however I realize that I can't determine if he was evil), you do not have the capacity to show God is evil or know it.

And the part about dying in agony … well come on, he got to rise from the grave after only 3 days and then live for eternity at the right hand of god. That doesn’t sound like such a giant sacrifice to me. Not to mention the fact that it’s bizarre that your god even thought human sacrifice was necessary to begin with.

No human could do what was needed. In fact he set up an example for the specific purpose of making that very clear. We had nothing to undo the damage we caused (and you blamed on others, like Rome). He basically suffered the penalty for us. It is the greatest example of the action we associate with the greatest possible love even when we do it. We build museums to the acts, we give medals for them, we write books about the, yet when God does them atheists call them evil. You guys are nothing if not inconsistent and desperate.

How about actually citing examples?

No, if you want some there are more than you can even possibly read about 5 seconds away. These posts are long enough.

I’m pointing out that the existence of your god is theoretically demonstrable. What is it that you think I’ve invented? I assure you, I didn’t invent science or empirical testing.

However you corrupted it and applied it to something where it has no application. I have no problem with reasonable methods but what you have done is demand God pass some test there is no reason to think he should or would and then use that as a conclusion. Tests have methods and application. I could simply declare that if atheism was true then it should not be the case that almost every culture in history has had faith in some God or another. Is this a reasonable sounding test - yes. Is it applicable, conclusive, and appropriate - no.

I will do so by reiterating what I have already said. What you in fact, just responded to. (Right above this).

I said prove that you should have more evidence. Your mere assertion that you should in contradiction to the Bible is not valid. God is only required to do as he has promised not as you demand.

The existence of dark matter is inferred from its gravitational pull. Gravitational pull is a natural means of measuring something.

Nature does not mean better or more valid. First of all what is gravity. We know how it behaves, we know not what it is or why it works. Calling that natural is assuming.

And you missed the point about demonstrating your god’s existence. It doesn’t matter that you think your god exists outside of time and space or whatever, it’s irrelevant to what I’m saying. According to you, your god exerts his influence on humans and the natural world in some ways (like answering prayer, for example) and therefore, his actions should be detectable and/or observable in the natural world in some way. Get it?

I got it years before you said it. In fact I can at this point almost have the debate without you. As I pointed out earlier there are millions and millions of miracles claimed to have occurred. Have at it and no I will not do the work for you. I will add a more quantifiable example here and one of my favorites. Prophecy has no other explanation possible. The Bible has over 2000 of them. I hope it wasn't you that used the invalid modern city of Tyre to disprove a true prophecy about a specific Tyre that God destroyed. If not then it is one of the most challenged and can be used as an example to debate, if so then I can have this argument without you as well, as the folks who contend this say the same invalid and illogical things over and over again, they never work and never will except for unjustified plausible deniability for 1/2000th of accurate Biblical prophecy. What is the motivation for the length and time you spend here. I do not believe is UFO’s but I live my life as if they do not exist. I do not debate them and never ridicule them or people who have faith in them. You are not evidence driven but preference driven.

 

[1robin]

That's a matter of perspective. Abortion isn't murder, no matter what knee-jerk, reactionary position you take to the subject.

No that is historical fact. The issue of when life occurs is ambiguous but me method of deciding is unquestionable. BTW there are tens of thousands of abortions at points that no one would question the life that was destroyed. There is no day that can be accurately determined as the one on which life arose. To err on the side of compassion and morality, I propose that since we do not know, we do not take any chances and consider life or the (soul) to exist on day one. If you think reacting to the murder of millions of innocent babies a fault then I am guilty.

Isn't it mostly religious institutions that disapprove of sex education in schools? As far as I'm aware, most secular organizations are in favor of greater sex education.

Many times I am convinced that there is a certain spiritual blindness or rational confusion in the non-theist camps but am unable to know for a fact. It is claims like this that make my convictions true. Saying teaching kids not to have sex is causing more sex is to say that we should teach kids about the methods to murder to prevent killing. Teaching kids not to race never caused a fireball by the highway. As every knows and will admit in any non-God discussion familiarity reduced inhibitions. Sex was practiced just fine long before the liberals invaded every aspect of everyone’s lives and mucked them up by kicking God out of schools and asserting themselves acting as God's and even contradicting the actual God instead.
In my teenage life I had had a reluctant association with the Church (but not God). It was my superficial notion of faith and that alone that made me on a few occasions decide against what my body wanted to do and the sex ed teachers said was natural and gave me protection against consequence from. On other occasions when my biology got the better of my morality it was a Christian girl or two that for faith and faith alone said "no". Do you teach your kids not to drink using alcohol education? People fear what they do not understand. When they understand they lose their fear and a 15 year old will do what they do with or without sex ed but many times not with faith.

