Hello everybody, I have a question that I would like you to help me with.

I am a Christian trying to be get back to my Catholic belief system. I also consider myself a sceptic.

The question I put to anybody who is willing to engage in a thoughtful discussion is-

What alternative do Athiests have for Christian morals in creating or upkeeping a healthy society. (I realise there are many subdivisions in Christianity, but there are core common beliefs and a focus on the teachings of Jesus.) Please dont divert to irrelevant topics, focus on the majority of Christians. Who take inspiration from such texts as;
-Not judging others
-You can not serve both God and money
-Giving to the needy
-love for enemies
-turn the other cheek
-importance of keeping the family whole
-Do not commit adultery
-blessed are the peacemakers
-love your neighbours as yourself
-forgivness
-good samaritan
-ten commandments
-self mastery

There are others, but thats all I can think of for the moment. I realise that many Christians do not act like they should, but they are human after all.

We have a rule of law in most western countries and our societies are relatively stable. But what happens when this rule of law is absent or weakened?

What system of morals do you propose to guide future generation of humans if they turn away from Christian teachings as many Athiests hope will happen.

A fair percentage of Athiests that I have come across online and in life seem to have on the surface essentially good hearts and want to make the world a better place. But they have grown up in a cultures that have been molded with Christian traditions and beliefs.

I have come aware of the differences that this has had on our society by living in China for four years. Chinese people still feel the tug of the moral law and thus thurst for justice just as much as any other human, but their passed on cultural morals are quite different to that in the west and they have lost many traditional morals since the cultural revolution, indeed it could be argued that it now is a corrupt culture.

As a teacher a father and a student I am well aware that humans need guidance from a young age and through most of their lives, so by what system of morals or whatever will you ensure that future generations of humans will be able to flourish and improve their quality of lives, physically and spiritually?

What happens when you are brought up and dont believe in anything, besides science, with out the concept of the existence of absolute good or evil?

Please stick to the question.

A concept of absolute good or evil is unnecessary. If something is good or bad for human society, that is enough; it doesn't have to be good or bad in God's eyes (which still isn't absolute good or evil).

Our moral sense does not derive from on high; it is an evolved trait which helps large, social groups function better. The fundamental basis of all moral codes around the world is the Golden Rule, which predates Jesus by at least 500 years.

The basic premise of your question - that our morals are derived from Christianity and that, therefore, a substitute for Christianity is necessary - is flawed. Christianity is not the source of our morals; it is a reflection of both our morals and of the relatively immoral nature of societies that lived 2000 years ago.

The majority of christians say one thing and do another.

What happens when we don't have police? We can see. An article I looked up for the discussion.


" As a young teenager in proudly peaceable Canada during the romantic 1960s, I was a true believer in Bakunin's anarchism. I laughed off my parents' argument that if the government ever laid down its arms all hell would break loose. Our competing predictions were put to the test at 8:00 A.M. on October 17, 1969, when the Montreal police went on strike. By 11:20 A.M. the first bank was robbed. By noon most downtown stores had closed because of looting. Within a few more hours, taxi drivers burned down the garage of a limousine service that competed with them for airport customers, a rooftop sniper killed a provincial police officer, rioters broke into several hotels and restaurants, and a doctor slew a burglar in his suburban home. By the end of the day, six banks had been robbed, a hundred shops had been looted, twelve fires had been set, forty carloads of storefront glass had been broken, and three million dollars in property damage had been inflicted, before city authorities had to call in the army and, of course, the Mounties to restore order.

Also, if you look at the middle America towns that have the most christians per capita, they also have the most shootings, rape and theft. If these people are getting their morals from the bible, they must be looking only at the books that have god running around encouraging genocide and marriage by rape.


By living in China for 4 years, do you think you have the right to judge them for their less then western morals? I see a bunch of people who have the sense not to make their kids ashamed of their sexual selves, since this only leads to virgins getting married and not able to switch off the SEX IS DEPRAVED message they've been brain washed to believe. Are you really saying that Americans are morally superior to Chinese people?


Where do I get my morals. Certainly not from the bible, but in spite of the bible. I was brought up in a fundamental christian family. I have since thrown off all the guilt involved in believing humans are inherently sinful. Now I believe that marals are something that develop over time, and that there are stages. Kohlberg
Level 1 (Pre-Conventional)

1. Obedience and punishment orientation

(How can I avoid punishment?)

2. Self-interest orientation

(What's in it for me?)

Level 2 (Conventional)

3. Interpersonal accord and conformity

(Social norms)
(The good boy/good girl attitude)

4. Authority and social-order maintaining orientation

(Law and order morality)

Level 3 (Post-Conventional)

5. Social contract orientation
6. Universal ethical principles

(Principled conscience)



Wiki has a pretty good article for this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlberg%27...

What alternative do Athiests have for Christian morals in creating or upkeeping a healthy society.

Your question is fallacious and really can't be answered. It is fallacious because you assume these values are "Christian values" or were derived from Christianity when most (the good ones---not the ridiculous Ten Commandments) aren't and were not.

Yeah, I love how the original post says that judging others is immoral, according to Christian morality...

then he turns right around and judges the Chinese.

Classic

\then he turns right around and judges the Chinese.\

This is a commonly discussed issue in China, by Chinese people. I was just letting you know about it. It was not my personal judgement.

Nathan
Many of these values did exist before Christianity, that just sheds light on human altruism and the moral law.

But that in no way takes away from the truth of Christianity.

Christianity has promoted these values through out history and up to the present. Without tne churches guidance many of these values would have dissappeared.

Many of these values did exist before Christianity, that just sheds light on human altruism and the moral law.

If the values existed before Christianity (which you concede) then what makes you think they would disappear without Christianity (which you assert)?

Hi Dan
By saying that there is no absolute rights or wrongs, good or evil, I assume you mean to say that all ethical decisions are relative. This belief is widespread among postmodern philosophers, but if there are no absolute truths, can postmodernism be true? If there is no right or wrong, there is no reason to argue about ethics in the first place.

Futhermore who decides what is good for society? The statistition? Politicians? The majority? The majority of the population is not necessarily morally in the right. People are so easily decieved by people with an agenda, and they are decieved by themselves with even greater ease.

/<that our morals are derived from Christianity and that, therefore, a substitute for Christianity is necessary /

I dont think there is any substitute for Christianity. I wanted to know what some Athiest thought about the question.

/Christianity is not the source of our morals; it is a reflection of both our morals and of the relatively immoral nature of societies that lived 2000 years ago. /

It is clear to me that this sense of right and wrong is an intrinsic quality of being human, the moral law is consistent in all cultures of the world- denunciation of oppression, murder, treachery and falsehood. And praise of kindness to the aged, young and the weak, of honesty ect.

Christianity is the most complete guide as I see it to the moral law, in particular the way it reveals 'selfless love' or 'agape' as CS Lewis calls it.

Physical evolution is almost certainly true, so It is quite possible that many of our morals have been evolved over time aswell(although this is far from proven), but the existence of agape is inexplicable in evolutionary terms and is a sign of Gods influence, a command he has planted in us.

Agape and other morals are easily buried under or blocked away or even wiped from our hearts by society. Thus guidance is needed to ensure that they are kept to the fore. This is were christianity has been so positive in western society.

If christianity is just a reflection of these evolved morals then shouldnt all present day societies and cultures throughout the world have identical morals to christianity. They dont.

From my own observations of Chinese culture many of these values are not promoted. The old moral systems have been blasted away, and nothing new has ben put in their place. Nationalism is the highest moral.

Nicole
Again I didnt judge the Chinese people, I said there could be an argument for this view, and indeed Chinese people are aware of the moral failings of their own society. Its interesting to note that the overwhelming stereoptype that the Chinese people have about Americans is that they are sexually promiscuous and unfaithful to their partners.

That was an interesting Wiki article, I read some of it and found it revealing. Thanks for that.

God gave humans the ability to reason so it is no suprise that part of an individuals grasp of morals is developed through stages, if that is how it happens. You can look back and make a rational series of stages that lead to your present moral principles but that doesnt necessarily mean that thats how they were developed.

Furthermore what about those most moral decisions that we make in a split second of time, without time to rationalise. The person who jumps into a river to save a drowning child even when they themselves are not very good swimmers.

When we answer that inner voice to make a sacrifice for the good of another that could lead to personal suffering, injury or death, without any evidence of benefit. We do it for because of Agape, for our conscience.

The conscience must be nurtured and protected it is so easy to lock it away.

I dont know what kind of upbring fundumentalists gave you, you only speak of guilt, how about the love that Jesus teaches us to show to our fellow humans. This must have had some impression on your formative years.

I was brought up as a Catholic and I deeply remember the role model of Jesus as a caring loving individual, I was further impressed by the supernatural goodness of the saints.

/I see a bunch of people who have the sense not to make their kids ashamed of their sexual selves, since this only leads to virgins getting married and not able to switch off the SEX IS DEPRAVED message they've been brain washed to believe/

I am not aware of what some churches in America teach their people about sex, I am Australian. I do know that the Catholic Church teaches that sex is a beautiful thing, a gift from God, a holy act, because it is the action of creating new life. If anything in this world is holy then I would have to say that the act of creating new life is.

/If the values existed before Christianity (which you concede) then what makes you thi..."</i>/

I am quite certain that Christianity will never dissapear. The moral law is the inbuilt part in our design. Christianity is the complimentary part outside of us that allows us to understand God and our conscience. Further more by embracing it and God we may recieve the holy spirit into our hearts and hold true to these moral laws.

