INDISPUTABLE Rational Proof That God Exists (Or Existed)

[1robin]

I went on in great length on the subject, a while back in the discussion. I really don’t feel like looking for it at the moment.

Trust me there is no need to review.

It is not impossible for murder to be shown wrong without inserting god into the equation.

It is logically absurd to claim Murder is an actual wrong when you can't even show actual wrongs exist in the first place unless you do what Harris did and simply assume that there exist absolute objective wrongs without any source for them. There is rarely with theological debates a slam dunk issue as obvious as morality. The attempt to salvage the unsalvageable IMO indicates desperation.

What we use to determine right from wrong are rationality, reason, emotion, and logic.

No that is what we use to determine preference. None of those things can make any act right nor any act wrong. In fact Hitler, Stalin, Mao and thousands of other atheistic tyrants used those exact same methods to arrive at the opposite conclusions. Those terms are what is force fit into a void where God was excavated from and they do not belong there and are utterly incapable of making any act ever committed wrong or right. Those terms and any others invented, coughed up, or plucked from this air are all equal to opinion.

In other words, we use our brains. We can observe our brains and see these things going on. You have no problem applying logic and reason when it comes to expressing the supposed existence for your god, and yet you somehow think it cannot be applied to determine morality and ethics. How does that work?

I will explain exactly how that works. I use those things to excavate the truth for God's existence from reality. That option does not exist for morality without a God. There is no force that encoded moral facts into nature for your reason to find. So you must do the only thing available, determine what you or someone else prefers and redefine morality as being equal to the ethics you invented that were not found encoded into reality because no encoder exists.

Self-defense is the taking of another person’s life, nonetheless, and yet human beings determine that it is acceptable, including you.

Acceptable and right are two vastly different issues.

We also determine that killing a person on the battlefield is not considered murder or “wrong,” which indicates yet another nuance in this discussion. This demonstrates the actual subjective nature of morality. Same goes for lying. We generally say that lying is wrong, and yet we accept that in some instances it’s okay to tell a lie in order to spare someone’s feelings, or save a person’s life. This is subjective and specific to varying situations.

Nothing I, you, nor any other mortal ever thought made anything right or wrong. We can make it acceptable or unacceptable but as everyone knows legality has little to do with actual right and wrong. As the Romans so eloquently put it. There are acts against social norms and there are acts against an objective moral standard. They as most instinctively know there are actual rights and wrongs but as all atheists must they assumed it to be true without any way to account for that fact. You are very intelligent, too intelligent not to be able to see the obvious facts I am illustrating. The only explanation I can even theoretically think of is that your desire to account for all desirable things within atheism is overriding your ability to objectively recognize facts in this case.

Why would murdering ourselves out of existence be wrong? Well, because we wouldn’t exist anymore.

So? Why are we special without God? Why are we needed without God? Why would our existence or nonexistence have any moral implication within a cold uncaring natural universe? You have simply redefined right and wrong to be preferred or not preferred. We would have declared the extinction of the insects that carry deadly diseases as preferable but the insects themselves would not. Why is what we prefer the standard and what the insects preferred not. You can invent some kind of invalid intelligence requirement but what if a more intelligent alien species decided that for them it is preferable that we are now their food source and they would do so with the same validity you do for cows. I imagine you would instantly abandon your inadequate moral reasoning and declare the aliens to be objectively wrong in that case. These silly rationales are quickly discarded when they become inconvenient and only survive in the absence of opposition or need. That is why in times of sever crisis it is your side that moves to mine and not the other way around in general. There are no Atheists in foxholes being a general example.

Human beings decided long ago, that in order to live together in socially cohesive units (we are social creatures after all) that we have to agree to a few things. Not murdering each other being one of them. People don’t enjoy living in fear; we tend to prefer wellness and happiness. If we are to value anything it is human life. We want our species to perpetuate. If we don’t then we are gone from this planet. One thing we know for sure is that we only get a brief life in this world. We’re better off maximizing happiness and wellness for ourselves and everyone else than we are living in misery and pain.

Yet again preference not morals. You have redefined morality to be specieism and assumed a superior value for human life that supersedes all other life and without any source to justify it. I disagree with most of what atheists post but recognize most issues as debatable enough that both sides are acting reasonably but when even the most obvious and absolute failures of atheism are defended it cause me to doubt the validity of argumentation in the other less obvious arenas. Proving any actual moral truths exist within atheism is impossible and the attempt only harms the credibility of the one who makes it. If I was an atheist I would do what most have done and claim objective morality is an illusion and we invent ethics that have no actual basis in right and wrong but that we find necessary and convenient even if a superiority of our species is assumed for convenience. I am half glad to have a subject so easily distinguishable (not that that makes any difference to some atheists) and half frustrate with it because it is not much of a challenge. It is like when Israel whips its neighbors that invaded them decisively time after time but the Muslims still yell victory and believe in Allah despite his abandonment of them in every battle with God's children.

 

[1robin]

Every piece of evidence we have indicates that the earth is billions of years old. That is all we have to go on. Of course it is possible that the earth was created 5 minutes ago with the appearance of age, but it doesn’t seem likely. I’m not employing faith, I’m applying rational analysis to the available evidence. It’s also possible that our entire universe could be perched on the head of flea sitting on a dog’s backside. How likely do you think that is? We have to use evidence to at least attempt to determine what is going on here, and it appears that all possibilities are not equally likely simply by virtue of being possible.

I agree but admit unlike most of science that I do so on faith because science is impotent to prove otherwise. Your rational analyses would fail miserably if in fact reality was 5 minutes old and had the appearance of age. I have no problem with faith it is your side that has tied it's own noose with the absurd idea that there is no faith in science.

If your god exists, and the earth was created 5 minutes ago with the appearance of age, then “he” has some explaining to do.

He sure would have. Some (not me) claim he made the Earth with the appearance of age when Adam was made but that is neither here nor there.

I keep it in my brain which is the same place you keep yours. We don’t need to have been created by a supernatural entity in order to be able to find meaning in life. Some godless people feel a certain transcendence when looking at the stars or imagining the scope of the universe. This can be experienced in the absence of belief in a god.

I am not discussing what you find meaningful in something. I mean what objective meaning a things has. What you find meaningful is subjective and meaningless in a discussion of this kind and dies with you. All of us including you intuitively think that reality must have some objective purpose and life some objective meaning. My God as usually explains those universal instincts and atheism as usual must either deny them of cast about in the dark for something no matter how invalid to plug the hole.

Some have gods, some don’t. Those that don’t, have different qualities and characteristics attributed to whatever god(s) they believe in. That alone to me, indicates that religion is manmade, but that’s beside the point.

Since are many mutually exclusive claims in cosmology and almost any scientific claim does that mean there are none that are right. I also am only responsible for what the Bible claims. My God is not affected by pointing out the problems with Hinduism or Islam. I also was talking about a God concept in general not the specific forms it takes.

The meaning we give to our lives comes from ourselves and what meaning we wish to have.

That is like saying that a painting is only as objectively good as my subjective opinion on it. I also would add that ascetic value is an objective fact even if no one was alive to appreciate or evaluate it.

Whether one is religious or nonreligious, this is what we are all doing. You believe your meaning is to serve god, probably among other things.

That is not what I am saying here. I am saying a universe created by any theistic God has a purpose. A universe that appeared from nothing is purposeless, immoral, and arbitrary. However that is not what we have. We have a universe in need of a creator, one that has a moral dimension all humans apprehend (even most animals), and one that appears to be tuned for our existence.

I think, to find meaning in my own life would be to try to leave the world a better place then I found it, and to try to positively affect the lives of others, if even only in some small way. Other people are going to give other answers. We all make our own meaning and this is done without any need for a supernatural creator. There doesn’t need to be meaning in some supernatural realm for all of us to matter. The fact that we all get to share this planet together for a brief time in history is meaning enough for me. A fly’s meaning is to do whatever a fly does in this intricate and beautiful natural world that we all contribute to in some way.