This is just plain old bigotry.

That is a fact and your sensationalistic claims to moral high ground based on moral ambiguity (except for racism and bigotry) will not change that. Are there classes you guys go to where they teach you how to make an invalid moral argument sound moral, to condemn truth and in its absence coronate falsehoods known for thousands of years as the "new" truth, or to tolerate anything except traditional morality or faith even when it actually works and liberalism destroys everything it touches?

How many Presidents and Congressmen are non-Christians, again?

I do not know. After the last election I gave up on politics and politicians though we are the real problem that created them. What a politician claims he is or is not is based primarily on self-interest and votes and I long ago quit listening. However their arguments are what matters and they make no Christian arguments for their liberal policies that are destroying what was once the light on the hill among nations when true Christian values reigned supreme. IOW if they are Christians and that is hard to determine they at least are not acting as such.

Oh, I see, you have no idea what you're talking about and are just spuriously throwing out insinuations without any kind of rational basis while making massive, generalized remarks about a subject of which you clearly have absolutely no understanding.

If so this was a good opportunity to prove it. Why didn't you? The most liberal president in history has spent more money than all the rest combined while causing crippling unemployment, expanding the government at a pace unheard of before, has betrayed our old allies and befriended the world's terrorists, and is undoing the freedoms purchased by his betters with their lives as fast as possible. He has claimed to be a Christian and yet has been more friendly to Muslim’s and sat in a racist church preaching some other gospel. Atheistic communist utopias have utterly failed and exhibited the most injustice possible. You know what there is no point. I get tired of stating obvious facts and then to have to endure invalid counter arguments. If you think what I said wrong, fine, run with it. It will be a short trip.

 

[1robin]

And yet after thousands of years, these countless scholars and theologians still cannot agree on what is literal and what is allegory or symbolic.

That is simply not true in the vast majority of cases and is an example of your lack of grasp of Biblical theology. Name me a single story that has a large group on either side of whether it is a parable or a literal.

What I am saying is that your Bible, while not exactly evil, is not the perfect basis of morality you claim it be either. We've come a long way in the last two thousand years.

I never said the Bible was the basis for morality. I said God is and if he exists then there is no possible better source even conceivable. I respond to yours and others claims that God is evil as if they have a valid foundation but the truth is that an ant has more basis to tell Newton his calculus is wrong than a man has to declare God evil. We may only decide if we agree with God not anything beyond that. I wish this were different but I claim truth as truth not convenience as truth.

Hence the claim of cognitive dissonance.

Fine everyone who does not agree with you is nuts. I am in better company than you are so think what you wish.

That depends. Tell me how you define God first.

No one could possibly fully define God and what is more no one could fully evaluate or understand God or what his characteristics mean. Using our minds and what they have produced to evaluate God is like one of the "lost boys" deciding whether going to the moon was possible. They simply have no frame of reference or knowledge base capable of meaningfully evaluating it and neither do you. However I agree with what description exists in the Bible concerning God or at least have no reason to reject any of them.

 

[1robin]

Firstly, you miss the point. You equated lack of proof in God with a lack of proof in the existence of love and morality. But they are not equitable.

I did not mention lack of proof of God or anything else. I said that with God morality fits like a glove into reality and reason. Without God morality is an unexplainable intruder that obeys no method we invent to explain it. Morality is moral and has a foundation with God. It is mere opinion and non-moral without. I was speaking about the foundations of love and morality not the perceptions of them. An atheist may be moral and love just as anyone else, he can't explain or justify either, even a fraction of as meaningfully or sufficiently as a theist .

You make claims for God's nature that you do not make for the nature of love and morals. Maybe feelings was not the right word. They are immaterial concepts. But you say God actually exists. He has attributes, intelligence. You claim He exists in a very different way to people understand love and morals to exist.

I am not sure I follow. I experience God in very similar ways as I do love and morality. However they are available to a non-Christian but not God. That is why a Christian can ground them so much better. An atheist has no access to their actual foundation and so is forced to invent a bad one. I will wait for clarification on this I may be astray here a bit.