The moral law, the selfless love that we have in our hearts is like a signpost to God. Christianity guides us through our journey for it is very easy to turn away from the sign posts and go off the track to evil deeds and thoughts.

Christianity promotes these values and makes us aware of how important they are, but if you want to do away with Christianity you should be able to show that you have perhaps an altruistic belief system to sustain and guide humans.

If you have nothing but a utopian faith that the world will be better without religion and you just want to tear down traditional values, without edifying alternatives you are making way for a new cultural revolution.

Without tne churches guidance many of these values would have dissappeared.

Simply a HUGE line of bullshit. Please tell me how you know values that existed before Christianity would have disappeared without the help of Christianity.

Since logically it makes no sense at all, please provide evidence for this ridiculous claim.

The values I refer to are those listed in my first post, (I have never seen then comprehensively expressed in any other religion or historical text) and although they are expressions of the moral law, if they are not preserved or nurtured by religion then they are forgotten. Society puts the focus on other things. They can resurface but the damage done while they are ignored is tragic.

You can see the strength of trends in contemporary society shaping peoples morals in a negative way even despite the works of the church. The most basic moral law 'thou shalt not kill' is being flouted. Traditional 'sanctity of life ethic' is being threatened by the new 'quality of life ethic'.
Many secularists feel that it is acceptable to have abortions. I was brought up as a Catholic and because of the influence of society I always sat on the fence unwilling to commit to any side, I even helped a friend of my girlfirend out by lending her money for an abortion. And I thought I was helping her. It is something I regret deeply now.

Recently I actually did some research and I realise how simple it is. From the very spark of conception human life is formed. It matters not what stage it is at, it is human life from begining to end and thus has a right to fulfil its full potential. Who can decide the quality of a humans life and declare a standard by which it is not worth living. Is it the mothers right to choose to kill her feotus? Lack of brain activity does not mean that it is any less a human, it is just a human in the early stages of its life. What about the baby that is two years old it is still less intelligent then a dog, is it alright to kill it then? Does the mother have this right? We kill dogs for no reason. Somepeople even eat them. If nobody wants the baby should we kill it? The mother doesnt want it, society probably doesnt want it, is it ok to kill it... in other places and time certain unwanted groups of humans were also denied the right to life - holocausts and lynchings.

But the Church still fights to uphold the moral truths revealed in the bible. The sanctity of life ethic which is taught by all the great religions of the world, is the basis of western civilisation from its judeo-christian roots, is presupposed in our laws, and is the basis of all the catholic teaching about the fifth commandment. Thank goodness I have the Catholic Church to put me back on track.

The history of the Catholic Church is another reason for my faith. I realise present day reactionists love to quote the evils of the church throughout history, but this is just another example of their narrow minded focus on using the mistakes of humans from the past as proof that religion is bad.
Catholic Church has shown-
-'faithfulness to her doctrine, never abandoning or contradicting any point of it, despite many pressures to do so, both from within and without, and despite the intellectual and moral weakness of her human teachers;
-her survival for two thousand years despite persecutions without and sins and follies within;
-her growth, her liveliness, her eternal youth, her production of new saints for every age; and
-the winsomeness and joy of her saints. If the Catholic faith is not supernatural truth, how could it have produced such supernatural goodness? Can truth and goodness contradict each other? Could the human heart be so badly designed as that? '-'Catholic Christianity.'

Christian morality is relative also. This is shown by its morality changing over time. Do Christians follow all Old Testament law? With the exception of a few sects, they do not. They are told that Jesus freed them from the Old Testament law. Well, the changing of such things shows that their morality is fluid. Why would things like slavery, genocide, etc. be good or allowed in pre-Jesus times, but bad later? Why would Levitical law be so important and then later disregarded?

Also, I think a big problem with your stance is that you are also not defining by what you mean by "good" or "evil".

If I define "good" as "that which helps a society to function effectively, efficiently and survive in its environment", then that could include many laws, ethics, morals, etc.

Furthermore, things like game theory can show that morality and ethics can develop naturally.

There is a common misconception at play here: christianity teaches morality. In fact all christianity "teaches" is what is necessary for christianity. In other words instead of morality what christianity teaches is religion. Just because the religious want to try to usurp the word "morality" there is no reason to accept their equivocation which stipulates that what is required under christianity is what is moral.

As for what christianity has promoted, since there was a claim that it promoted good ends, we should look to the long history of murder, rape, child rape, racism, aggression, theft, coercion, etc. ad infinitum, to see what christianity truly promotes. Then too we can look to the central text which calls for all of the above and more..

If you are interested in morality avoid christianity like the plague, and check out the work done by Bernard Gert in Morality: Its Nature and Justification, which describes morality as it is, instead of trying to dictate what morality ought to be.

Alex,

Stipulating that all and only "human" life is what matters gives you no foundation upon which to rest any claims. Your claim that the absence of brain activity does not make an entity less human is at best trivially true, but at the same time shows the absurdity of the claim as well as the stipulation that all and only humans matter. Consider that a corpse fits your criteria as well, yet it is not merely false to say that it is immoral to kill a corpse, such a claim is completely absurd. Thus necessarily your stipulation and/or your axiom must be in error. I contend that both are.

As for the church doctrine of "Do not kill" being violated, first off it was "Do not MURDER" as self defense and other forms of killing may be justified. Secondly it refers only to moral agents, not say the organisms you kill every day just by living, or you kill so that you may eat. By being vague the religious can simply assume that whatever they want to be the case is what the church or the christian bible says is right. Reality says otherwise..

Thirdly, yes "Do not murder" is being violated, and has been for a couple of thousand years or more by the church/religion itself! From your "holy" book:

1 Chronicals 21 (70,000 murdered because David ordered a census)

Deuteronomy 17:12 : Anyone arrogant enough to reject the verdict of the judge or of the priest who represents the LORD your God must be put to death. Such evil must be purged from Israel.

Leviticus 20:13 If a man lies with a male as with a women, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed; they have forfeited their lives

Exodus 22:19 Whoever sacrifices to any god, except the Lord alone, shall be doomed.

2 Chronicles 15:12-13 They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and soul; and everyone who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, was to be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman

So if you are a "good" christian, then you should be actively killing every single rational reasonable person you come across..

These are but a few of the hundreds of examples of murder being advocated, celebrated, or ordered in the christian bible.. and of course that is but one of the commandments which christianity itself cannot live up to, let us not overlook the orders to rape and murder children, and the ongoing church doctrine of child rape..

All of which serves to prove conclusively that christianity is not merely not identical to morality, christianity is directly at odds with, directly opposes morality.

The values I refer to are those listed in my first post, (I have never seen then comprehensively expressed in any other religion or historical text) and although they are expressions of the moral law, if they are not preserved or nurtured by religion then they are forgotten.

You are so full of bullshit I just can't take it. First, the actual moral laws you are talking about from your first post existed before Christianity, so to argue that they can't continue on without it (or any other religion) is foolish, asinine, and insulting to the intelligence of anyone reading your ridiculous post.

And now you bring in the nice bullshit line about abortion. "Secularism leads to abortion." Nice try, but you may want to check your history on that one. The Catholic Church once supported abortion. Hopefully Dan is reading this post because he knows the actual year they finally banned it.

It matters not what stage it is at, it is human life from begining to end and thus has a right to fulfil its full potential.

No, actually it doesn't have that right. Hence, why women can have abortions. They are the ones with the rights to do with their bodies what they wish.

Skin cells are human life as well. So are red blood cells. Do they get rights not to be destroyed?

You are an extremely boring simpleton. Your posts are the opinions of others and not even your own. You let a Church do the thinking for you because you are too lazy to do it yourself. That is sad.

Hahaha
Nathan you are such a charming person.

I think most people get their ideas from others, actually I think about things alot, I dont deny that I am a ton of simple but I hope not a simpleton.

It just so happens that the Catholic Churches teachings have the ring of truth to me.

So raping children and killing innocents "has the ring of truth" to you?

Seriously is there anything which can even in theory count as refutation in your mind or to your position? Can't we rely upon reality to show us what really is, rather than self serving appeals to false authority?

Thanks Brian, a short and sweet thoughtful post.

I have recently bought a text book on game theory so I will have to look into it.

The Christian Church was never required to follow all the laws of Leviticus. The ten commandments and Jesus's teachings are the basis of the Catholic Churches teachings. I dont know much about this but the dietry habits and so on was to purify one to get access to God. The coming of Jesus changed everything, his sacrifice allows us to have direct access to God.

Could you give me an example of how game theory shows this. 'Shows' may also be a bit misleading, the morality as man-made rules is far from a proven idea.

Christian morals and in my opinion Catholic Morality define and reveal what is good and evil. There is a rationally organised body of knowledge, stipulating how people really ought to behave. It is based on objective truths, not subjective opinions or feelings and is discoverable by natural human reason. The modern morality that you believe is true has no definition but relys purely on human feelings and opinions, as most moral matters in human society can not be solved by the application of science.

I think it is wrong to assume that moral laws are man-made rules like the rules of a game of tennis, created by human will, and changeable by human will.

I hope you dont mind I am going to quote from the catholic Churches stance, because I think it quite succinctly states the opposite stance to what you believe.