I was not discussing meaning so fleeting and trivial that it dies with whatever created it. That is not the kind of meaning the people who have asked those questions since the dawn of man have been asking about.

What I need to believe, in order to accept your fine tuning argument is that the universe was created almost 14 billion years ago, perfectly designed to support human life, which wouldn’t show up until several billions of years later, on one small planet which itself has vast regions of space where human beings cannot live. Not only that, but this is the only life in the whole gigantic space which is the universe. And you wonder why I don’t immediately jump to this possibility?

No, that is what an argumentative atheist like a Hitchens must distort the claim into in order to evade the implications. Your points concern some kind of claim of optimality that the Bible nor I have ever made. Your "problems" are only problems if God had limited time. I only need to show that the chances that universe that would support life even if it was one example are almost infinitely less probable than one that would not support any. You are familiar with cosmology enough to know that is the case. This is another example of an argument so obvious that the denial of it damages the credibility of the one doing so. Countless scholars on your side easily concede the point because it is so obvious. Unfortunately in their rabid attempts to escape the conclusions they have invented all manner of fantasy to allow other explanations and we have covered a few. The universe appears to be fine-tuned for us is a well conceded fact on all sides. Inventing a fantasy to allow escape as bad as it is is better than denying the reality we actually have.

 

[1robin]

The fine tuning argument is the equivalent of a puddle thinking, “Look at this interesting hole I’m sitting in. It fits me perfectly. It must have been made to have me in it!” (Douglas Adams)

That would only be the case if we knew more puddles existed or ever could. We find a single puddle so in need of a God we have dismissed, that we invent other puddles without any evidence as a sort of defense mechanism and where it really goes bad is we call that science and insist it is evidence not faith based. Cal it faith and you can fantasize all you wish. Call it science, and you are hoisted on your own petard.

It only appears that the universe fits us perfectly, but it is the other way around.

You must not be familiar with the argument. If one parameter was changed infinitesimally (the expansion rate for instance) there would no universe to have any life in of any kind.

I said science has shown us that it’s possible that aliens seeded life on earth? I don’t think so.
Anyway, the point is that it looks a lot more likely than it used to.

Even if the aliens did so it only kicks the can down the road.

The goal was to see what would happen, and what could be produced. What happened was that the most basic building blocks of life were produced from inorganic compounds. And let’s not forget that adenines have been produced in these studies as well. Adenine being one of the most important nucleobases for life.

I meant to ask why are you relying on one of the oldest of these experiments. Have they not even improved on the vanishingly small accomplishments that Murray achieved. Which by the way have all been found to be unlike what early Earth is now supposed to be like.

What do you think they thought they were going to produce? Tiny little men or something?

I expected it to produce exactly what they did. Low equilibrium complexity. However until they can produce what they actually claim. That life was a result of a lightning strike in a pool then it is meaningless in our context. If life requires a million steps or conditions to arise, producing the simplest 20 or 30 is not a meaningful result for our discussion. I expect them to actually provide even contrived evidence if that is all they can to what they claimed happened of quit claiming it did until then, in a reasonable universe the wisdom of that would be apparent.

What are you talking about and what experiments have shown it?

Instead of my naming every natural process known to produce all low complexity without any high complexity why don't you tell me the ones that violate this principle that is true even in mathematical models, as you would have an infinitely shorter list. I will give you one that you can do and one that is well known to illustrate this very well-known fact of nature.
Get 10 pool balls and drop them on the ground time after time. How long do you think it will take before they all line up in a line in the correct order? Since DNA has 3.2 billion of these variable how long would that take? If you have ever seen contact, the scientists were looking into space for a signal. They said they would know if intelligence existed if they got back a message with complexity and a patter. Why, because nature does not build complexity of any great size. If you heard a series of prime numbers you would think intelligence (unless it meant God existed), if you found a sign that said eat at Joes on Mars you would think intelligence (unless that made God true), and only an atheist would find a copy of King Lear and say look what a bunch of monkeys did on a typewriter. We find things in far more need of a designer that a computer but since we have denied that possibility that a designer exists we must instead claim the making of amino acids is evidence that life arose on its own.

The difference between amino acids, adenine and life isn’t as impossibly vast as you think and your lack of imagination on the subject doesn’t serve you well. As I already pointed out, amino acids are the building blocks of proteins which are the building blocks for enzymes, cell production, and reproduction and serve as catalysts for biochemical reactions, and RNA and DNA duplication (among other things). Adenine is one of the chemical bases of DNA and RNA. These are not insignificant findings in any sense of the word.

Is that why its chances of occurance are assigned numbers so absurd constantly. Many mathematicians, physicists, biologists, and geneticists have produced odds concerning life coming from non-life and they are all so unimaginably immense it is quite silly to even attempt to imagine them. Even if cut in half or divided by 10 or a hundred the averages are still so large as to prohibit anyone's non biased faith that it happened. Even averaging the more conservative numbers are far worse odds than selecting a particular atom out of the whole universe.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Atheism in clinical definition is a far cry from what it is claimed it can actually do. Atheism is elastic and is capable of great deeds when convenient but is however devoid of any negative aspect. What a wonderful and convenient concept. The semantic properties of the word are hardly meaningful in this context. Atheism is a world view in that is contains a decision about a concept that affects the entire world and universe in every conceivable way. If I was anti-carbonist it would affect how steel was made would it not. Atheism denies the very concept that justifies true morality. Is that alone not enough to make it a world view?

Atheism tells you only what a person doesn’t believe, on one single subject. It’s not a world view any more than the rejection of astrology is a world view. Funny how you don’t think my lack of belief in unicorns is a world view. Why might that be?

To tell you the truth the only time I think or talk about god(s) is really when I’m on this forum or when someone brings it up. It doesn’t have much of anything to do with what I do in my everyday life at all. My nonbelief in god(s) doesn’t tell you what I think or believe or what kind of person I am. It tells you nothing, other than I don’t believe in god(s).

Without knowing what your opinion is on true morality coming only from god, I go about my life making moral decisions without one thought about any god(s) whatsoever. I’d even venture to say that this is what most people do.

Being an a-carbonist might affect your perception of how steel is made, but it’s not going to shape your philosophical viewpoint of the world.

Worldview def: A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/worldview
If atheism isn't a worldview there aren't any.

Not at all.

Atheism is not a collection of beliefs. It is a lack of belief, in one thing (or several if someone is proposing multiple gods).

Atheism: The doctrine that there is no God or gods.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/atheism

You skipped this one:
Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods.

Atheism is also not the rejection of a claim alone. Classic atheism is the positive claim that God does not exist.

No it isn’t.

There are flavors but that is the classic definition.
Lets re-examine def one:
Worldview def: A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/worldview

Atheism says nothing about life. It’s about rejection of god(s).

It is the positive claim that life changes based only on mutation and natural selection.

No it isn’t. It’s the rejection of the positive claim for the existence of god. An atheist can believe that leprechauns cause mutations.

Evolution is also quite elastic. I have seen it claimed to have constructed every moral we hold dear and to have nothing what so ever to do with morality and all points in between. It is my view that evolution (without God) or at the very least natural selection is a great contributor to behavior (or would be). I have never heard an argument against that view worthy of mention. Behavior has survival value or even more so than a biological adaptation and would be selected in the exact same way. I thought behavior (mind) was all material in your view anyway.

Evolution produces behaviors that aid in the survival and/or reproductive success of the organism. It explains why we have moral impulses: for example, given that we have evolved as social creatures, we have an innate pull toward empathy, especially toward our own species. Evolution gave us these large brains we have, which are capable of learning (which produces moral behaviors as a result of learning the consequences of our actions), thinking and rationality, all of which we use to make moral decisions. Evolution doesn’t produce morality per se, but it helps explain why we are moral creatures.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Both are but why in the world do you find it merits debate in the first place? What difference does it make?

Neither are world views. Evolution describes change in the inherited characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. How is that a world view?

Atheism is a rejection of god claims. How is that a world view?