When you say then I understand why you need a rule book to live by. We are very different people, as what I want to do is usually moral too. Perhaps this is the problem - you assume that everyone else would naturally do wrong because that is what you 'want to do'. I don't run around raping and pillaging because I don't want to.

I never said anything about a rule book either. In fact I have made a point to say that a Christian and an Atheist can both perceive moral truth. The difference is that only the Christian can fully account for it and explain it sufficiently. This is another epistemology, ontology confusion problem.

Your argument for morals having no meaning without God is biased. Most humans, of whatever religion, creed, ethnicity or intelligence know that wanton murder, rape, theft etc are wrong. We see exactly the same in the animal world - animals do not generally wantonly attack others of their species. Has God instilled morals in them too? If you say morals are doing what God says then they are not right and wrong - just pleasing, or not, to God.

Now this was my fault. No meaning was the wrong word. No foundation is the better. It may be very meaningful for an atheist to not kill but he can't prove why it is meaningful. Again explaining perception issues is different from foundation issues. We both perceive only God sufficiently founds.

It is funny that you give the example of the murder of a million people as being immoral given the mass murders and genocide that the Bible attributes to God. (I'll not list all the verses - it's rather dull, and I'm sure you'll know them.) Was God immoral or morally schizophrenic?

I do not wonder that you do not wish to post details, because these verses give the greatest possible moral justification for these genocidal actions in the OT. This is complex and any discussion will be substantial. I will give you the choice on whether you want to breach this topic. It will not end as you think. BTW a little context please. If you added up all the people God ordered attacked plus all the people the Hebrews killed that God did not authorize and punished them for, plus all the witch trials, plus the crusades, plus the inquisition, plus the 30 years’ war all together it would not equal the numbers the atheistic Stalin killed alone for the glory of his atheistic Utopia that made 99% of all soviets miserable wrecks for 60 years and then collapsed in abject failure. Not to even mention the atheistic Pol Pot, Napoleon, Thon Shwe, Kim Jong, Mussolini, Mao, etc ad infinitum.

 

[Hufflechuff]

So God is not as bad as Stalin. Not the most convincing argument.

Moral justification for genocide - there is no such thing.

Maybe I missed how you live your religion. I was assuming you believe God to exist as a sentient entity, rather then how you experience love and other feelings? If not, and you see God as an extension/foundation of the psyche then that would be different.

You say that without God morals are just opinion. How does God experience morals? Do they exist outside of him or are they just his opinion?

 

[SkepticThinker]

I will go with the tenured, professional, and universally respected philosopher. However this issue does not depend on the word of any one person. Apprehension is different from justification as an objective fact.

Good for you. I’ll choose to go with what actually makes sense and is supported by facts and evidence.

Craig does what you do: States his conclusions in his premises and thinks he’s made some great logical argument.

Your statement is odd anyway. Richard Dawkins is a universally respected scientist, yet you don’t follow what he says.

Precious to you, is not a moral foundation, it is a contrived personal valuation not based on any moral law but on self-centered specieism. The lives of the Jews were not precious to Hitler and in this lies the bankruptcy of this contention. A cow’s life is precious to the cow and in your world view just as valuable, but you have taken many of their lives, not to preserve but only to enhance your own life. With no God this is as immoral as it is possible to get, with God and all these gaping moral holes are closed and everything once again works as intended.

Precious to me = moral to me. That is my moral foundation. That is your moral foundation too, whether you actually realize it or not. Everyone’s moral foundation comes from themselves, their experience, their upbringing, their evolutionary history and their society. We (the people who have chosen to live together as a society) codify it into law and … voila!

Hitler apparently believed in the same god you do, so I’m not sure why you’re bringing him into this.

Not in your view, it is only inconvenient or undesired. You have given no reason to think it wrong as of yet.

Yes, in my view it is immoral to take someone’s life. That is taking away everything they have, and everything they are. It is the most immoral thing a person can do to another person. I don’t need to post the definition of morality for you, do I?

Once again you have proven that murdering someone is against what they want you have not said anything about why it is wrong. By this method taxes, long lines, and having to work are now immoral. No matter what language a non-theist uses (and they use quite a bit of self-contradictory, inconsistent, but flowery words) it all equals opinion not moral right and wrong. You may have a bad but valid system that given a lot of qualifiers and modifications might provide a foundation for some ethics but it makes nothing actually right or wrong.