'The traditional idea taught by not only the Catholic church but all the major religions in the world and nearly all pre-modern philosophies, is that the laws or morality are not rules we make up , but principles we discover, like the laws of science such as anatomy. They are based on human nature, and human nature is essentially unchanging, so the laws of morality is essentially unchanging, like the laws of anatomy. Just as our anatomical nature makes it necessary for us to eat certain foods and to breathe oxygen for our bodies to be healthy, our moral nature makes certain virtues necessary for our souls to be healthy. There are universal principles, based on human nature, for bodily health and for mental health - and also for moral health.'

It is my observation that the Church guides us towards these morals but modern society can lead us away.

Alex wrote: "Hahaha
Nathan you are such a charming person.

I think most people get their ideas from others, actually I think about things alot, I dont deny that I am a ton of simple but I hope not a simple..."

And Alex, seriously -- you still haven't learned anything about Buddhism, or you wouldn't dream of writing that "only" the Catholic church (or Christians of one sort or another, noting again that many Christian sects think that Catholics are damned to hell and that the Pope is or one day will be the very Antichrist that signals the apocalypse) comes up with a list of moral principles such as:

-Not judging others
-You can not serve both God and money
-Giving to the needy
-love for enemies
-turn the other cheek
-importance of keeping the family whole
-Do not commit adultery
-blessed are the peacemakers
-love your neighbours as yourself
-forgivness
-good samaritan
-ten commandments
-self mastery

Besides, this list is amplified and false; it is something that you are making up for argument, not because it is correct. Take adultery, which is listed twice since it is in the ten commandments. The Old Testament quite clearly states that the God-mandated punishment for adultery is being pummelled with rocks until life (extremely painfully) ceases. Jesus clearly stated that he was come to preach the Law of the Old Testament and not depart a tittle (whatever that is) from it.

Jesus (and Paul) spoke quite clearly about divorce, as well. According to both of them, if anyone gets divorced and remarries, they are committing adultery, and therefore should be stoned. The Catholic church initially opposed divorce on just those grounds. Then it made itself fat and rich by selling divorces or annulments on trumped up grounds. Finally it acquiesced in the clear recognition that many marriages are in fact not "made in heaven" and it is better to end them, and it certainly doesn't advocate the stoning to death of divorcees who remarry.

This in and of itself refutes many of your (as Nathan points out) groundless assertions, that have a flavor of "the Church is as I imagine it to be in my own best dreams, not as it really is". And where do those dreams come from, I wonder? Certainly not from the Church itself, absolutely not from trying to emulate Jesus's buddy Moses in the OT. Could it be that you've actually picked up a secular concept of morality and are using it to cherrypick parts of the Bible that seem good to you while ignoring the ones that you don't like? Maybe?

Anyway, I invite you to try out an alternative to Christianity for moral size. Take just a few minutes to visit here and read it, and perhaps follow a few of its links to read more.

http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/5min...

This is a direct answer to your post, because Buddha was an atheist -- even an antitheist. Buddhists today are atheists. Note well that Buddha was not a god, and did not claim to be a god. That alone makes him far more moral than Jesus, because if Jesus ever claimed any such thing, he lied, the same way that he lied about coming back in his followers' lifetimes (repeatedly). Buddha may well have been mistaken about the entire cycle of rebirth -- there is some evidence for rebirth, but it is controversial and far from certain -- but it is absolutely impossible to deny that his moral teachings are not easily superior to those of Christianity, and quite possibly were transported to Judea by the first century CE and influenced both Jesus and other early Christians.

Whether or not you accept this, it is sound evidence that one can be an atheist and propose a very reasonable morality, a prescription for living a compassionate life that is far, far clearer than anything in the entire Bible, Old Testament or New. Only a very few parts of a very few books in the Bible come close to the purity and clarity of the Pali Canons, or the later works of the Mahayanas. Furthermore, this moral code is practiced by a significant fraction of the people in the world today, and by in large they live the life that Christians pretend that they wish to live.

For example, you tout America as a "Christian country" and assert that you cannot serve God and money, but the US (and Australia) are among the most wealthy countries in the world, and the Catholic Church alone is far wealthier than many of the countries of the world.

Read instead what this page says about why Buddhist countries are often poor:

One of the Buddhist teachings is that wealth does not guarantee happiness and also wealth is impermanent. The people of every country suffer whether rich or poor, but those who understand Buddhist teachings can find true happiness.

Or note their rather succinct moral code:

The moral code within Buddhism is the precepts, of which the main five are: not to take the life of anything living, not to take anything not freely given, to abstain from sexual misconduct and sensual overindulgence, to refrain from untrue speech, and to avoid intoxication, that is, losing mindfulness.

Christianity is based on the principle of killing things. The OT is all about bloody sacrifice. Jesus glorifies bloody sacrifice, and an example of his temperament is his cursing the fig tree to death because he wanted a fig but it was out of season. It teaches its morality with the naked threat of eternal torment after death not for living an immoral life, but for failing to acknowledge that Jesus is Lord. It isn't about what you do, or what you think; it is about who you know, getting in with the Godfather's main made man. Its basis is extortion and threat.

Compare that with a real "though shalt not kill</i> -- not anything with a mind, not being too hasty to assume that you can tell what has and what hasn't got a mind. Not just don't steal, but don't accept anything that another claims that isn't freely given. Not a prescription for exactly what appendage can be placed in what orifice of what gender when, but a simple rule to avoid sexual misconduct that rather neatly covers all cases, permitting each individual to experiment and learn for themselves (if necessary) exactly what "misconduct" is and what it isn't. Not a dreary litany of what is or isn't permitted, act by act, as an offence against God, but an equally simple suggestion that seeking nothing but sensual gratification or intoxication are unlikely to lead to happiness.

No threat of eternal punishment, no claim to divine truth that cannot be doubted or even changed -- just a set of empirical rules, actual wisdom if you like that sort of thing, that each person can try on for themselves and live as best they can without God shooting the dog if they fail.

You want an atheist morality? This is a pretty good one. And one of the best things about it is that it is devoted strictly to truth. "Refrain from untrue speech". Buddhism loves science, because learning the truth about the Universe (even if it isn't the way Buddha might have imagined it) is more important than Buddha being right.

Modern atheist or deist or Buddhist morality is arguably even better, because it is better informed by science, and far better informed by the thousands of years of additional history we have to draw on. We've invented entirely new moral precepts that were utterly absent in Jesus's preachings and that have ushered in a new age of peace.

Did I say peace? Yes. If one averages over the number of war related deaths over the last twenty years, maybe even thirty, I think you'd find that they are smaller, per capita, than nearly any era in recorded history. This silly little concept called "democracy" and "Freedom", you know. Oh, wait -- Jesus failed to mention either one, and the Church actively opposes it even today (or did you get to vote for Pope and I missed it?)

rgb

BTW, my atheist, deist, non-theist friends, noting that Buddhism is itself atheistic or non-theistic deist. There are Buddhists who believe in God, but not the Abrahamic dualistic God. And here is what Buddha had to say on the subject:

In early Buddhism, the Buddha clearly states that "reliance and belief" in creation by a supreme being leads to lack of effort and inaction:[28:] This is a significant hindrance in the path to liberation in the Buddha's view. It may be noted that the Buddha did not criticize veneration of the noble, veneration of the wise and learned, but only said that the belief in the existence of a creator God fetters the mind to samsara.

Having approached the priests & contemplatives who hold that...
'Whatever a person experiences... is all caused by a supreme being's act of creation,'
I said to them: 'Is it true that you hold that... "Whatever a person experiences... is all caused by a supreme being's act of creation?"'
Thus asked by me, they admitted, 'Yes.'

Then I said to them, 'Then in that case, a person is a killer of living beings because of a supreme being's act of creation. A person is a thief... unchaste... a liar... a divisive speaker... a harsh speaker... an idle chatterer... greedy... malicious... a holder of wrong views because of a supreme being's act of creation.'

When one falls back on creation by a supreme being as being essential, monks, there is no desire, no effort [at the thought:], 'This should be done. This shouldn't be done.' When one can't pin down as a truth or reality what should and shouldn't be done, one dwells bewildered and unprotected. One cannot righteously refer to oneself as a contemplative. This was my second righteous refutation of those priests and contemplative who hold to such teachings, such views.

(Wikipedia)

Seems pretty clear thinking to me. Elsewhere Buddha explicitly tell his followers not to waste their time thinking about or arguing over God (or Gods, in the case of his actual venue, which mixed Monist Vedantic Hinduism that was evolving at the same time with Vedic polytheistic Hinduism).

If you add the number of Buddhists to the number of atheist, agnostic, deist persons on the wikipedia world religions pages, you end up with some 22% of the world's population. That narrowly edges Islam for second place, and I suspect it undercounts e.g. Humanistic Judaism and other nominal Christians who aren't openly atheistic but no longer really believe all of the supernatural dogma and instead belong to a church for its social and societal advantages and the comfort of its traditions.

rgb

Hi Brian
The fifth commandment is thou shalt not kill. Not 'murder'. Jesus expanded the commandment In the Sermon on the Mount and adds to it the prescription of anger, hatred and vengeance. Christ even goes further and says to turn the other cheek, to love your enemies, He also did not defend himself and told Peter to leave his sword in his sheath.

/Consider that a corpse fits your criteria as well, yet it is not merely false to say that it is immoral to kill a corpse/
A corpse is a dead person. My stress was on 'human life' not just human. The life is the important part.

/entity less human is at best trivially true/
It is not trivial at all it is human life plain and simple, it has the potential if nature is allowed to follow its natural course to be a wonderful human LIFE. Who are we to deny that? Christianity upholds that no one under any circumstances claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human being.