Like I said before atheists can be humanists, anarchists, nihilists, conservatives, liberals, and any number of other things. Therefore, atheism alone is not a world view.

I do not follow that. I do not have to swallow every aspect of a single view to still have a universal (world) view on issues. This is the stage of debate with the atheist I like the least. Hyper-semantics for no discernible reason.

Semantics are important here. You do not have to swallow every aspect of a single view to have a world view, but a single claim on a single issue doesn’t really amount to a world view. If I tell you I don’t believe in fairies, would you call that a world view as well? Does your lack of belief in Vishnu amount to a world view, in your opinion?

Did you go through all of those semanticall gymnastics to argue with a word I used in a paraphrase? Let me restate to avoid this in the future. Dawkins looked at one of if not the most universally recognized evil men in history and said whatever he uses for morals did not allow him to declare his actions wrong. Even if he was saying that (his) morality is too complex to judge Hitler is that any better? That is the kind of moral ambiguity the loss of God produces. Men who can't act or decide or when they do uncoupled from any sufficient moral justification, act in the most diabolical and evil ways imaginable and will never admit it. What more extreme and damning evidence for this is even possible that the modern secular moral ambiguity that allows Babies to be killed by the millions? Countless mothers who were persuaded it was their right to kill a baby have lifelong psychiatric conditions that reflect the objective absurdity of even thinking these acts are morally acceptable. Even when nature, common sense, stats, and the obvious cost in lives and money proves in no uncertain terms the direct failure a viewpoint is headed in the direction of. Not only is the act and many like it defended as a sacred right that does not exist but the actual God that provides the sacred right to life is called evil. Things do not get any more wrong.

He said it’s a difficult question, not that it’s impossible to determine that Hitler’s actions were wrong.

I say morality is lost when it is turned into a simple obedience to authority scenario, which is what your religion appears to dictate. God is perfect, therefore whatever “he” says must be moral. So if god told us to murder our children, it would have to be morally right because god commanded it so. In my opinion, that is not a system of morality. There is no thought or reason going into the decision-making process. It’s nothing more than, god says it, therefore it is so..

This is wrong.

How so? He explained exactly what humans do when pondering moral decisions.

BTW I can't watch videos on a DOD server. We also (he neglected to mention) have developed enough weaponry to annihilate life as we know it several times over and the moral insanity to almost do so at least twice. We kill babies be the millions and school shootings, teen pregnancy, one parent families, drug abuse, gang activity, and thousands of other issues that have perfectly coincided with the moral insanity that has characterized modern secular intrusion are rising at unheard of levels. Not to mention the enshrinement of homosexuality in spite of natures or God's abhorrence through the millions that die of diseases spread through the practice and the billions spent by people who do not even practice it to treat victims of the brave new world Dawkins wants. Nor to illustrate the tens of millions that have died at the hands of tyrants trying to invent atheistic utopias in just the last century. The list is far longer than the depression caused by creating it will allow me to include, this is only the tip of the ice burg. As I said, almost any cost stats (physical or monetary) for just a single decade for any one of those (secular problems) exceeds all the misery caused by Biblical faith that is even claimed. There are few things as crystal clear as the moral bankruptcy the denial of faith has caused.

Lucky for you, I typed it out for you so you don’t have to watch it.

Whether or not this is the world Dawkins wants, this is the world we have. What he described is the method by which human beings have come by morality.

Killing each other is nothing new, we’ve always done that, in fact, you can find such behavior all throughout the Bible without many words of condemnation from your god. Quite the opposite, actually.

Nature doesn’t seem to abhor it, given that it produces homosexuality, so I’m not sure what you’re talking about there. What are all these diseases you think homosexuality is spreading to you?

There have been no atheistic utopias in the last century. Those were state-sponsored religions. Much like we find in North Korea where the dead grandfather of the current leader is considered the “Eternal President” of North Korea and his birthday is a public holiday called the “Day of the Sun.” There is nothing atheistic about that.

What is they?

Moral dictates.

I do not remember making a claim in this context at all. However unlike even with the obvious failures in secular morality I can admit it is possible I am wrong and did so. However you will have to remind me what I said, if so. I have since figured out where you got this and will respond. Using Dawkins in a theological discussion is like climbing on the Titanic after it hit the ice burg.

You keep saying that morals cannot be grounded in anything without inserting god into the equation.

You’re the one who brought up Dawkins.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Now that I can see what you were saying I will clarify.
God searched the world according to the Bible to find someone who would follow him. He intended to make a nation of those people and reveal himself most prolifically and clearly through them and eventually bring about the messiah through them (all of which came true hundreds of years later in exact detail). It does not say how many refused but finally Abraham agreed. His children eventually became the famous Hebrews of Israel. God as promised dealt far more with them than any other. He gave them the law. This had approx. 613 or so commands within it. Just guessing maybe 500 were not primarily moral issues and dealt with issues of state, ceremony, and revelation. The primary moral codes were the Ten Commandments and maybe a hundred or so others. However as regards others God also said he gave every single human a moral conscience. The more he heeded it the more attuned to it anyone would become Hebrew or not. The more resistant and the less aware people became of it. The only difference between the Hebrews and the others was.
1. The Hebrews had the law in writing in addition to their heart.
2. God demanded far more from the Hebrews than others because they were to reveal him more conspicuously than by any other culture. Before you yell unfair (another concept that means little without God) he was also far more demanding. IMO he was far more demanding than considerate of them.
3. Everyone had access to God's moral requirements and there are many in the Bible God was pleased with outside of Israel. In fact at times he was more pleased with them than Israel.
I hope that fixed whatever you found in my claims to complain of.
All the primary moral precepts were the same for all people.

This is all just fairy tales to me. I’m sorry.

Why bother creating all of us if only this one tribe are considered special in any way? Exactly which of these 600+ commandments are still binding today? Is this how you justify the apparent cherry picking of certain Biblical passages that goes on today?

 

[1robin]

Francis Collins has theological preference, but he doesn’t let it interfere with his acceptance of the evidence, as any good scientist does. It doesn’t matter what your personal preference is, it matters what the evidence says.

You’re avoiding the issue and have not posted any evidence in the context this issue came with. I posted statements where a scientist opposed a SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSION for theological reasons and that is wrong and can't be made right. Especially by claiming that Francis Collins has theological convictions. Almost everyone has them and as long as they are not a factor in determining truth (or at least not denying truth) then they are no problem. If you post a claim where DR Collins employed theological preference in a scientific conclusion then he is wrong as were the ones who I posted. Until then my claim stands and his theology is irrelevant.

“At this point, godless materialists might be cheering. If humans evolved strictly by mutation and natural selection, who needs God to explain us? To this, I reply: I do. The comparison of chimp and human sequences, interesting as it is, does not tell us what it means to be human. In my views, DNA sequence alone, even if accompanied by a vast trove of data on biological function, will never explain certain special human attributes, such as the knowledge of the Moral Law and the universal search for God. Freeing God from the burden of special acts of creation does not remove Him as the source of the things that make humanity special, and of the universe itself. It merely shows us something of how He operates.”
― Francis Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief

Why did you not say this before I went through everything above? This is close to what I was talking about? I will look into it and respond. Keep in mind that I said if Collins used theology to derive scientific fact then he was as wrong as the statements that I provided and if this turns out to be a case of this then he was wrong. What help is that to you or what is it you are intending to show in the context of our discussion? In fact I will do so whether or not his is the case. In the condemnation of Copernicus, Galileo, and about a hundred others plus the entire dark ages the Church was completely and utterly wrong. How does this help your case? BTW he is right about one thing; evolution alone does not explain reality.

Your argument fails on one fact: That these people accepted the scientific evidence, as scientists must do. They didn’t let their personal preferences bias the facts, any more than Francis Collins does even though he’s an evangelical Christian.

First you are assuming this based on three examples. If preference exists then there countless times the evidence did not prevail. History is full of them. Unfortunately the Catholics doing this is far more famous than the scientists doing it but it exists and has occurred constantly on both sides. You realize your argument is based on human infallibility. Talk about a sinking ship.