Boy, your moral compass isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, now is it.

Murdering someone is taking away what they are, and all they have. You are causing someone to cease to exist. That is bad, i.e. immoral. I’ve thought it through and come to that realization, rather than just reading an old book that says I have to obey it because some invisible entity commands it and doing so on that basis. I consider the former to be moral and the latter to be immoral.

If you added all the witches burned at the stake in the entire history of Christianity, children stoned to death in the entire Hebrew history, slaves in the entire history of the US (slavery still exists in other places), they would not total the number killed in Stalin's purges alone, nor in the war Hitler started alone, nor the number of babies killed in the womb in just the past few decades alone.

Says you. What happens if you add up all the people killed in god-commanded genocide in your Bible? Does that get us closer?

Oh and by the way, it isn’t just atheists who get abortions. A rather large amount of religious folks do as well. Hmmmmm.

As I already pointed out earlier, Stalin and Hitler didn’t do what they did in the name of atheism. Atheism is not a worldview. It’s a lack of belief in god(s). That’s it. An atheist can be a Nazi, or a hippy, or a Republican, or a conservative. There has never actually been a purely secular nation on this earth, as far as I can tell.

You are right we (meaning the still predominantly Christian US, but things are a changing) Americans spend great amounts of money and loose lives in the effort to save civilian casualties. Atheistic Russia sure didn’t, nor atheistic China, nor atheistic N Korea. In fact it is almost a direct relationship between the dominance of Christian's or Christian doctrines in nations that produce the benevolence you speak of. If a secular nation has proper moral systems aimed a justice then they smuggled Christian based values in even if they told God to wait outside.

When you say that North Korea is an atheistic country, I can’t help but laugh. A dead man is the eternal leader of the country (hmm, that sounds familiar). The leader of the country forces the population to worship him as a god, or face certain punishment. There’s nothing atheistic about that. It is a political religion.

I’ve heard this ridiculous claim too many times to count. The assertion that anyone who has proper morals must have smuggled them in from Christian dogma is nothing more than arrogance and/or wishful thinking on your part. To say as much ignores human history predating the Bible, and all the people who have never even heard of your Bible who somehow managed to carry out productive and moral lives (like most of Asia, up until recently). Again, adherence to authority is not morality. I say it’s the exact opposite.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Yes there does. Morality becomes inevitably opinion without God.

It is the collective, demonstrable opinion of people who choose to live together safely and cohesively in a society. It is not merely one person’s opinion.

So tell me, how come we can consider murder to be wrong overall, but justified in some cases. As in self defense, for instance? That seems subjective to me. You?

There is very little about obeying any mere man in the Bible. If it did say I was to obey someone on Earth, I have no idea who that would even be. I think rather you find accountability immoral and inconvenient and so have cast it in whatever light needed to allow rejection, though where you got it from is quite a mystery.

I’m talking about the unquestioning obedience you must provide to the god you believe in (and throw in a dash of worship as well). I don’t consider following arbitrary commands to be acting in a moral fashion.

If God exists then there is no argument to his having a right. It is a silly statement, like screaming at the wind. Your life will be taken either way, however with God it is not taken without the knowledge of an all knowing God. You seem to prefer a life with no ultimate meaning, no ultimate purpose, no ultimate morality, no ultimate justice, and no ultimate hope. Only inevitable heat death, of you and everyone that you ever cared about within a dying and meaningless universe, yippy secularism. I for the life of me can't find anything comforting in that and definitely nothing desirable. Desirability does not make something true. It just so happens that what is true also happens to be the most universally valued and associated with benevolence concept, in human history. I will add that contrived non-desirability does not make something untrue either.

There is in my book. If there is a god, I can question “him” all I want. He gave me this nifty brain, why not expect me to use it? Your god’s not stupid, is he?

I prefer a life with no ultimate meaning? Who the hell says? Life has the meaning and purpose you give to it. I live my life to be the best person I can be, to make a positive impact in other peoples’ lives when and where I can, to ease the suffering of others whenever possible, and to enjoy every fleeting moment knowing I won’t go on forever. Yes, I will die, and so will everyone I love (by the way, there’s nothing I like about that, I don’t want it to happen. I just know that it’s inevitable and that’s what makes all of this so important and precious). All the more reason to flourish and enjoy this one opportunity we get to live. It doesn’t matter what I believe, or if I like it or not. It’s just the way it is, and so I must go with it. I mean, I guess it would be nice to believe that I get to go to some great place when I die. I would love to believe that my father lives on somewhere, and that he’s happy and whole again, but I can’t make myself believe it just because I may want it to be true. All I can do is live the one life I know I get for sure, and do my best to make the one life everybody else gets as good as it can be.