I didnt say all and only humans matter, I said life is sacred and in this case we are talking about 'termination' killing a human life by flushing out the early stage of a human baby.

\and the ongoing church doctrine of child rape.. \
What the hell are you talking about?

\Murder being advocated\
There was alot of violence in the old testament, a tribe had to fight to survive, and in those savage times whole nations and generation swerved away from the moral law. Child sacrifice was practiced by many nations but the Jews always condemend this.

We didnt live back then so I dont think we have the right to condemn whole nations and generations for thousands of years of past history on moral grounds when we have sunk even lower in modern society. Where the 'quality of life ethic' is a kind of idolatry as the worship of stone idols, false pagan gods, or evil spirits- all of which in ancient times also manifested themselves in the practice of human sacrifice, especially of children.

Christianity follows the model of Christ. If there are sects or individuals who want to use past history as recorded in the old testament as an excuse to harm others or gain power they are clearly going against the teaching of Jesus and thus not Christians.

Nathan

/Skin cells are human life as well. So are red blood cells. Do they get rights not to be destroyed?/

Abortion is not a complex issue.

Skin cells have the potential to develope into skin...
They are part of an individual human, if you want to damage your own body by all means go ahead.

But the embryo or fetus is a whole living human who relys on the mother for its survival in its early stages. It is a person.

Present state laws about abortion give people the legal right to terminate their child, but the state did not create design or give us life, therefore the state cannot take away that right.

Alex,

By saying that there is no absolute rights or wrongs, good or evil, I assume you mean to say that all ethical decisions are relative.

I simply point out a lack of absolute right, wrong, etc. to point out the error that religious people make when they talk about absolutes. They shove the burden onto God - such and such is "absolutely" right because God says so - but this isn't an absolute. Why is what God deems right right? These so called absolutes are still relative: they're relative to God. Right and wrong, like meaning, can't simply exist. They can only exist in context. So of course I believe in right and wrong; of course I believe my life has meaning. I believe these things in the context of human society, and don't pretend that my contextual values are some how universal and absolute when I have seen such a staggeringly small fraction of the universe.

if there are no absolute truths, can postmodernism be true? If there is no right or wrong, there is no reason to argue about ethics in the first place.

Here you are equivocating absolute rights and wrongs with any rights and wrongs. In effect, you're saying, "If nothing is absolutely right or wrong, then nothing is right or wrong, period." I don't know if you're doing this in purpose, but it's a bait-and-switch. As I said, of course I believe in right and wrong, but only in the context of here and now. Could right and wrong mean something different a thousand light years away, a million centuries in the future? Sure.

Futhermore who decides what is good for society? The statistition? Politicians? The majority?

All that means is that it's not always easy and clear-cut. No one contests this. There are moral gray areas. I never claimed that the majority, politicians, or anyone else should explicitly "decide" what's right or wrong. And that includes clergymen and centuries-dead goat-herding Bible-writers, too.


I dont think there is any substitute for Christianity. I wanted to know what some Athiest thought about the question.

You seem to be misunderstanding me. You claimed that Christianity is the source for our morals and therefore that our morals would vanish if Christianity vanished. Since atheists don't believe our morals derive from Christianity (and can easily prove this), then we don't really have an opinion how to replace it. Christianity could evaporate tomorrow and the world would be none the worse for it.

It is clear to me that this sense of right and wrong is an intrinsic quality of being human

And then...

Christianity is the most complete guide as I see it to the moral law

Well which is it? Do we need the guide, or is it intrinsic? You vacillate between claiming Christianity is the singular necessary source of morality, and implying that Christianity is simply a reflection of intrinsic morality. Please take a position, state the position, and stick to it.

If christianity is just a reflection of these evolved morals then shouldnt all present day societies and cultures throughout the world have identical morals to christianity. They dont.

If by "identical morals to Christianity," you mean claiming to be good and righteous, turning around and doing a bunch of horrible things, justifying those horrible things and somehow seeing them as different from the horrible things that everyone else does, and completely failing to see their own flaws, then I'd have to disagree and say that, yes, the rest of the world does have identical morals to Christianity.

From my own observations of Chinese culture many of these values are not promoted. The old moral systems have been blasted away, and nothing new has ben put in their place. Nationalism is the highest moral.


So, the Chinese are completely different from Americans because, for them, "nationalism is the highest moral." I've never been to China, so, tell me, what's it like? Do Chinese people drive around with Chinese flag bumper stickers that say "love it or leave it?" Do they assert that their nation has the right to maintain hegemony over other nations, by unprovoked military force if necessary? Do the Chinese find torture reprehensible, unless it's being carried out by Chinese people against non-Chinese people? If so, that sounds horribly amoral. I'm glad America's not like that.

God gave humans the ability to reason so it is no suprise that part of an individuals grasp of morals is developed through stages, if that is how it happens.

What is surprising, though, is the fact that God's grasp of morals seemed to develop at least as slowly as humans'. For example, God didn't discover that slavery was wrong until people figured out on their own that it was wrong. God didn't discover that genocide was wrong until people figured out on their own that it was wrong.

Christianity promotes these values and makes us aware of how important they are, but if you want to do away with Christianity you should be able to show that you have perhaps an altruistic belief system to sustain and guide humans.

If you have nothing but a utopian faith that the world will be better without religion and you just want to tear down traditional values, without edifying alternatives you are making way for a new cultural revolution.

Again, you need to make up your mind. You concede that the values Christianity professes existed before Christianity. You concede (or seem to) that our morals do not derive from Christianity, because we are able to objectively judge Christianity to separate its morality from its immorality. Then you turn around and claim that Christianity, despite this, is necessary. This is a logically inconsistent position.

It is not my job to simultaneously respond to your two contradicting positions. You try to shift the burden onto atheists, requiring us to accept a premise that we by definition reject: that Christianity is important.

I'm not trying to "tear down traditional values." My values are traditional, because they predate Christianity.

You say, "you should be able to show that you have perhaps an altruistic belief system to sustain and guide humans." I already have done this; twice. I demonstrated that our values predate Christianity (and therefore can survive in its absence), and I have demonstrated that our values do not depend on Christianity, since we can objectively judge Christianity. You simply ignore this point, and continue asserting that Christianity is necessary, while simultaneously conceding that it is not.

I realise present day reactionists love to quote the evils of the church throughout history, but this is just another example of their narrow minded focus on using the mistakes of humans from the past as proof that religion is bad.

You mean, kind of like when you just cited the Holocaust and lynchings to "prove" that society is getting more immoral?

The Catholic Church once supported abortion. Hopefully Dan is reading this post because he knows the actual year they finally banned it.

Well I left the book with all those dates on the other side of the country, but that's what they invented Google for. In 1869, Pope Pius IX eliminated a distinction between an "animated" and "inanimate" fetus. Prior to that, you could abort a fetus that wasn't "animated," which happened 116 days into pregnancy. There was a little waffling back and forth before then; for example, there was a time when females and males became "animated" at different times, one at four weeks and one at eight, despite the fact that there was no way to tell the sex of a fetus back then. There were periods prior to 1869, here and there, were abortion was forbidden, but there were also huge swaths of time - centuries and centuries - when it was permissible.

I think it is wrong to assume that moral laws are man-made rules like the rules of a game of tennis, created by human will, and changeable by human will.

It's a good thing moral laws are changeable; otherwise we'd still be buying slaves and burning witches and stoning disobedient children.

Dan

Sorry if I have put my argument in an unclear fashion I will try and sum up my beliefs as influenced and guided by the Catholic Church.

Laws of morality are not rules that we make up but principles that we discover. They are based on human nature.

The natural law is also known by natural human reason and experience. So yes all people can have the ability to know that they are morally obligated to choose good and evil.

It is permanent amd immutable through the stages of history.

It is in the hearts of all men.

The essence of men does not change but his circumstances and situations do change so the application of the natural law can vary greatly.

It provides the basis for civil law.

Devine revelation in the Catholic religion includes this natural morality, it reminds us of it, formulates it, clarifies it, defends it and gives it a devine sanction.
It also builds on it. We know more about morality by faith in divine revelation than we know by reason alone.
This is why the Catholic Church and Christianity is necessary. It may be hard to accept this but if you break down the walls in your head and open your heart and actively search for the truth in the scripture and in the teachings of the Church then it becomes clear to you.

Lastly and most importantly 'human nature finds its perfection and ultimate meaning in Christ, the one perfect man, since morality is based on human nature, therefore morality finds its perfection and ultimate meaning in Christ. Jesus Christ is in person the way of perfection. To be fully human is an essential part of being fully Christian.''Catholic Christianity'

Alex wrote: "Dan

Sorry if I have put my argument in an unclear fashion I will try and sum up my beliefs as influenced and guided by the Catholic Church.

Laws of morality are not rules that we make up but ..."

Don't get what you are asking, really.

Catholic Church itself is immoral. Anything from the catholic church is bullshit.

Human is fine without church, religion or god. Actually, Human are better off without church, religion or god.

To follow the simple rule, we respect each other rights, and know that a personal belief does not give the individual any right to influence another person negatively, or harm another person.

If in doubt, follow the international human rights laws as a guideline, that is the least anyone could do.

Know that as human, we could live in harmony.

rgb

I have been meaning to read your earlier link. I will get to it.