Even if that is the case, the likely candidate wouldn’t necessarily be your god. At most, you could propose some sort of deistic god but to get from there to the Christian god is a loooong way.

Name a better attested one. The revelation for the Biblical God is identical to what philosophy indicates must be present in a creator of the cosmos. I do not even think there is another God who claims to have created from nothing but there are many that claim falsely to have created from something else and that is known to be false. I am not talking about candidates you can invent as concepts but ones that have evidence or textual attestation. My God alone meets all the demands of reality. I disagree with your looooong claim but even if true it is much closer than any competitor at this time.

God isn’t a likely candidate either because you’re still stuck explaining what created god.

I will illustrate this one last time. This is probably the worst argument an atheist could make. Only things that begin to exist need a cause. God is uncaused and eternal as a concept. That concept has no need of a cause. BTW no matter what the actual case that will still be true. An infinite regress of causation is a logical absurdity and will not produce anything. If you have X then the causal chain for X ends at some point with an uncaused original cause for it, if not you will never get your X. This argument as Dawkins made it has been called the worst argument in the history of western thought concerning God.

 

[1robin]

This is all just fairy tales to me. I’m sorry.

Well who could oppose such scholarship and rigorous proof? I think you determined this long before you evaluated it. That is not the point anyway. This is the context God comes with. If he is to be evaluated it must be within the environment and context that he comes in.

Why bother creating all of us if only this one tribe are considered special in any way?

Who said that? First he created all of us to live in perfection and harmony with him. If this is true then your attitude and mine throughout most of my life is a good indication that we would have none of it and so we were cast out of this perfection into a land where the rewards of our rebellion were obvious. He did not look for a person so he could declare his descendants special. He looked for one who would follow him and render his descendants special in the process. Not that others were forgotten. Many times Israel's specialness was a far greater liability than an advantage.

Exactly which of these 600+ commandments are still binding today?

None, IMO with the possible exception of the Decalogue. Many of them are literally impossible to follow today. There is no temple to do many others in.

Is this how you justify the apparent cherry picking of certain Biblical passages that goes on today?

Well that was a disconnect. What did you get this? I need some context before I can answer. Justify who?

 

[John Martin]

Where did God come from? If we try to prove the existence of God by reasonable arguments they are all always inadequate. It may be easy to disprove the existence of God than to prove it. Whatever statement we make about God always cause difficult to prove,for example statements like omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotent are always difficult to prove. if we begin with the question whether God exists then we have began with wrong step. The Indian sages had a different approach. they asked the question who am I? This question is like the scientists asking about the nature of matter. First they thought that atom was the brick of the matter.But they broke the atom. There realized that matter is energy energy is matter. They also discovered different types of energies like quarks. Now they have discovered Higgins Boson which gives mass to the matter.These truths may not be known to the ordinary people.You see them in the laboratories. In the same way sages asked the question who I am? what is my eternal self? In their inner research they discovered that their true self is God. These questions are like a piece of ice floating on the water asks Who am I? In its melting process it discovers that it is one with the water. It is nothing but water. As a piece of ice it is the manifestation of water. So the sages discovered that the ground of our consciousness is God or eternal reality. We are also the manifestations of that reality. so in one level we are God and another level we are creatures. We are both finite and infinite. If the piece of ice asks the question:does water exist? it may not find the water. but if asks the question who am I? then it may discover it is nothing but water. If it denies the existing of water because it cannot prove it,then it lives in ignorance. it is also same like a leaf asks the question: does a tree exist? It may not find a satisfactory answer. But if it asks the question: who am I? Where am I? Then it may find the tree. To deny God is to deny our own divinity. it is like a piece of ice that denies the existing of water, a leaf that denies the tree, matter that denies energy. The question is not whether God exists or who created God but who am I?
Another way to come to God is unconditional love.God is unconditional love? Does unconditional love exist? If the answer is 'yes' then God exists because God is unconditional love.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Let me explain something I have been meaning to for some time. You are posting so much "stuff" that I usually can't respond to every post in one attempt. By the time I get back to the forum you have already answered the half I got to with more stuff that I can only get some of answered. Very soon we are so far along I can't go back. I will leave the solution to you but it is impossible for me to answer this much "stuff" in the time I have.

I disagree with your analysis: There were two basic claims he stated or were obvious. 1. Hitler is probably the most universally morally condemned person in human history. 2. (Whatever Dawkins uses for morality or invents) is so impotent that it does not even allow condemnation of the most evil actions of history. No context can change this.
.

I’ve been trying to consolidate as much as I can so we aren’t left repeating ourselves over and over in different posts. Of course, that’s easier said than done.

I addressed this one in my last post so I will leave it be, here.

Please illustrate. Let me clarify first. I have no doubt you do condemn him but I also doubt you can sufficiently ground that condemnation. The ontology verses epistemology thing again.

If all we have is this one life on earth (and that is all the evidence indicates) then taking a person’s life means you are taking everything that they are and everything that they have. You are ending their existence. The fact that we only get one chance on this earth makes human life extremely precious and fleeting and therefore the taking of that life is considered bad, or wrong. Furthermore, if we allowed this taking of life to continue on the mass scale on which Hitler carried it out, we certainly run the risk of ending all human existence as we know it which means we’re not here anymore to experience the one life we get. That is bad. Hitler also ran the risk of finding himself annihilated as a direct result of his actions. And that’s exactly what happened.

In the interest of time if you find the accuracy of Hitler’s claims important bring them up again and I will respond.
Nature selects behavior exactly the same as physical attributes. On your side mind is all matter anyway so where is the conflict unless this is only more hyper semantics.

I’m just saying that Hitler wasn’t even following evolutionary principles, he was following a perversion of those that had been applied in a social context which was not applicable, as evolution describes only a biological process.

So I see as I have stated many times that evolution can produce or select behavior but only good behavior. If it produces good it also produces bad behavior and I can show it will produce more bad than good if necessary but first make up your mind: evolution produces moral behavior or not?

Evolution produces behavior that aids in the survival of a species. It is our brains, which are a result of the evolutionary process that allows us to think and learn and consider the consequences of our actions, as in the example I gave.

Post the numbers killed by every single one of those issues above that are even claimed (reasonably) for the Bible including the flood and triple them. Do you believe they are more than just the numbers for abortion in the last century or not? or for just the last two big atheistic utopias of the last century? Not for a second buying what you claim but even if true what is your answer.

How about you just address what I said instead? There was a period in human history than went on for a number of centuries in which “the Church” ran the show and engaged in all of these terrible things based on some supposed authority from god. In fact, churches have run the show for a rather large period of human history, in which all of these terrible things were carried out, having been derived from a Bible that condones such things.

These “atheistic utopias” you refer to were nothing more than state-sponsored religions. See my last post on this.

 

[SkepticThinker]

New International Version (©2011)
"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free,

So that translates to “Slavery is wrong?”

Let me go even bigger. You have claimed that God likes some bad form of slavery even though I gave the most comprehensive example that that is false within the civil war. You seem to be stuck on the issue and apparently it is so important to you that page after page quantifying, giving examples, and explaining verse after verse has no effect. One last simple statement and I am done with this issue for quite a while. Is this command consistent with your claim that God likes a very bad form of slavery?
Deuteronomy 23:15-16 ESV / 15 helpful votes
“You shall not give up to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you. He shall dwell with you, in your midst, in the place that he shall choose within one of your towns, wherever it suits him. You shall not wrong him.
There is no possibility and being that likes the slavery you suggest would ever say this or free the Hebrews from slavery, nor the Africans from slavery at the cost of teh lives of 300,000 of his people and the misery of millions more of them. That is it I am done with this broken record.

I said the Bible condones slavery. The Bible, according to you, being written or inspired by your god himself. If slavery is wrong “he” should have just said “though shalt not commit slavery.” He didn’t.