I’m not sure you noticed, but you just contradicted yourself. You told me that you don’t find anything comforting in what I believe, and then you directly followed that by stating that desirability doesn’t make something true. Exactly! So the fact that you may not like it, doesn’t make it false.

God as a Biblical concept created the life, knows everything about the future and past, gave them free will they did not create or earn and if sufficiently abused might result in the loss of that life which was granted them and used to rebel against it's creator. With or without God we still die. With God there is hope, without God there is none even theoretically possible, yet you desire this, and condemn the hope. In your world Hitler never had to answer for anything, Mother Theresa never was rewarded. The worst genocidal leaders in history and the most humanitarian folks ( a very large portion Christians) met the same futile and unjust fate decided by mindless matter in motion. What you value I find depressing and counter intuitive on a primal level. Yet you condemn the only possible remedy to this meaninglessness as immoral. I used to make the exact same argument to Christian's when I was an atheist. I now look back on that period and those statements as the most shameful and dark of my life.
Continued below:

It’s becoming increasingly obvious to me that you don’t understand the atheist position at all. Which is strange, considering you say you used to be one.

Again, I don’t desire nothingness when I die, I just find no good reasons or evidence to believe that your god exists in reality, and by extension the heaven you believe in. Like I said above, I would love to believe that my father lives on somewhere (especially considering he led a rather tragic life and died very young) but again, my wanting it to be true doesn’t make it true and I can’t force myself to believe in something I find illogical. I don’t condemn someone else for believing it, it seems only natural to me that people would want to believe it. But again, simply wanting something to be so doesn’t make it so.

Hitler did answer for what he did, he ended up dead in an underground bunker somewhere in Germany. It’s not like he died comfortably in a warm bed somewhere in old age. And I don’t see any reason why Mother Teresa should be rewarded for increasing the suffering of people already living in poverty. Sorry. But yes, everyone ends up in the same place after death, in my opinion because as far as I can tell, that’s simply what happens. (Don’t confuse that with my wanting it to happen).

So you think it’s depressing that I value human life. Wow, some morals you’ve got there!

 

[SkepticThinker]

There are a lot of things I hear Christianity falsely criticized for. Forcing obedience to authority is about the most wrong I have ever heard unless you were speaking about Catholicism before Luther tore it apart. I feel no compulsion to obey any religious authority figure on Earth, I am not asked to , nor is there any direct teaching in the Bible about doing so that applies. I have no idea what you were talking about here. If Jesus was in the subject making business then why did he and his apostles say:
....
Galatians 5:13 ESV / 98 helpful votes
For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
John 8:32 ESV / 82 helpful votes
And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Romans 8:1-4 ESV / 45 helpful votes
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
....
Isaiah 58:6-7 ESV / 22 helpful votes
“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
John 10:10 ESV / 11 helpful votes
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
Romans 8:1 ESV / 10 helpful votes
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Isaiah 40:31 ESV / 7 helpful votes
But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.
Hebrews 2:14-15 ESV / 6 helpful votes
Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.
John 8:36 ESV / 6 helpful votes
So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
John 3:16 ESV / 6 helpful votes
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Luke 10:36-37 ESV / 5 helpful votes
Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”
Romans 8:21 ESV / 4 helpful votes
That the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
[URL]http://www.openbible.info/topics/freedom[/URL]

This cut and paste job is meaningless to me. You have proclaimed that nothing is moral unless god says it is. That means an individual's moral interpretations and/or judgments are irrelevant. You merely have to do what god tells you to do, and that equates to being moral. So when god tells you to murder someone, it is moral because "he" says so. When god tells the Israelites to murder their enemies (including the children), to take all their stuff, and to keep the women for themselves, that is moral because god commanded it. THAT is a system of obedience to authority. That is not morality.

I didn't say anything about obeying earthly figures. I'm talking about obedience to your god, whom you assert is the ultimate arbiter of morality.

If god told you to murder your child, what would you do?