/Besides, this list is amplified and false; it is something that you are making up for argument, not because it is correct./

I am not making it up, it the focus of the teachings of the Catholic Church I experienced this noble teaching as I was brought up.

/Old Testament quite clearly states that the God-mandated punishment for adultery /

Jesus did away with this when he said 'let him who is without sin cast the first stone.'

Now this might seem like a typical example of the Bible contradicting itself, but it is not. God revealed many divine laws , some were for all people (the ten commandments), or for one people (ancient Israels liturgical laws) or to one individual (a command to one of his prophets).
So if you see there is no contradiction at all.

/you've actually picked up a secular concept of morality /

In my last post to Dan I stated my belief in the moral law, and its relation to Christianity.
St Paul says of the pagans, 'They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness.'

Secular morality also has the instinct to pick out what is good or bad. But it is also easily mislead. So now some secular ethics praise going out and having a one night stand, condone whoring as a descent transaction, think it is good to kill human life in its early stages and so on.

I dont judge people who do these things but I think it is fair to say that these are not virtuous acts, even could be considered evil, and are harmful to the soul.

Jesus did away with this when he said 'let him who is without sin cast the first stone.'

Oh, dear. Now you've gone and done it. You've quoted one of the many Bible passages that are great favorites of people that, in fact, are not in the original gospels and which Jesus did not say.

This entire story is an insertion. Look it up.

So I guess Jesus didn't do away with it after all.

Besides, even if it were there, all it would do is demonstrate Jesus's imperfection since I was quoting Jesus when I pointed out that he was there to require people to follow the Law and not depart a teensy bit from it. It would simply be yet another example of the Bible's (and Jesus's) inconsistency, permitting you to cherrypick in precisely the way you are cherrypicking when you bring up the woman who was never, actually, taken in adultery.

Here is Jesus, on the Law.

Everybody must follow the OT law to the last line of it.

Some parts of the law are being disobeyed, and it is kind of OK.

Jesus himself fails to follow the Law (a Pirate Code that is more like "suggestions":-)

Jesus openly preaches for people to disobey the Law (10C).

It is trivial to find examples of all four in the gospels. Hey, consider it a kind of treasure hunt and dig in and see if you can win the Golden Thimble for finding at least one verse for all four!

It is similarly pretty easy to see that he and the Apostles lived a pretty wild life on the road. Drunkenness abounded. They stole donkeys for transportation when they got tired of walking. They fished naked (a bit of an odd practice, I have to admit). And they were strangely unable to recognize a man they'd lived with and followed when he supposedly visited them post crucifixion, especially given that some of them were probably relatives, but maybe that was because they were too drunk.

And by the way, your assertion that God revealed "many divine laws" and that there isn't one Law is a) directly contradicted by Jesus's own words; b) the worst kind of moral relativism of precisely the sort you and Dan have been discussing; and c) rather repugnant. I freely admit that it removes all contradictions from later arguments because it is a contradiction, and you can prove anything from a contradiction -- and you do, Mr. Cherrypicker. When you want it to be, the 10C is divine law for all men. Until you don't, when it is whatever ELSE you want it to be, justified as necessary by one of the many contradictory stories available that help you prove whatever you want to prove.

All it really proves is that the Bible is an unreliable guide, period. To pretty much everything. Its science is terrible with no evidence whatsoever of "divine inspiration". Its "absolute, God-given" morality is so unclear and murky and relative that you have to constantly make up stuff and cherrypick your way through the document, contradicting yourself constantly to answer the objections Dan and I equally constantly raise. Ultimately it is based not on teachings (teachings that have varied enormously over the life of the church in a way Truth does not), it is based on that innate moral sense that you and Dan even agree on, that predates Christianity, is visible in all cultures and even in the animal kingdom, and that clearly evolved along with humanity because the probability of survival of self and offspring is globally optimized by moral behavior! Oooo, what a concept!

Of course it is locally optimized by amoral behavior living in a moral society -- society protects self and offspring, but immoral acts that you can get away with can give you personal advantage. And that behavior is pretty well evolved too, in humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. Read some of the work done on chimpanzee societies some time. It's an eye opener. And they manage both moral and immoral behavior without Jesus!

Finally, having come full circle, you cite Paul (a man who never met Jesus and who rewrote much of what Jesus is reported to have actually said anyway) that yeah, many pagans and pagan societies are "virtuous". This once again seems to completely acknowledge that Christianity is not necessary to morality, and that the basis you have for judging what is or isn't moral isn't derived from Christianity, it is used to cherrypick your way through the many contradictions using "hermeneutics" and a good deal of wilfull and deliberate blindness.

As far as judging things like one night stands is concerned -- do so, please! For yourself. I might even agree, for myself. But would I execute someone who engaged in them, even if married and on a Sunday in defiance of their parents express wishes, at a Witch's Sabbat (just because that is four, or is it five capital strikes against them in OT law)?

Don't be silly. And neither would you, because you're not a Christian, you're a complex cherrypicked Pagan that believes a carefully selected some, but not all, of the Bible, and can turn your belief in its moral truth on and off like a faucet as it suits you.

rgb

Alex,

Are you aware that stipulating that the counterexamples that others offer don't apply in no way removes those counterexamples? Seriously why not use reason and evidence?

If you can dismiss the bible by saying that it does not apply because we did not live back then, so why can't we in exactly the same manner dismiss all of christianity because we "didn't live back then?"

How too do you reconcile this claim with your later claim that morality, which presumably you are erroneously using to mean christian teachings, is immutable?

I notice that you ignore all of the examples of christianity teaching that which we know is evil, such as child rape, murder, and the like.. too inconvenient?

The tired old "that was the Old Testament, jebus did away with it" line just does not play with anyone familiar with christianity.. Here again is something you have yet to offer DIRECT EVIDENCE:

“For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:18-19 )

Clearly the Old Testament is to be abided by until the end of human existence itself. None other then Jesus said so.

This is far from the only such clear and indisputable reference.

Morality exists outside of religion, and necessarily so. Religion is about controlling others, seeking power over others, and seeking personal gain. Morality is about justified action and the recognition of the basic worth of others. Religion denies the worth of all individuals, morality asserts that worth. The two are at odds.

BTW you did not comment upon your religious duty to seek out and kill every reasonable person. This is what your religion, your man made religion, declares is morally obligatory.

Oh, and you did not stress human LIFE, but rather mere humanness. The counter example still holds. By your reasoning, it is immoral to kill a corpse.. However you also still have yet to face the example from others that skin cells and the like are also human, throwing yet another absurd conclusion into your position that being that it is murder to naturally shed skin cells..

Look up argumentum ad absurdum.

Alex,

If our values are not derived from Christianity (a point on which you and seem to agree), then Christianity is unnecessary. Throughout history, before during and after Jesus' time, and all over the world, people have been coming to the same moral conclusions: love one another, do unto others, don't kill, don't steal, etc. There is no reason to believe that they won't be able to do this in a world without Christianity. If you're going to claim that moral behavior requires Christianity, then prove it. Since there are moral non-believers all over the world, and there are immoral Christians all over the world, proving the moral necessity of Christianity would be some feat.

Furthermore, some of your examples of the "essential" moral code in your first post have nothing to do with morality, or are at the very least highly subjective. For example, the Ten Commandments. These have less to do with morality than with perpetuating religion. This is why so many of the commandments have to do with following God rather than being a good person. A moral code that prioritizes worshipping a deity so highly over not killing people is, in my opinion, not a very useful moral code.

You are equivocating being a "good person" with being a "good Christian." A good Christian, for example, goes to church on Sunday, doesn't take the Lord's name in vain, doesn't have sex out of wedlock, doesn't work on the Sabbath, etc. None of these things have anything to do with morality. So, what you're really asking is, "Without Christianity, how will people be good Christians? Without Christianity, who will enforce the Christian law?" The answers are, obviously, "they won't" and "nobody," but this doesn't have anything to do with how moral people will be.

/Oh, dear. Now you've gone and done it. You've quoted one of the many Bible passages that are great favori..."</i>/

The texts that omit this part of John 7:53-8:11 are called the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, both 4th century manuscripts. They are older but not more reliable. There is abundant evidence in support of the authenticity of the story of this woman taken in adultery.

So as usual you offer up another misleading example as fact when it is far from fact. You seem to cherrypick your 'facts' and offer them up as devastating shut downs. But the RPG is using dud rockets;)

\Everybody must follow the OT law to the last line of it.\

The natural law is made up of principles that we discover. The path of history and the work of the church clarifies protects and builds on our understanding of the moral law.

The Jewish religious leaders have done likewise, so I think you should be saying, that Christians should follow the Torah.

But again this is not necessary. There is the law of Moses and the traditons of judaism or there is the Gospel of the messiah and the message of his love. You can choose either of the two but not both.
Paul explains the Gospel Message and its relation to the OT law.
1. Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?
2. For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.
3. So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man.
4. Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.

-----------

If you are strictly meaning that Christians should follow the old testament laws, then this is also unnecessary. This comes down to the Moral law again. There are two categories 1)The Universal Moral Law- dont kill steal and so on and there are 2) Cultural Universals. Laws geared to Isreals ancient culture but have a moral law behind them.

A believer in Jesus will indeed follow the dictates of the law - the universal morals, of course, not the cultural particulars, because they want to try and be obediant to Christ.

Also in Deuteronomy the ancient covenant between the Jews and God, they agreed to the penalties listed within. We now have a new covenant with Jesus and the individual and the believer Matt. 26:28.
'This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.'