Exodus 21:2-11
The Lord gave Moses the following laws for his people:
2 If you buy a Hebrew slave, he must remain your slave for six years. But in the seventh year you must set him free, without cost to him. 3 If he was single at the time you bought him, he alone must be set free. But if he was married at the time, both he and his wife must be given their freedom. 4 If you give him a wife, and they have children, only the man himself must be set free; his wife and children remain the property of his owner.
5 But suppose the slave loves his wife and children so much that he won’t leave without them. 6 Then he must stand beside either the door or the doorpost at the place of worship,[a] while his owner punches a small hole through one of his ears with a sharp metal rod. This makes him a slave for life.
7 A young woman who was sold by her father doesn’t gain her freedom in the same way that a man does. 8 If she doesn’t please the man who bought her to be his wife, he must let her be bought back.[b] He cannot sell her to foreigners; this would break the contract he made with her. 9 If he selects her as a wife for his son, he must treat her as his own daughter.
10 If the man later marries another woman, he must continue to provide food and clothing for the one he bought and to treat her as a wife. 11 If he fails to do any of these things, she must be given her freedom without cost.
Exodus 21:20
&#8220;Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result,</SPAN> 21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.

So which ones do we go with?

There is apparently no escape but after this post I will no longer address this worn out issue.
1. At least God did free them. Atheism is probably still trying to figure out if it was actually wrong to begin with.

I&#8217;ve realized it&#8217;s wrong to own another person since I was first able to think about it.

2. God has countless other reasons involved in doing things that in our finite and faulty capacity have no access to. Many of the things we think are right, like for instance denying the Christian Churchill&#8217;s request to kill Hitler in 37, do not turn out to be right after all.
3. 3. God also has purposes that supersede yours.
4. 4. God is also on his time table not yours.

To me, this is nothing more than a cop out answer.

You claim to know all kinds of things about why god does good things, how he thinks, etc., but when it comes to things that involve human suffering you just throw out the old &#8220;god works in mysterious ways we cannot possibly comprehend,&#8221; magic answer that really answers nothing.

Semantics.

Semantics are important here. You&#8217;re trying to give definition and meaning where no definition or meaning exist.

Whatever being produced that statement does not value oppression of captivity in any of it's diabolical forms and HE not Dawkins, Atheism, or evolution has ended time and agina throughout history.

So there are good forms of slavery and diabolical forms of slavery. How does a human determine which is which?

Only in Atheist bizarro world is: "What&#8217;s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn&#8217;t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question. proof that Dawkins has an answer.

I&#8217;ve cited big, long discussions that Dawkins has written on the subject of morality. For you to keep repeating this little sound byte is a bit disingenuous on your part. When someone goes to the trouble to elaborate on his view of morality at great length, and all you can do is cite a one-liner from a single interview, I have to wonder where you&#8217;re coming from.

There exists no actual answer in anything but God to end slavery. However liberal thinkers have transferred slavery from the field to monetary dependence. That is a little better, but as the motivation was buying votes by bankrupting the country and we now have 30 million instead of 9 million slaves, a hollow effort. That might be a Dawkins consistent effort if one exists.

I have no idea what you&#8217;re saying here but I do know that humans are quite capable in their own, in determining that slavery is immoral.

I don't.

Sure you do. You insert your god wherever you can.

I think in this case that might be impossible. That show was almost ten years ago. Are you suggesting there were not quite a few climatologists who claimed there was serious cooling events in the 80's? That is easy to prove.

So maybe if you can&#8217;t remember it, you shouldn&#8217;t cite it anymore.

Here&#8217;s a discussion regarding your claim:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/

 

[SkepticThinker]

You have really started to argue with the arguments not the claims within them lately. This is the very common and long awaited semantic phase I abhor so much.

1. Civil war casualties, Union only: 364,000 deaths. There were 2 disease deaths for every 1 battle death. (lack of science killed twice as many as bullets designed to do so).

Twice as many men died of disease than of gunshot wounds in the Civil War. Dysentery, measles, small pox, pneumonia, and malaria were the soldier's greatest enemy. The overall poor hygiene in camp, the lack of adequate sanitation facilities, the cold and lack of shelter and suitable clothing, the poor quality of food and water, and the crowded condition of the camps made the typical camp a literal breeding ground for disease. Conditions, and resulting disease, were even worse for Civil War prisoners, who were held in the most miserable of conditions.
Civil War Medicine

364,000 total divided 66% = 240,000 (in fact 240,540 is the official number) Civil War Statistics

That is far more than the tens of thousands I had claimed but since I mistakenly included surgery deaths for no apparent reason lets pair it down further.
240,000
- 45,000 Dysentery
- 35,000 Typhoid
- 20,000 Pneumonia
- 11,000 Measles
- 14,000 Tuberculosis
- 30,000 Malaria
- 10,000 All others
---------------------------
75,000 killed by disease that was not contracted by non-surgical means. That is being very generous with the numbers. For example probably half the Pneumonia cases contracted it from surgery etc...
Civil War Diseases, Civil War Medicine, Civil War Nurses

Tens of thousands was a very conservative claim on my part. Since millions claimed by me from 4000 years until 1863 is very very safe I am not going through the numbers concerning it as well.

I will split this up as I may not get too much further today. Some advice, stick to my weak suite (semantics) as the civil war is a life long hobby.

I guess you didn't even bother reading my links.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Why are you saying this? By the way post me what you claim is the "official" scientific method.

Because you seem to be denying it.

Here is a good, in-depth description of the scientific method:
http://teacher.nsrl.rochester.edu/phy_labs/appendixe/appendixe.html

That is true in general in every aspect of study and needs no special method and in fact does not have one. History corrects it's self over time without benefit of the great method. So do our check book computations, our personal conversations, our driving, however not our politics and not our recent morality.

It needs a special method when it comes to doing good science. It weeds out potential bias and the bad science from the good science.
I don’t know what you mean by “history corrects it’s self over time.”
Our personal conversations and stories tend to become more elaborate and exaggerated over time.
And I would say that morality does correct itself over time, which is why our sense of morality has changed over the centuries.

No nor do I think it exclusive or invented by science. It is simply comon sense put into fansy words. However mush of what we hold to be true is not subject to the method. Again what is the point?

Most of what we hold true is subject to the very method that gave us practically every great advance and discovery that society has ever seen. It is a very rigid methodology.

The point is that science isn’t nearly as crappy as you’re making it out to be.

I will just give one personal example among thousands of similar ones. A Chrsitian child raised in a lame Church is raised to have faith but it is superficial not born again faith and he eventually graduates and ventures beyond the small town he gre up in. He goes away to the Big school (Berkley maybe) where his pure scientific teachers brow beat faith out of him every class. (This one I have lived and there are horror stories by the thousand from everywhere). He is told Genesis is all wrong and life has been shown to be able to arrise on it's own and a thousand similar and absolutekly false claims. He thinks his ignorant parents dooped him and resents them, the faith they tried to give him, and the God that is associated with it. He is on his way home and dies in flight and wakes up in Hell. Thanks again garbage claimed to be science. Rinse and rtepeat about a million times at the very least. The no 1 issue that corrupts superficial faith is college professors and their preference based lessons. I even had one tell me on day one we could not discuss theology, then on about day four I heard him tell a student he wished to drive faith out of science, then later on he brought up some stupid claims against the Bible and I challenged him, he said we could not discuss the subject he brought up and I dropped him. The professors I have had that are most likely to mention God are atheists and claim to not allow faith to be discussed in class and that is from very conservative universities. Again this is the number 1 challenge to weak or superficial faith. The second is the problem of evil. Those claims are statistically true and both illegitimate issues.

That is a hard thing to say to an atheist. Can you grant that your conclusion regarding God potentially affects your souls destination? That is about all I can expect.

Well first of all, this is assuming the exact brand of Christianity YOU follow is the one true religion and/or path to truth. That’s a huge assumption right of the bat.