Yeah, we need to stop that guy and get rid of this awful teaching, and shut down all those Christian hospitals, public schools systems, and take back all the billions donated to world relief given by the most charitable group on Earth (the Christian conservatives).
Continued below:

Boy, oh boy. Do you ever make the most sweeping generalizations and assertions I've ever seen.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I do not understand the contention. In just the US 500,000 plus abortions are carried out without any medical necessity other than convenience for them and death to the child.

It was your contention. My response was a question to you.

And here you’ve made more assertions you should probably back up.

It gives absolute value and sanctity to all human life. I don't think I need to explain that the destruction of something sanctified because of someone else’s sin is wrong. Of course with many critics of God you never know.

Except in the parts where it doesn’t.

What? Getting pregnant is a sin? Having a stillborn child stuck inside your body is a sin? Become pregnant after being raped by your father at the age of 11 is a sin? Maybe you should explain it.

I did not say moral right. I said "sacred right", that was meant as a play on words to illustrate the irony.

It’s not all that ironic given the fact that there are restrictions on abortions. Anyone can’t just get one anytime they like or for whatever reason. (I.e. You can’t just walk into a clinic during the 8th month of pregnancy and demand an abortion.)

Women claim to have some "given" right (given from who I wonder) to take away every right of an individual that it has or ever will have.

Given by ourselves, to ourselves, as a result of the recognition that fully developed, self-sustaining human beings are all autonomous individuals.

They demand this unimpeachable right to their own body to justify destroying another’s body.

Whether we like it or not, people are entitled to have control over their own body. There’s not much we can do about that. It’s not that I think abortion is moral or immoral per se, it’s just that I recognize that I can’t force people to do things with their body that they don’t want to do. I can’t strap a person down and steal their kidney in order to save my sister’s life and more than I can force a person to carry a baby to term that doesn’t want to do so.

This is about the most indefensible, ironic, and morally insane concept possible. A woman has the "sacred right" to kill a baby her sin instigated, but God is immoral if he takes the life he created and gave when it is seriously misused to do evil and cause vast misery. Only in non-theist land do these things make sense I guess. I am not debating against any facts you have, I am debating your preference. You certainly have the right to dismiss any truth you find inconvenient but it makes a discussion quite pointless. You still have as of yet to show that anything is actually morally wrong without God. I will make it easier, simply show that wrong even exists as an absolute category of moral truth. You have shown what it is you might or might not like (morality and God wise) but that has little to do with morality or God.
This certainly didn't seem that long when I typed it. My apologies for the length.

A woman has the right to kill a baby her sin instigated? What makes you think there was any sinning involved? Or do you just assume all sexual acts are sinful in themselves?

If you don’t understand how human beings determine right from wrong by now, there’s no hope for you, I’m afraid.

And just to point it out again, I didn’t say there was some absolute objective morality. It’s pretty clear to me that morality is situationally-defined.


And no apologies necessary. This is getting pretty lengthy.

 

[1robin]

So God is not as bad as Stalin. Not the most convincing argument.

At least you have a sense of humor.. That was pretty funny if not exactly what I meant.

Moral justification for genocide - there is no such thing.