"remission" is also used instead of "forgiveness." It means, to send off, or away. And this, throughout Scripture, is the one fundamental meaning of forgiveness--to separate the sin from the sinner.

This is not cherrypicking by the way it is central to the Gospel message, Jesus died for our sins.

The new covenant does not contain specifics for enforcement and punishment.

Many Christians believe that witchcraft and homosexuality is immoral because although they are not party to the contract of the early Jews they still recognise that the contract holds the values of God.

So I think it is clear that God gave up his son in order for us to be clear of the penalty of sin and death.

Faith gives life and forgiveness. Furthermore Paul explains the Message of the Gospels and its relation to the law.

'Galatians 3:21-26
21 Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law. 22 But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. 23 But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. 24 Wherefore the law was our guardian to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. 25 But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a guardian. 26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.'

I have explained the Message of the gospel, and I have quoted Paul explaining its relevance to the OT law. These are basic understanding of all Christians. Do you think it is still fair for you tall call me a cherry picker, when you cherry pick ancient Jewish punishments link them to quotes by Jesus in your effort to discredit Jesus and the Bible.

The basic message is again seen in the very earliest of the fathers when it says of Abraham Rom 1:13
'It was not through law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith.'

\This once again seems to completely acknowledge that Christianity is not necessary to morality, \

It is to follow the moral law to its perfection or to at least aspire to it we need Christianity. By the model of Jesus we can try to be like Christ. This is truly living.

It is not wasting ones life it is living to the fullest. Exploring searching for God in all things, science art and so on. Taking risks is also part of the message, using what we have been given to make the most of a virtuous life.

rgb
I would argue that you are wilfull and deliberatly blind to the goodness of the Bible that is evident if you actually search for God and dont satarise the search by making purile jokes about asking God to have a cup of tea.

The world as we know it and God as the creator of the universe could be compared to a house and an architect, we should not expect to be able to see the architect in the walls or chimney of the house, likewise we should not expect to see God as one of the physical facts inside the universe. But we can see God in ourselves as an influence or a command telling us to do things in a certain way. And that is exactly what we find in the moral law. And agape. Agape is inexplicable in evolutionary terms.

/If you can dismiss the bible by saying that it does not apply because we did not live back then, so why can't we in exactly the same manner dismiss all of christianity because we "didn't live back then?"/

Who is dismissing the bible? I just said that you cannot judge an entire ancient nation who was trying to hold to the moral law. Yes they did have very strict punishments, but at least they were trying to hold true to goodness. You dont know what life was like back then so your judgement is irellevant.

Regarding Deut. 22:28-29 ---

'If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the girl's father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.'

Of this, a critic finds much that is unfair. But knowing the social context does a world of good.

First, our subject objects that the victim may not want to marry the rapist. In modern times this would be a sensible objection; but for the ancients, this was a highly viable and indeed merciful solution. The victim would no longer regarded as marriageable and would therefore lose means of interdependent support. The rapist is here being required to provide that support for the rest of the girls life.

The above about rape was a cut and paste job, and the explanation is a good example of the different cultural conditions back then that lead to a law that present day seems strange but was actually just under the circumstances of the society.

/Religion is about controlling others, seeking power over others, and seeking personal gain. Religion denies the worth of all individuals/

Religion is an organised approach to human spirituality. It is also a way of life, Christianity in particular allows one to live life to the fullest. I do not weild any power over others, I am also not controlled by the Cathlic Church. I am guided and 'saved' by the Catholic Church. I do not look down on you or any athiests, I wouldnt be here if I didnt think I could learn something from the people involved in the discussion. I do not throw my weight around like Nathan and try and belittle others for a different world view or lack of knowledge or understanding in certain areas.

Why dont you look up some positive influences that the Catholic church has on present day society, you would be suprised the good they do.

The Catholic church has had a good run despite its few mistakes that everybody loves to focus on.

The influence of the Catholic Church :From Wiki

'The influence of the Catholic Church on world culture and society has been vast, first and foremost in the development of European civilization from Greco-Roman times to the modern era.[32:] The church campaigned against and helped end practices such as human sacrifice, slavery,[note 6:] infanticide, and polygamy in evangelized cultures throughout the world, beginning with the Roman Empire. In addition, the Church played a significant role in moderating some of the excesses of the colonial era.[210:][211:][212:][213:][214:]

Christianity affected the status of women in evangelized cultures such as the Roman Empire by condemning infanticide (female infanticide was more common), divorce, incest, polygamy and counting the marital infidelity of men as equally sinful to that of women.[210:][211:][215:] However, "the critics of Christian tradition" say Church teachings have perpetuated a notion that female inferiority was divinely ordained[216:] even though official Church teaching[217:] considers women and men to be equal, different, and complementary.


The School of Salamanca during Counter-Reformation period Spain produced many theologians.Catholic universities and many priests including Copernicus, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Robert Grosseteste, Nicholas Steno, Francesco Grimaldi, Giambattista Riccioli, Roger Boscovich, Athanasius Kircher, Gregor Mendel, Georges Lemaître and others, were responsible for many important scientific discoveries. The Jesuits produced the large majority of priest-scientists, who contributed to worldwide cultural exchange by spreading their developments in knowledge to Asia, Africa, and the Americas.[218:][219:] Most research took place in Catholic universities that were staffed by members of religious orders who had the education and means to conduct scientific investigation.[218:] The 1633 Church condemnation of Galileo Galilei restricted scientific development in some European countries and created the perception of antagonism between the Church and science of that era.[218:] In part because of lessons learned from the Galilei affair, the Church created the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, a scientific organization that essentially began in 1603 but developed over time to reach its present form by 1936.[220:]

The Catholic Church was the dominant influence on the development of Western art, at least up to the Protestant Reformation. Important contributions include its consistent opposition to Byzantine iconoclasm, its cultivation and patronage of individual artists, as well as development of the Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance styles of art and architecture.[221:] Renaissance artists such as Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci, were among a multitude of innovative virtuosos sponsored by the Church.[222:] In music, Catholic monks developed the first forms of modern Western musical notation in order to standardize liturgy throughout the worldwide Church,[223:] and an enormous body of religious music has been composed for it through the ages. This led directly to the emergence and development of European classical music, and its many derivatives. The Baroque style, which encompassed music, art, and architecture, was particularly encouraged by the post-Reformation Catholic Church as such forms offered a means of religious expression that was stirring and emotional, intended to stimulate religious fervor.[224:]'


-- I am sure it will continue to have a positive effect on humanity.

Pontifical Academy of Sciences: From Wiki

'Work of the Academy
Since the Academy and its membership is not influenced by factors of a national, political, or religious character it represents a valuable source of objective scientific information which is made available to the Holy See and to the international scientific community. Today the work of the Academy covers six main areas:

(a) fundamental science,
(b) the science and technology of global questions and issues,
(c) science in favor of the problems of the Third World,
(d) the ethics and politics of science,
(e) bioethics,
(f) epistemology.
The disciplines involved are sub-divided into nine fields: the disciplines of physics and related disciplines; astronomy; chemistry; the earth and environmental sciences; the life sciences (botany, agronomy, zoology, genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry, the neurosciences, surgery); mathematics; the applied sciences; and the philosophy and history of sciences.

During its various decades of activity, the Academy has had a number of Nobel Prize winners amongst its members, many of whom were appointed Academicians before they received this prestigious international award. These include:

Ernest Rutherford (Chemistry, 1908)
Guglielmo Marconi (Physics, 1909)
Alexis Carrel (Physiology, 1912)
Max von Laue (Physics, 1914)
Max Planck (Physics, 1918)
Niels Bohr (Physics, 1922)
Werner Heisenberg (Physics, 1932)
Paul Dirac (Physics, 1933)
Erwin Schrödinger (Physics, 1933)
Peter J.W. Debye (Chemistry, 1936)
Otto Hahn (Chemistry, 1944)
Sir Alexander Fleming (Physiology, 1945)
Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee (Physics, 1957)
Joshua Lederberg (Physiology, 1958)
Rudolf Mössbauer (Physics, 1961)
Max F. Perutz (Chemistry, 1962)
John Carew Eccles (Physiology, 1963)
Charles H. Townes (Physics, 1964)
Manfred Eigen and George Porter (Chemistry, 1967)
Har Gobind Khorana and Marshall W. Nirenberg (Physiology, 1968)
Christian de Duve (Physiology, 1974)
George Emil Palade (Physiology, 1974)
David Baltimore (Physiology, 1975)
Aage Bohr (Physics, 1975)
Abdus Salam (Physics, 1979)
Paul Berg (Chemistry, 1980)
Kai Siegbahn (Physics, 1981)
Sune Bergstrom (Physiology, 1982)
Carlo Rubbia (Physics, 1984)
Klaus von Klitzing (Physics, 1985)
Rita Levi-Montalcini (Physiology, 1986)
John C. Polanyi (Chemistry, 1986)
Yuan Tseh Lee (Chemistry, 1986)
Jean-Marie Lehn (Chemistry, 1987)
Joseph E. Murray (Physiology, 1990)
Gary S. Becker (Economics, 1992)
Paul J. Crutzen and Mario J. Molina (Chemistry, 1995)
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji (Physics, 1997)
Ahmed H. Zewail (Chemistry, 1999)
Günter Blobel (Physiology, 1999)
Ryoji Noyori (Chemistry, 2001)
Aaron Ciechanover (Chemistry, 2004) '

Quite a list...