Secondly, someone being exposed to science is considered a “horror story?” Come on now! If people are so afraid of their faith being challenged or they’re afraid of being exposed to scientific principles, why don’t they just go to a nice Christian school then? No one is forcing anyone to go to Berkeley. (And on a side note, Genesis is not scientifically accurate and we know that there is a possibility that life can come from non-life, so these are not wrong, as you assert.)

Thirdly, you say all of this as though it is a fact that this person would die and wake up in hell. There’s no way to know such a thing.

Fourthly, shouldn’t you be happy that this supposed professor says he wants to drive faith out of science? Isn’t that something you keep saying should be done? That there’s no room for faith in science?

Fifthly, my anecdotal experience completely differs from your anecdotal experience in that in my entire time in university never did any professor ever discuss god, religion or faith outside of a comparative religion class, and not even so much in that particular class. So where does that leave us?

And finally, I cannot grant that my conclusion regarding god potentially affects my soul’s destination because I don’t believe in souls. I don’t see you worrying too much about your soul’s destination in regards to Islam or Hinduism. It’s probably not something you think about very often, if ever.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I lacked the word "lack of" before Knowledge in one case where I mentioned knowledge. I meant the facilities to wash up existed most times but it was the lack of Knowledge that prevented it and killed all those poor men.

But they did &#8220;wash up.&#8221;

Not hardly. I never mentioned their existence or nonexistence. I also almost always quantify that claim with the date of 1862 or 63 when the great "sanitary awakening occurred". The civil war is the war where barbaric medical science finally gave way to more update methods. However during this time even when these issues were known and being adopted they still died from simple diseases that basic sanitation could have stopped. The numbers are facts but if you wish to debate the phases of sanitation within the war for an unknown reason I can oblige you. I heard the other day a cure for some types of aids was finally found but people will still be dying from ignorance of it for many many years.

No you didn&#8217;t, but I brought it up to make a distinction between basic &#8220;washing up&#8221; and actually sterilizing things. Your whole thing about ancient Hebrews knowing more about sanitation than modern doctors is a bit of a silly comparison, especially considering that distinction. Had the ancient Hebrews been operating on people and using antiseptics and sterilization methods, you might have a chance with that argument. But &#8220;washing up&#8221; is a far cry from disinfectants and antiseptics in the case of surgery and amputations on a battlefield.

I thought I had eliminated the need by saying it does not matter and acting as if it did not. Why bother if the point is the same either way? You are ever far more argumentative of anything related or not than I am many times over and that is saying something.

I don&#8217;t think the point is the same either way. They didn&#8217;t know anything more or less than say, the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Is Zeus recorded by the Romans and the Greeks as giving them these instructions? If I discovered a can of dark matter I am not going to say God did it.

Who cares? They knew the same basic things that the ancient Hebrews did about sanitation, possibly more.

No other contemporary society had a fraction of the sanitation mandates Israel did. People in the region thought them very odd. Even Israel did not like many of the extreme requirements. I showed how they were unique in all the ancient world in their ethical instructions for servants with examples and that did not help. Why would it here? That or pray.

What were they doing that would have been beyond the knowledge of Bronze Age desert dwellers?

By extremely slow and costly trial and error apparently. Something the Hebrews were spared to a great extent. I guess when patients keep dying by the millions then millions of causes can be eliminated and by dumb luck eventually the right one is found. Or they could wait for a Christian to invent the microscope. Do you want to examine Christianity&#8217;s contribution to medicine? It is all together astounding

So now you&#8217;re saying the ancient Hebrews knew about germs? Why were they not the ones that proposed germ theory then? Only Christians could have invented the microscope?? Practically everyone in the western world was a Christian so it&#8217;s not that extraordinary that it would have been a person who professed to be a Christian to have done so. That certainly doesn&#8217;t mean that Christians had some kind of special or divine knowledge that nobody else was privy to.

A few minutes ago you were dumping all over scientists for not coming up with germ theory earlier than they did and now you&#8217;re extolling the virtues of Christian science?

I was discussing scientific progress you were discussing what the Catholics cost us by the dark ages, two different things. I also will withdraw my claims about sanitation in the dark ages. It was forgotten in large part. I think you have been wrong many times and I know you have a few times yet I am the only one I can remember ever revising, agreeing, or correcting a statement. Why is that do you suppose?

I would gladly do so if you could point out to me where I am wrong.

 

[The Wizard]

Whether God is an all-knowing being, or a thoughtless being non-existent anymore, something had to start the first thing, the first science, and science cannot and will not ever explain the start of science, just as something cannot create itself. Before anything, there was nothing. Something transcendent, existent before anything, had to create the first something. That, we call God.

Sure... Existence could of never NOT existed. Becouse then nothing could exist to begin it in the first place!.. Yes, first cause conversations are usually humorous...

 

[1robin]

I’ve been trying to consolidate as much as I can so we aren’t left repeating ourselves over and over in different posts. Of course, that’s easier said than done.

Well I appreciate the effort but I have given it up as impossible. I have started just answering what I thought most interesting in the time available.

I addressed this one in my last post so I will leave it be, here.

Ok but I do not see how even a theoretical explanation could do anything with what I claimed.

If all we have is this one life on earth (and that is all the evidence indicates) then taking a person’s life means you are taking everything that they are and everything that they have.

And that proves there is a reasons why that person would not prefer to be killed, it says nothing about what that person prefers as being the arbiter of moral fact.

You are ending their existence. The fact that we only get one chance on this earth makes human life extremely precious and fleeting and therefore the taking of that life is considered bad, or wrong. Furthermore, if we allowed this taking of life to continue on the mass scale on which Hitler carried it out, we certainly run the risk of ending all human existence as we know it which means we’re not here anymore to experience the one life we get. That is bad. Hitler also ran the risk of finding himself annihilated as a direct result of his actions. And that’s exactly what happened.

I must cut to the chase on this you are circling the drain of redundancy and futility on this issue.
An atheist can prove that being murdered is not preferred by a person, you can't prove what that person prefers has anything to with right and wrong. The atheist just will not allow their views to look this bad and so they redefine morality as being equal to preference which is exactly what I have said all along. With God Murder is actually wrong because:
1. God has assigned human life with actual objective value. Atheism can't.
2. God's moral nature supersedes any other standard in the universe. There are none higher. What he declares and determines the fabric of truth in the universe. If he declares something wrong it is absolutely and objectively wrong, there exists no standard possible to overturn that. Atheism does not meet a single one of these.
3. God can and has instituted moral directives into reality. They are as real and true as up and down or 2 + 2 = 4. Atheism is derivative not determinative. It can never make anything into anything. Atheism is devoid of causal potential. Atheism only has nature as a causal element. Nature is morally neutral.
4. I can determine what is absolutely right. You can determine what is preferred. I can't believe that you can't see the obvious and glaring deficiency with the latter.
I do not care what fancy label you give the process by what you say is used to determine morality (never mind the facts that Hitler, Stalin etc.. used the same methods but arrived at a different conclusion and there exists no standard to declare who was right as Dawkins accurately pointed out) it all perfectly equals an opinion, and subjective opinion is absolutely devoid of any power to determine absolute right or wrong or even define the terms. Nothing is more obvious. I can't spend an eternity pointing out the sun is hot over and over. There are only a few explanations why you can't see this.
1. You are too slow to even get it. I do not think this is even possible in your case. You are obviously intelligent.
2. Cognitive dissonance has claimed another willing victim. This is far more likely.
3. That you are actually right. This violates every philosophic principle I can think of unless first morality is redefined as has been attempted. Without a false redefinition this is a logical absurdity.

I’m just saying that Hitler wasn’t even following evolutionary principles, he was following a perversion of those that had been applied in a social context which was not applicable, as evolution describes only a biological process.

To illustrate the point that is your opinion. I have had dozens of atheist argue that evolution does in fact produce morality, I am pretty sure you have as well. That is as long as it is a good morality. Evolution appears to be a term so elastic it can be warped into whatever shape the atheist needs. I believe and am quite sure that evolution will affect and select behavior. It certainly can be used to support race theory directly and slavery indirectly. It also renders precious human life into a biological anomalies with no absolute worth of any kind.