Oh Contraire Mon freir. The flood (literal or symbolic) is a story that records the just destruction of pretty much every life on Earth. If you read the verses it becomes quite clear that man had reached a level of total depravity that even Hitler and Stalin would have been shocked at. God had three choices. 1. Force compliance and thereby render justice and his whole purpose moot and make them obey. 2. Kill them all and take the innocents straight to. The guilty died in a perfectly just action and the innocent went to heaven without having to endure years of sickness, misery, and watching loved ones die and stumble around in the darkness of ignorance. Three he could have done nothing which seems to be the non-theists choice. This would have inaugurated a thousand generations of wickedness, suffering, oppression, true slavery, war, famine, and rape the likes of which we can't imagine. So God kills a bunch of guilty people and you yell foul but would instead allow evil to fully mature until nothing but depravity and misery reigns for countless years and everyone goes to hell and call that progress. I know who's case looks nuts here and it isn't God's.
As far as genocide goes, once again you are wrong given theology and context and wrong given even secular facts. I will deal with the theology. The context the God we are discussing comes with (even though you non theists seem to avoid doing so) is that Israel was selected as the nation by which God's revelation and eventually Christ would arrive. They were on their way to a land in which tribes so evil and corrupt existed that they would have and did lead Israel astray constantly even with God's warnings and wars he ordered. These are only the factors I know existed at this time and they come from the Bible, secular archeology, and secular OT warfare scholarship.
1. He had waited until the Canaanites, Amorites, etc…. cup of iniquity was full.
2. He had spent years trying to get them to repent and change. They told him to get lost and actually walled up live children in their foundations and made them walk through fire for Marduk and other demons thought to be God's.
3. They finally maxed out God's patience and he commanded and assisted Israel in destroying them for the express purpose of stopping their depravity from infecting Israel and his revelation. Let's see if that is true.
4. God's genocidal language may have been apocalyptic prose or literal. Either way no genocide ever took place that I can remember. There were Canaanites and Philistines popping up everywhere long after these wars took place.
5. However let me tell you what happened because the Israelites did not obey in just one case. The Hebrews had defeated the Agagites but ever faithful Saul had left the king and queen alive against orders. Samuel showed and cursed Saul and killed the king but the queen got away. Her child later was born and grew up in Persia. He ascended to service to Xerxes. He talked Xerxes into ordering the death of every Jew in Persian (4/5ths of the world). Only Esther and God prevented this from happening.
6. So God stopped the surrounding nations that were evil enough in their own actions to warrant death when they for one instance constantly raided at harvest time only, and produced famine is Israel or in another when they subverted the worship of Israel, with total war to preserve his revelation.
7. At stake are the future souls of billions and billions. Letting the message become obscured in a sea of secularism or false religion and billions would pay the price.
8. As is obvious the context gives the greatest possible explanation and stakes for what God did in Israel and why nowhere else did he allow these wars of annihilation. Not for anyone at all in the NT.

Maybe I missed how you live your religion. I was assuming you believe God to exist as a sentient entity, rather than how you experience love and other feelings? If not, and you see God as an extension/foundation of the psyche then that would be different.

I am unclear what the reason or intent for this clarification is. I experience and evaluate God's existence in many similar ways as Love and feelings. God is a feeling (at times beyond love or words at all). I do not use relative personal experience as an argument most of the time but it is no less evidence. I am unclear for the need or point of clarification so I will await clarification of the clarification.

You say that without God morals are just opinion. How does God experience morals? Do they exist outside of him or are they just his opinion?

How God experiences morals is a bizarre and irrelevant question. God does not encounter and then experience morality, he is morality. Morality is simply an extension of his eternal nature. They exist outside of him as concepts and law but they are not his opinion. They are the natural outworking’s of his nature. We are dealing with something that has no parallel in nature so it takes time to get our thinking around how to evaluate or explain God. Murder is wrong the same way space is cold. Cold is an inherent (though somewhat relative) natural outcome of what space is. Murder is wrong and (not relative) but the natural output of God's eternal character.

 

[SkepticThinker]

[ The deviant sexual practices of some kill people not doing them.

This is what he created:
New Living Translation (©2007)
Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good! And evening passed and morning came, marking the sixth day
This is what he said when we told him to hit the bricks, and that us secular folks can do a better job with nature:
New Living Translation (©2007)
By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return."
http://bible.cc/genesis/3-19.htm[/quote]

Like what? (Geez, this is like pulling teeth).

Why are you quoting Bible verses to me like it means something?

For crying out loud death did not even exist for anyone until we rebelled.

Nonsense.

Oh and by the way, how is it that someone can rebel if they don’t know that they’re rebelling in the first place (e.g. Adam and Eve eating the fruit).

Unless you think this better than paradise then we caused creation to fall.

I don’t believe heaven exists.

Of course your side has a strange way of viewing progress so it may have gotten better by your way of reckoning but not the vast majority of humanity.

Yeah silly me for valuing the fact that we can now improve and save lives on a scale never before seen, of the fact that we now treat human beings with much more equally than we have at most times in human history, or that we’re not burning heretics alive for not believing in our particular brand of theology. Silly progress.

Seriously, do you not believe that we live in probably the best time we could live, given human history? I mean, if you lived just 150 years ago, you’d be constantly worrying that your children would be killed by any number of illnesses, including a simple flu virus, and in most cases they would be (that’s if you even made it out of childbirth, which about 50% of women did not) or you could be challenged to a duel that you’d have to fight lest you be branded a coward for the rest of your life. If you lived 1000 years ago you’d have to live in fear of your life, if you disagreed with the church on just about anything. Further back than that, if you lived in Europe, you’d have to worry that at any given moment hoards of barbarians would tear your door down and rip you to pieces. Seriously, think about it.