\By your reasoning, it is immoral to kill a corpse/

Im sorry but I dont know what your talking about.

\However you also still have yet to face the example from others that skin cells and the like are also human, throwing yet another absurd conclusion into your position that being that it is murder to naturally shed skin cells.. \
I thought I covered this
Abortion is not a complex issue.

Skin cells have the potential to develope into skin...
They are part of an individual human.

But the embryo or fetus is a whole living human who relys on the mother for its survival in its early stages. It is a person, it is not its mothers dead skin cells it is a human life.
Human life should be respected and protected from the moment of conception.

You think by saying that a human embryo, a human life in its early stages is the same as dead skin you can take away its human right. Living humans have rights, corpses dont,(except maybe the right to a proper burial)...

It is esentially the philosophy of power, of 'might makes right.' Those in power -doctors, parents, legislators, adults- decree the right to kill those who lack the power to defend themselves. The smallest, most vulnerable, and most innocent of human beings.

I think your main error is in thinking that unborn children are not humans. 'This is a serious factual and scientific error.
Before 'Roe v. Wade' legalised abortion, all science texts taught the biological truism that the life of any individual of any species begins at conception., when sperm and ovum unite to create a new being with its own complete and unique genetic code, distinct from mother and father. All growth and development from then on are matters of degree, a gradual unfolding of what is already there.

There is no specific or distinct point in our development when we become human. What were we before that? Birds?
Only when abortion became legal did the science text books change their language and cease teaching this truism- not because of any new science but because of politics.
Catholic Christianity.

/Christianity is unnecessary/

Dostoyevsky wrote 'If God doesnt exist, everything is possible.' If it is only mans will that makes moral laws then they are as easily changeable as the rules of a game. If we make the rules we can change them and unmake them. Destroy religion and you destroy morality.
I previously quoted Paul as saying that morality can exist in places without religion.

Both Dostoyevsky and Paul are right. Because if God the first cause of the moral law did not exist than an objective real and universally binding moral law would not exist either. Paul is also right in that you can know the moral law without knowing the lawgiver. But we can not know the moral law aswell without knowing the Lawgiver and his character.
Gods supernatural revelation clarifies the knowledge of morality we have by natural reason and corrects our errors. Fallen mans moral knowledge of natural reason is not infallible, but God revelation is.


/You are equivocating being a "good person" with being a "good Christian." A good Christian, for example, goes to church on Sunday, doesn't take the Lord's name in vain, doesn't have sex out of wedlock, doesn't work on the Sabbath, etc. /

Your description of a good christian is terribly incomplete.
Being a good Christian is being like Christ, becoming 'a new creation'. If we read what the saints say about charity or what Jesus says in the Beatitudes, you will see how different this morality is from what your concept stated above of Christian morality is.
How high and holy and beautiful and full of joy it actually is.
It is an amazingly joyful adventure to try and follow Christ, this is what Christians should aspire to.

The texts that omit this part of John 7:53-8:11 are called the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, both 4th century manuscripts. They are older but not more reliable. There is abundant evidence in support of the authenticity of the story of this woman taken in adultery.

Piffle. Older is more reliable, by the simple virtue of diffusive drift in the process of copying manuscripts, and older times two more reliable still. Not that these manuscripts themselves are reliable because they are already copies of copies of copies of copies, most of which (prior to 325 CE) were made by the ignorant near-illiterates of the early church, which did not flourish in the educated segment of Roman society.

Read Ehrman's book, Misquoting Jesus. That will be another eye opener for you. Ehrman's personal journey from being a born-again serious Christian -- one so Christian he literally devoted his life to studying the Bible just so he could learn what it really says as the Word of God -- to his reluctant conclusion that we do not know, and will not ever know, what it really said, Ehrman is currently an agnostic, not just because of his rejection of the Bible as not divinely inspired truth (even moral truth) because if God cared enough to send his Word, he might have cared enough to ensure that that Word was correctly preserved, and he manifestly didn't, but because of the problem of evil that you steadfastly refuse to address except by mumbling the usual bits about "God's plan".

My five year old son had more insight when he asked about it in the car, as the whole problem is with God's plan, and how it involves the death of many, many more infants and morulas and fetuses and small children and older children and grown up children and adults and old people, often painfully, often from silly little "acts of God" like hurricanes, earthquakes, genetic accidents, or (in two cases in Durham last week) by trees falling on the people involved. Guess it was part of God's plan for them. So if God really wants people to stop performing abortions, maybe he could do something about creating fetuses with Down's syndrome, spina bifida, and a host of other horrible teratogenic mutations. Perhaps he could work on zapping rapists with lightning bolts (or just arranging for their penises to drop off) so that women don't have to bear their unwanted child and propagate their equally unwanted genes. Perhaps he could send the Pope a Visitation pointing out that contraception is good because it significantly increases the chances that a woman will get pregnant only when she wishes, not by accident, and will get pregnant without getting HIV from her partner (including her partner her husband). Oh, and because there are 6 going on 7 billion people on this sorry planet, and we really don't need for Catholicism to "win" by outbreeding Islam or Hinduism, evolutionarily sound as it might be.

God is a notorious child, baby, and infant murderer. In Numbers 31, he orders Moses to order his troops to kill all of the Midianite children except f**kable young girls, and all the Midianite women including those that are pregnant. Gee, just abortion, or abortion and femicide, infanticide, homocide, genocide? But as an omniscient, omnipotent deity, God bears the final responsibility for the whole thing.

A Western/Abrahamic God as dualistic Creator fails the test of evil. It fails this test even allowing for Jesus as the "participant", God experiencing his own evil creation and thereby justifying it, because Jesus is still a dual manifestation and Jesus isn't me, suffering what I suffer, because Jesus certainly isn't the little babies who die not because mean old sinful humans hurt them but because God ordained them to suffer and die without enough time on the planet to even understand the simpler words in a dispassionate discussion on how their suffering is somehow justified, too bad mate, bad luck, Jesus will make it all better later, somehow. The Eastern conception of Atman/Brahman Vedantic Hinduism does work, because God is everything, and experiences all things. There is no good but worked by God, their is no evil but worked by God, and the Universe is God evolving according to God's will (as apparently expressed in the laws of physics -- God is a stickler for Law and nothing ever violates it! It doesn't mean that suffering doesn't happen, but the suffering becomes a kind of illusion, the "suffering" of our skin cells when we scrape them with a fingernail, a thing that doesn't matter as long as the Uber-sentient being, Brahman, remains, eternal. The Universe itself has a point, because the state of unified perfect being is eternally, infinitely boring; to be "alive" one requires entropy, a lack of knowledge fo all things, so that there may be discovery (yet another point illustrated clearly in my book The Book of Lilith. So God splits Its unified Self up into many to forget his true unified nature and thereby be able to enjoy and suffer and experience the gift of time, even though Its true nature is (rather obviously) timeless.

This actually does solve the problem of evil -- evil itself is an illusion, one that we can, if we try, see through. Suffering is not evil, it is just the inverse of pleasure, and one cannot have one without the other. The lack of suffering and pleasure is called "death", if you prefer. One cannot have unbroken pleasure, not even in heaven (a thing you might meditate upon) because unbroken pleasure becomes a kind of suffering itself, even in one lifetime, and eternity is infinitely much more than one lifetime, isn't it?

This in no way "proves" Hinduism or Monism, by the way -- just suggests that as models of God go it is consistent where JCM religions are fundamentally and deeply inconsistent in the way that they focus on sin and retribution without providing any insight or reason to be good beyond wishing to avoid pain and seek pleasure, the extortionate carrot and stick of a mafia-thug God that is no universal participant in Its creation but rather Other.

Having gotten the sense of your beliefs from your many posts, I suspect that this vision of a Unified God is very close to your own, somewhat Gnostic, inclination -- much of what you say would have had you branded as a heretic in 375 to 400 CE when the nascent Church was trying to stamp out gnosticism with fire and sword. I can almost predict that you will reply that Jesus is a "sufficient" participant in Creation and try to somehow hang on to a dualism that isn't really dualism, maybe one-and-a-halfism, or trinitarianism where the HG is the monistic God-in-all-things, the Father is the gruff and angry creator, and Jesus is the participant Son that justifies evil. Or any other unnecessarily silly and complex thing that you make up, as none of these things are really consistent even as an implausible hypothesis.

rgb

Alex,

I strongly recommend The Reasonable Woman: A Guide to Intellectual Survival by Wendy McElroy. This wonderful book will introduce you to some of the most basic concepts in reasoning and intellectual discussion in a manner which is easy to understand and written for the person who perhaps has no background in logic and reason. It is not a book on Atheism, but rather one on intellectual discussion and reasoning.

I suggest this because of the numerous and very basic logical errors you continue to repeat here. You make absolute and universal statements, which by their very nature need only one example to disprove. You have been given several such counter-examples, but still you repeatedly claim that because you personally feel good about the evils of the christian bible or the christian church, then it must necessarily be good, and worse yet all good at that.

You still overlook the fact that stipulating that your claims are right does not in fact make them right. Truth is correspondence to reality, not correspondence to what you desire. This is the only manner in which we can gain knowledge, by allowing reality to determine what is true.