Evolution produces behavior that aids in the survival of a species. It is our brains, which are a result of the evolutionary process that allows us to think and learn and consider the consequences of our actions, as in the example I gave.

See the above. Survival means lethality as much as it does defense. If you will accept the lethal aspects I could grant the passive aspects.

How about you just address what I said instead? There was a period in human history than went on for a number of centuries in which “the Church” ran the show and engaged in all of these terrible things based on some supposed authority from god. In fact, churches have run the show for a rather large period of human history, in which all of these terrible things were carried out, having been derived from a Bible that condones such things.

I have already agreed to and even added to the claims you made here but that was not the context. We have been contrasting the benevolent effects of Atheism versus (at times) Judaism, Christianity, or any religion. I said and it was perfectly appropriate that even with Christianity’s massive failures the harm produced in comparison with actions justified within secularism have been infinitely worse with no overwhelming corresponding compensation as exists within Christianity. I do not see what it is your unsatisfied about.

These “atheistic utopias” you refer to were nothing more than state-sponsored religions. See my last post on this.

Yes, I know. I must take responsibility for anything ever done by anyone claiming to believe in God (even for forms of slaverry that did not exist at the time)but any negative act no matter how appalling is never the fault of Atheism even when the most committed atheists ran the entire show. Again this is the kind of arbitrary selectivity that ruins credibility.

 

[SkepticThinker]

1. I never said that traditional morality should not be dismissed because it has the label of traditional. In fact I went to great links to give the evidence that since it has been overturned by our new secular moral insanity most of the stats we measure moral health by has skyrocketed. I never made a semantic argument.
2. I never said anything about whether civilizations progress or not. I said claiming specific things were progress (at least if progress means good) were completely wrong but not that progress does or does not occur. The fact that morally in many ways we have regressed is also an obvious point I made.

1. I don’t think you’ve shown that at all. Look at the way you judge and belittle gay people or people who don’t conform to your “traditional” view of proper sexual behavior.
2. I don’t think we have morally regressed. And I think we are more moral than the people described in the Bible.

1. My taxes are higher because we have to treat diseases spread many times more rapidly because of their habits. This strangely enough, is almost exclusively male male problems.

Since when do you get to decide where your tax dollars go? Are you equally upset about your tax dollars going toward treating lung cancer in smokers, or heart disease in obese people? Tough luck, I think.

It sounds like you have more of an issue with promiscuity than you do with actual homosexuality. African American males account for more than half of people living with AIDS in the US. So you should probably have the same problem with African Americans as you do with gay males in general. (If AIDS is in fact, what you’re talking about here.)

So you have no moral arguments against lesbians?

2. I was in the Navy in 88 when Clinton was elected. I saw countless very good soldiers take early retirement because among other things they thought gays in the military would be a reality soon. Fighting fires was much more dangerous when 25% of the experienced personnel were gone and replaced by new recruits.
3. It took longer than they thought at the time but eventually homosexuality was permitted in the military. Even if nothing what so ever is wrong with being gay it still caused major unit cohesion problems. Over 1000 officers of the highest level petition congress to stop it and of course were told that was not PC and to shut up and go die as they were told.

That is a failing on the part of the soldiers who decided to shirk their duties because they didn’t want to fight alongside gay human beings. They don’t sound like very patriotic people to me; maybe the military is better off without them. How is it that the rest of the free world manages to get along just fine with both gay and straight soldiers serving together?

I guess it never occurred to these people that gays have always been in the military anyway?

3. Navy doctors along with treating legitimate injury have now to treat the most diabolic and depraved issues imaginable that only homosexuality produces. I will not get detailed about this.

Why are Navy doctors blabbing to you about how and why they’re treating patients? Are they not subject to doctor-patient confidentiality?

They’re doctors, they treat illness and disease. I guess they’ll have to get over it. I’m sure Navy doctors have seen some pretty horrific stuff anyway.

4. My already broke government will have to borrow even more money it does not have to treat the issues exclusive to homosexuality.

Nonsense.

5. I could very easily contract a disease that would in all likelihood not exist if homosexuality was not practiced even though I do not practice it.

How?

6. Whether something is inconvenient for me has nothing whatever to do with it being wrong or right. This list is getting too big and I will leave it there.

Apparently it does. All your objections to homosexuality have to do with how it may inconvenience you.

What? The movie or the Bible? No one voted in Phoronic Egypt and movies do not count. BTW it was the men who died in the mud brick pits not the women.

The Bible.

Exodus 20:17
You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.


This is a list of property. Your neighbour’s wife being one of those pieces of property.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I never said anything about anything being labeled tradition is good and I am pretty sure you know that very well. I used the "label" traditional as it applies to approx. 1940-50 United states.

Right, you&#8217;re using the &#8220;good old days&#8221; argument - when everything was more traditional than it is now. The problem is that they usually only appear to be the &#8220;good old days&#8221; when viewed through rose-colored glasses. Don&#8217;t you think people living in the 1940&#8217;s and 1950&#8217;s longed for the good old days of the 1920&#8217;s? I bet you people living in the 1920&#8217;s longed for the good old days of the 1890&#8217;s. Everyone thinks the time they grew up was the best time and everything should stay like it was then. But it inevitably it changes because that&#8217;s the affect time seems to have.

What stopped women from voting was not the Bible? Women are given almost equal and in a few cases more value than men. In a few instances women have less rights than men. For example their testimony is considered less valuable than men and they are told to be quiet in Church (that verse is woefully misused by your side. It was to one church at on time because the women were being disruptive and is no general command). Some say any inferior status women have is linked to Eves greater sin in the Garden but I don't know. However God appointed women to judge the entire nation of Israel, used them to save the majority of the Hebrew culture, used them as the first witnesses of teh resurrection, and made countless more prominent heroes. If you are saying God is oppressive to women you are incorrect and that is a desperate claim.

Societies, clinging to archaic and traditional beliefs stopped women from voting for most of human history.

Whether it&#8217;s Eve, chattel, testimony, uncleanliness, or whatever &#8211; of course women weren&#8217;t going to be considered equal to men because that&#8217;s not the society the people in the Bible grew up in. That&#8217;s the society that most human beings have grown up in. Obviously, just because that was the way it had always been doesn&#8217;t mean that&#8217;s the way it should always be. Traditions change and we progress.

I am not against safe sex. I am against it being used as replacement for abstinence. No Christian I ever heard of thinks that abstinence is a guaranteed event. In fact of all the people I have known Christians are far more aware of our fallings than anyone.

Great, then we agree on that much.

You do not understand the issue from our side and it would take far too long to clarify.

I guess I don&#8217;t understand what the huge hang up about sex is.

One thing is an absolute fact passing out condoms is in effect a condoning of adults to sex in most teens eyes and parents not the state run schools are supposed to fill that role (though I am not against it, but it should be done within the context of the spiritual system that sufficiently explains what is at stake). Liberals are destroying the government and the country and should stay away from our kids.

It is not an absolute fact that passing out condoms and comprehensive sex education is in effect a condoning of adults to have sex in most teen&#8217;s eyes. I certainly never took it that way. In fact, studies show that such practices don&#8217;t cause teens to initiate sex when they wouldn&#8217;t have otherwise, they don&#8217;t accelerate the onset of sexual activity, they don&#8217;t increase the frequency of sexual activity and they don&#8217;t increase the number of sexual partners. I&#8217;d say that&#8217;s the opposite of your claim. So how is it that liberals are destroying the country?

You made self-contradictory points here. You said the country with the most sex education and the ones with the least have the highest rates of teen pregnancy, that means education is irrelevant. Do you actually think that people do not know what causes babies? I can tell you exactly why underdeveloped countries have high pregnancy rates but you would not believe it unless you researched it, I didn't. I see no point made here.

No I didn&#8217;t. I said the countries with the most sex education (mostly European countries) have the lowest rates of teen pregnancy while the ones with the least amount of sex education (United States, African countries) have the highest teen pregnancy rates. My point stands.