I can't believe you asked this. Lung Cancer (smoking), throat cancer (chewing tobacco). If you want I can call me corpsman buddy from the Navy and have him run down a list of the bizarre things they have to treat now that homosexuality is allowed in the military (you can't possibly imagine what they do and what it tears up).

How about stomach cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, bone cancer, brain cancer, bladder cancer, or children who get cancer? By the way, you can get throat and lung cancer without ever having smoked or chewed tobacco. And also so you know, gays were in the military long before they were officially “allowed” to be. They’ve been a part of society forever.

One of many reasons I and countless good soldiers got out starting when Clinton was elected.

So you’re telling me you’re a bigot, for some reason?

It’s too bad the US lost so many good soldiers to mere bigotry and intolerance. Doesn’t sound all that patriotic to me.

If you do not know what I am talking about then what are you complaining of. This is like my saying Isaac Newton there is no way that calculus can ever work, it is a stupid idea, and has many problems: No how does it work.

Because, again, you’re making sweeping generalizations without really defining what you’re talking about.

So I ask again, how do you justify making such a statement?

 

[SkepticThinker]

Off the top of my head alcohol abuse and homosexuality greatly increase suffering and misery and have no comparable good reason to allow.

Alcoholism isn’t exactly an act of “self-gratifying lust,” rather it’s a disorder than changes the chemistry of one’s brain and their biological functioning. And yes, it does increase the suffering of the individual and of those around them. Are you suggesting we ban alcohol? (Not so sure that worked so well the last time around.)

Neither is homosexuality, really. Not any more so than heterosexuality is. So how does homosexuality greatly increase suffering and misery? I wasn’t aware that love greatly increases suffering and misery.

Good night nurse, has it really come to the point that an organization that teaches against sex outside of marriage is to blame for pregnancy? What a crock? Of course I have heard that the book that teaches though shall not murder is to blame for killing, so I guess I should not be surprised.

Yep. That’s what it comes to. By trying to cut off universal access to birth control, they end up increasing the number of unwanted pregnancies, and therefore the number of abortions. Good night nurse, indeed. Anyone who is against abortion for whatever reason, has a moral obligation to support birth control (which despite the church’s ridiculous claims are not equivalent to abortion). Oh and hey, guess what? Married people have sex too! (Well, some of them.)

By the way, while these arbiters of moral truth should probably focus on the most heinous acts committed amongst themselves before they even begin to start preaching moral truths to anyone else (yes, I’m talking about child molestation.)

We are in a transition. In fact all of western society is. Secularism even if not dominant has still inserted it's tentacles into the administration of nations that it has cloaked anti-religion as a sacred secular right.

Examples?

Again a right from who I do not know

Again, we have rights based on the fact that we are alive and that we are conscious, autonomous beings.

but they have even strangled the effect of a dominant Christian population by the use of courts rooms, media outlets, and the capital building. Since something even this obvious will be contended, without evidence and probably will anyway then let me illustrate.

Good. We live in a pluralistic culture.

Was it secular institutions or the Catholics that pushed for an abortion law to legalize murder?

Murder is not legal.

Was it secular institutions or the Lutheran’s passing out birth control instead of knowledge in schools despite having more money per student than any country in history?

What are you talking about? As far as I can tell, knowledge is taught in schools, and birth control isn’t handed out willy-nilly.

Is it the Methodists or secular folks that are pushing to legitimize deviant sexual tastes that produce deaths by the millions and cause even vast numbers of people who do not practice them misery and costing them billions?
I can do this all day but it won't help so I won't.

Nobody is pushing deviant sexual tastes. LOL They’re pushing equally.

Again I have to ask, who are these “vast numbers of people who do not practice” that are suffering and paying billions?

Our society may be Christian dominated but the reins of power are not. Secularism is a cancer on western society and it behaves as such.

Nonsense.

I will concede that many of the actions by the Catholic Church over the years have been as atrocious but that is an indictment of man not God or the Bible. If you are a skeptical thinker it is a selective skepticism.

Great, we can agree on one thing, at least.

It’s an indictment of both. These people were following what they thought their Bible (and their god) wanted them to do. Who are you to say they were wrong? Maybe they were right, and you’re wrong. (And therein lies one of the problems of Biblical interpretation, which I’d say is an indictment of your god, given that it’s the only tool he has supposedly left us with to gauge what he expects from us. I guess “he” should have made it more clear.)