Appealing to "that was then" as to making something morally right is a fallacy. I can just as easily say that about any action at any time and stipulate as you do, that it must then be morally right, be that action rape, murder, theft, or any clear wrongdoing. You yourself claimed that morality is immutable, thus the countless examples of child rape, murder, theft, and other attrocities which constitute the bulk of the christian bible are examples of morally wrong commandments and actions, or christianity is simply not as you describe it. You logically cannot have it both ways. Murder is wrong whether done in your "god's" name or done for any other reason.

Face your contradictions and learn from them. Drop one or the other position and recognize that reason trumps wishful feeling.

As for what jebus said was moral, recall again the passages quoted to you where "he" clearly states that ALL of the laws will always hold, none of them passing or changing with "his" coming. This means the laws on killing anyone who uses their mind, the laws on raping young girls, the laws on committing theft, the laws ordering genocide, the laws denying individual worth. You cannot claim that this is not the case and pretend that it is all peace and love as you seem to want to do. Your own texts have been quoted directly providing clear and undeniable examples which prove that in fact christianity in theory and in practice are NOT as you characterize them. To make your case you would have to show that these passages do not exist, and that you cannot do, well not honestly anyway.

As for square circles and potential persons, I make no such error as you claim. Nothing I have said so much as hints at that strawman you present. Rather I simply point out the basic logical errors you have embraced as the sum total of your argument. Here again this is why I recommend TRW as the best intro to sound reasoning I have come across. Being "human" is insufficient stipulation for the reasons already given and wholly ignored by you. Your argument leads to known false conclusions, again as shown conclusively, thus we know that either a premise is wrong or the argument is invalid in form. In this case both. There is no difference in your stipulations about potential persons and a stipulation that all and only white people are worthy of moral protection (are "human") (Which unsurprisingly has also been a position in your religion).

What constitutes a person is not mere DNA sequencing (humanness) but rather other important elements such as vulnerability, rationality (broadly understood), awareness of self and surroundings, and the like. Even your own church once claimed that infants were not people, forget about the multi-celled globs..

Honestly, if you are going to try to argue for a point you have to know what it means to prove a point. Read TRW... or barring that any intro to logic text.

Paul explains the Gospel Message and its relation to the OT law.

Or rather, Paul, calling on his own vision of Good and Evil makes stuff up that directly contradicts the words of Jesus pronouncing on the issue. I agree! That's how it works! You, too, can do it! And amazingly enough, you too can do it by contradicting the imperfect words of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels!

Which makes you exactly what? A moral relativist? That would be yes. A creator of your own personal religion? Absolutely. If you want to call it Christianity, who can stop you? There are some 38,000 heresies currently known as "Christianity". And if you want to adopt some, but not all, of the Christian or JCM myths in your own personal version of Christianity, please do. Just don't argue that you aren't a moral relativist, making it up as you go along and please don't continue to justify your beliefs by using this line where it pleases you (ignoring that one).

You do see, I hope, how it makes any sort of rational treatment of the subject impossible? I propose a line that contradicts one of your absurd assertions. You find another line that supports it. I find two more lines that refute your refutation. You find still another that refutes my refutation of your refutation.

What does this really demonstrate?

My repeated assertion that the book itself is full of inconsistencies, and that in logic one can prove anything one likes from a contradiction. Which really means that you can prove nothing at all from an inconsistent theory! Not anything at all, not whatever you like, but nothing at all, because all conclusions are rationally possible and hence are all ultimately irrational. The Bible is not a reliable guide to anything at all. Its science and morality and law is pretty much what some human made up, with no more divine inspiration than you or I possess! And where they had the substantial disadvantage of a damn sight less prior information about how things really work both physically and morally in this world...

You constantly want to suggest that their wisdom, because it is ancient wisdom, is more reliable. But that contradicts common sense and everyday experience and the known facts. You know that this isn't true. You have a brain. You have instant access to an enormous amount of factual information about the real world. You can sit in judgement of the Bible, and of course you are every time you choose to believe this passage, not believe that one. Give it up. The existence of a single contradiction demonstrates that the basis of the Bible as a perfect document is false. At that point, you're stuck with critical thinking and reason with no perfect authoritative guide.

rgb

I think your main error is in thinking that unborn children are not humans. 'This is a serious factual and scientific error.
Before 'Roe v. Wade' legalised abortion, all science texts taught the biological truism that the life of any individual of any species begins at conception., when sperm and ovum unite to create a new being with its own complete and unique genetic code, distinct from mother and father. All growth and development from then on are matters of degree, a gradual unfolding of what is already there.

Consider the errors in your own thinking. The first, and largest of your two errors is that this is a scientific question. It is not. It is a political and social one. Legally, becoming a "person" in the eyes of the state has always occurred at precisely the moment of birth and life independent of the mother. This has been true throughout the ages of man, across all societies, for excellent reasons. In the common law of the united states, we do not get to take tax write-offs for fetuses. Fetuses do not have social security numbers. They cannot collect social security benefits. They have no human rights, because they are not yet legally humans. The rights the do have (let's call them "pre-human" rights) are precisely what we, as a society, choose them to be, which is actually true of human rights in general as well, as any student of Hobbes, Locke, and Thomas Jefferson should be fully aware. Human rights are asserted most vocally by invoking Deity and so on, but in truth the only rights we have are those granted by nature -- to live an ugly, nasty, brutish and short existence except to the extent that we agree on common axioms of communal social existence and implement them in law and enforce them.

So politically and socially your reasoning is entirely fallacious. Fetuses have the rights in society that we wish to give them. They are not, by tradition and in common law, human; or rather they are human in posse but not yet in esse. They become human in law when the law says they do and not before, and in a democratic society we the people establish the law. This is not the trivialized human problem you wish to make it, because the "rights" of the not-yet-legally-human fetus and the fully human mother can quite easily come into conflict. Because we no longer live in the patriarchal genetics-dominated misogynistic society that is encoded in most of the Bible, we have come to view not being pregnant as a fundamental right of a human being. No human can be forced to have a child against their will. Males, (of course) get this right from nature, and females can never be the equals of males in law or practical society without this right as well. Finally, from an absolutely pragmatic point of view, the planet is vastly overcrowded as it is, and we have many reasons to not wish to encourage the production of children who are unlikely to be loved or wanted by the mother or raised in poverty by a mother in the absence of a father or raised by society at enormous human and economic cost in the event that the fetus is genetically defective so that they can never become fully human even if they are carried to term and granted legal status as human.

Then let us consider the scientific issue. You believe as a matter of faith that God "magically" infuses each and every fetus with a special something that you call the Holy Spirit. I'm guessing that you believe that animals such as e.g. dogs, dolphins, chimpanzees don't get that special something, that it is only humans, and that something is what makes us "human" and capable of good and evil actions.

You believe it as a matter of faith, because there isn't the tiniest shred of evidence that any such thing happens. This Holy Spirit is invisible. It is (by church teaching) completely immaterial, and hence indetectable by material means. When eggs (human or otherwise) are fertilized in vitro, there is no detectable energy signature or difference in what happens for humans or dogs or chimpanzees. In all cases Mr. Sperm swims up, knocks Ms. Egg's membrane, gets in, and releases its genetic load. Ms. Egg toughens the membrane (so no more sperm can get in, usually), the DNA lines up and completes the genetic complement of one normal animal (one hopes, although often this fails and e.g. a trisomy of chromosome 13 occurs, leading to a Down's syndrome zygote, or any of a host of other things goes wrong, leading to anything from immediate death of the zygote without even the hint of a tax write-off to non-fatal mutations or variations major and minor. I repeat, there is no difference at any stage in development of human and animal/mammal embryos that is not completely explained and well understood in terms of genetics and biophysics and biochemistry. There is no visible "magical moment" when "something" is infused into the zygote that cannot be explained by pure, mechanical, material science. If you've been taught otherwise, you've been taught a lie.

This zygote (if sufficiently normal) in time becomes an embryonic fetus. As I said above, there is nothing in this fetus that strongly differentiates it from a dog fetus, and it is even less differentiated from a chimpanzee fetus, until well along in its development. If there is a holy spirit lurking, it is completely indetectable.

So is anything that might conceivably pass for rational, self-aware thought.

Here is another place where your mystical beliefs differ from the conclusions of science. Science considers the study of awareness and brain function and thought to be a legitimate part of its realm of discourse. One can observe animals of all sorts, including humans, and study how their behavior (including higher level cognitive behavior) is related to their biology and the physics of their environment and body. One can form hypotheses and look for evidence to support or refute these hypotheses.

The conclusions of science to date are the following. Make of them what you will. The consciousness of all animals appears to be directly connected to a highly evolved mass of tissue called "the brain". The brain is an entirely material object (just like the heart, just like the lungs) and the brains of nearly all animals have strong evolutionary correspondances -- their hearts have very similar structure with similar organization, and so do their brains.

If you damage the brain of any organism that has one, you directly damage their cognitive function. One can map damage in different parts of the brain to particular deficits in cognitive function, allowing scientists to build a functional map of the brain. One can study how cognitive functions in many animals are related to cognitive functions in humans on the basis of similarities in their brain's tissue and organization and functional differentiation. People are doing and have been doing these studies for many years now. My wife went to gradaute school in neurophysiology for four years before medical school and I typed all of her papers; I assure you that this is very real science and I am not making this up.

There is no place in the human brain for the "holy spirit" to reside. There is no cognitive structure, no organic structure with which it could be associated. The sole difference between the human brain and e.g. the chimpanzee brain or gorilla brain is a matter of size, and the evolutionary development of speech centers as humans developed language. Basically, we have more neural connections, and they are organized for the development of language.

(cont)