Yes we need to educate people about a God that can help fight these urges, the reasons why they should be fought, and what to do when you lose the fight and give in. I am not a Catholic and I do not agree with their methods. Every Christian family I know says to be abstinent, what the enormous cost is for failure, and provides understanding and support when mistakes are made. My parents actually gave me condoms and a long talk that included the truth (which secularism is devoid of) of the nature of the acts involved. Protestant Christianity provides everything that secularism does but adds the power to fight these urges, the proper context the issues are included within, and spiritual support when failure occurs and leaves it in the hands it belongs in (the parents) instead of a government that can't even balance its checkbook or do virtually nothing it is required to effectively and efficiently.
Continued below:

Well first of all, that&#8217;s only going to work on people who believe in your god, and unless you want to force your god on people, I&#8217;m not sure how you go about doing that. And secondly, you don&#8217;t need god to say no to sex. You just don&#8217;t.
The sex ed I got amounted to, &#8220;You should always practice abstinence but if you do end up even thinking about having sex, there are all kinds of horrifying diseases you can contract if you don&#8217;t protect yourself, and sometimes even if you do.&#8221; I was terrified to have sex and convinced I&#8217;d contract some deadly disease and die if I did.
But the fact of the matter is, some percentage of teens are going to have sex, and virtually all adults are going to have sex at some point in life. Why not educate people on how to do it safely rather than just sending them out into the world to figure it out for themselves? It is kind of a big deal.
Okay, so your parents gave you condoms. Did you interpret that as their permission to go out and have wild sex and then go out and start having wild sex?

And, just out of curiosity, what are these truths about sex that secularism is devoid of?

 

[1robin]

So that translates to “Slavery is wrong?”

Slavery is certainly not optimal as I have exhaustively explained in detail. God never liked slavery. He allowed sevitude as a form of welfare and a necessity of the times. IN the fullness of time he set about undoing it and eventually fought against it at times when it was appropriate and teh prayers, state of faith , etc... of the people involved allowed him to. You are quite obsessed with this issue.

I said the Bible condones slavery. The Bible, according to you, being written or inspired by your god himself. If slavery is wrong “he” should have just said “though shalt not commit slavery.” He didn’t.

He did not do so because slavery (servitude) was a useful concept made necessary like divorce because of our fallibility. God has never ever intended to make this world right after we rebelled. Please quit assigning him a burden for optimality he does not have. He even says in the end he will burn the entire planet to ashes to purge it of the evil and even the non optimal issues he let stand. He does this specifically to inaugurate a world completely free of slavery (that we made necessary), death, disease, or sin of any kind. Yet you call this being evil. Atheism sure forces some logical absurdities to be adopted, not to mention the arrogance of a very faulty and finite creature telling an infinite one what he ought to do. If man's abilities equaled his grasp slavery would never have existed in any form as it didn't in Eden or will not in Heaven.

Exodus 21:2-11
The Lord gave Moses the following laws for his people:
2 If you buy a Hebrew slave, he must remain your slave for six years. But in the seventh year you must set him free, without cost to him. 3 If he was single at the time you bought him, he alone must be set free. But if he was married at the time, both he and his wife must be given their freedom. 4 If you give him a wife, and they have children, only the man himself must be set free; his wife and children remain the property of his owner.
5 But suppose the slave loves his wife and children so much that he won’t leave without them. 6 Then he must stand beside either the door or the doorpost at the place of worship,[a] while his owner punches a small hole through one of his ears with a sharp metal rod. This makes him a slave for life.
7 A young woman who was sold by her father doesn’t gain her freedom in the same way that a man does. 8 If she doesn’t please the man who bought her to be his wife, he must let her be bought back.[b] He cannot sell her to foreigners; this would break the contract he made with her. 9 If he selects her as a wife for his son, he must treat her as his own daughter.
10 If the man later marries another woman, he must continue to provide food and clothing for the one he bought and to treat her as a wife. 11 If he fails to do any of these things, she must be given her freedom without cost.
Exodus 21:20
“Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result,</SPAN> 21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.

I can't do the slavery issue anymore, I am burned completely out.

So which ones do we go with?

Find something else to obsess upon.

I’ve realized it’s wrong to own another person since I was first able to think about it.

I guess you would have done what we did in our infinite wisdom cast 9 million slaves adrift without work, money, or food. Many stole, hundreds of thousands followed Sherman around Georgia until he ran out of supplies, and many more died. Nice work. I am certainly glad you are not the architect of the universe. I got hung up with some more of sciences glorious track record I had to fix and ran out of time. I will try and look at the rest later. Sorry.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Would you please quit slanting things whichever way and to whatever extent is desired whether accurate or not. The word chattel does not even appear in the Bible yet you have used it in connection with it many times and the concept its self is forbidden. I never said anything about a lifetime of shame and no Christian I ever met thinks like that. Its these dozens and dozens of instances where things are distorted for effect that make it clear the lack of faith is based on bias and preference not evidence. Ravi by any standard is one of history’s greatest philosophers and here are a few of his comments about shame.

The exact word doesn’t have to appear. Read the commandment about coveting your neighbour’s property and you’ll find his wife listed alongside his donkey and other personal possessions. The word slavery is used too. Whether or not humans are specifically declared chattel doesn’t matter much.

You used the word shame several times throughout the post I was responding to. It seems you’re really into shaming people for their actions. I’m not sure what other way I could have taken it.

· Secularism (Webster definition): indifference to or rejection or exclusion of religion and religious considerations

Why include this?

· When shame has jettisoned from our society you will find how incredible the mind becomes
· When secularism has done its doing we may actually end up producing a generation of men and women who have lost their sense of shame – when a man or woman has lost their sense of shame, I will show you potentially dangerous man or woman you are looking at

Adolf Hitler: “I want to raise a generation of young people devoid of a conscience, imperious, relentless and cruel.”

I don’t see the connection.

“You show me a society without shame, and I will show you a society that is flirting with hell. You cannot, simply cannot, build a culture where nothing is shameful anymore.”

And …?

That is until the secularists decide they as well are no longer wrong as in the case of abortion.

Sorry to break it to you but religious people get abortions.

But I’m sure it must be because the big, bad secular world makes them think it’s okay, right?

That is impossible to prove or know even if true. How many girls chose to say no because of the repercussions another less conservative girl experienced. Shame is natural no one need invent or apply it. The human conscience rebels at what secular people claim is not even wrong.

You don’t think that a person who realizes when they’re very young (or at any point in life, really) that they’re gay or at least different from most other people don’t already feel shame about it? That they don’t feel different or strange, compared to their friends? How do you think they feel about telling their parents about their feelings? How do you think they feel when the kids at school call them names and beat them up? They’re already at a disadvantage from the start and probably not feeling too good about themselves to begin with and you want to heap more societal shame, marginalization and persecution on top of that? How could that NOT harm a person’s sense of worth or well-being? These poor people have some of the highest rates of suicide attempts so don’t tell me that it’s impossible to know if true.

You wanna know if it’s true? Ask a gay person.

I believe homosexuality is in large measure a symptom of a much bigger problem and that problem also comes with the ingredience that makes suicide more likely and is another example of nature’s rebellion against secularism.
I have nothing to do with it. It comes by betraying a moral code existence in the moral fabric of the universe and secularisms denial of that obvious fact causes vastly more harm than shame has.

It sounds like you think it’s a mental disorder or a choice, which we pretty much know it isn’t. It is pretty clear from all we have discovered through study, that that sexual orientation, whatever it may be, is an integral part of a person’s biological makeup, and not at all an arbitrary decision. It is as integral to the person as heterosexuality is to another person. And honestly, I have no idea how anyone could think that homosexuality is a conscious decision/choice.

The ingredients that make suicide more likely are depression, isolation, marginalization, persecution and shame.

There are a whole lot of animals in the wild betraying this moral code of existence you speak of. Maybe you should go read to them from the Bible or something.