Christian Theological/Philosophical Book Club discussion
The Forum - Debate Religion
>
Secular Values
I don't think anyone here would say that the worship of God is a prerequisite an essential requirement for good family ethics. A common misconception wendy talk to secular humanists is the argument from the secular humanist towards the theist when he says that quote we don't need God in order to be good moral beings and quote. Well, of course we don't! That is not the argument, whether or not so we can still presuppose some type of morality adhere to it, without necessarily believing the proposition of statement God exists, to be true. The argument lies and whether or not God actually does exist.
forgive the spelling errors. I am on my phone and have had two glasses of wine, buy you get thepoint. Lee, I would say of course we don't "need" it in the pragmatic sense, but if God does exist, and he has regenerated certain people, they are going to act a certain way that makes them stand apart from others being consecrated and sanctified (αγιασμός). Does that mean a secular family can't raise kids to be "ethical"? Of course not, but the problem lies in the ontological grounding for the very BASIS of these moralities that the secular family is adhering to when they angrily quipp back to the Christian "well we are good people too, and don't need God to be good." Well duh, no one is arguing that.Is that clear? David help me out here.
I agree with Brent. I think the argument is often mistakenly put forward by Christians and/or misunderstood by skeptics. Of course atheists and skeptics have great morals. I would not say worship of God or belief in God is necessary for moral values. The debate is about, upon reflection, is there inherent reason to adhere to specific moralities.Much of our Western morality was built upon a Christian foundation. Caring for the mentally challenged, ending infanticide, building hospitals, caring for elderly - these things are not just random goods, they were not around in pre-Christian days (in Rome and Greece). The question is, can you reject God and keep the God-based ethics...for long.
Think about it - if you are an atheist, why would you not abort a baby with Down syndrome? Or if a baby is born deformed, why not just have it killed?
What benefit is there in running a soup kitchen to feed the homeless? Why dedicate your life to travel to some foreign country and free women enslaved in the sex industry when you can live comfortably here?
The question is - why live by specific morals based on your worldview?
Also, as a Christian, I believe all are created in God's image. So of course atheists do good. They are still in God's image. It ought to be expected.
Quite precisely.The truth is that on atheism or naturalism there can be no moral "ought to." That doesn't mean they can't adhere to the moral ought to whilst still denying God, but what it does mean is that there simply is absolutely no foundation for any moral ought to because their ontology lacks any τέλος whatsoever. There is no design, and hence, can be NO goal or orchestration: no "you ought to so this over that." There is only change and fluctuations vis-à-vis anyone's specific relative moral judgments at the time.
To restate: can an atheist family raise kids to adhere to Christian morality? Sure. This is purely sociological. Is there any ontological basis for holding to these morals? Absolutely not. The secular humanists stands as a hypocrite under his own condemnation when he becomes haughty on the fact his kids are moral under an atheistic house, given that the worldview can make know claims to any sort of moral obligation or moral ought.
Brent wrote: "Quite precisely.The truth is that on atheism or naturalism there can be no moral "ought to." That doesn't mean they can't adhere to the moral ought to whilst still denying God, but what it does m..."
Thanks David and Brent for your thoughtful responses to this interesting question. When I read Steven Weinberg's book Facing Up: Science and Its Cultural Adversaries, he made the point emphatically that morality was a human invention and had no basis in natural law (as for example the laws of physics), but rather is a matter of choice or personal preference. That assertion, a rejection of objective value, puts severe limitations on what materialistic atheists can mean by morality. Our favourite colour or perhaps a predilection for country music are examples of choice, but it would be unreasonable to insist that others share our preference. That, I think, is the nub of the problem. Brent put it nicely when he referred to the "ought to" implicit in our understanding of morality.
Further in Weinberg's book, when he tackles the question of atheism and morality, he doesn't face the troublesome questions "What do atheists mean by morality?" or "Why do atheists bother to be moral themselves or expect others to be when it's all made up?" Rather he changes the question to one that was not asked: "Are Christians more moral than atheists?" and argues they are not by citing examples of benevolent atheists and trundling out a list of Christians behaving badly.
But that was not the problem question. Lewis dealt with this topic head on in The Abolition of Man and he convinced me at least that every attempt to justify morality on purely materialistic grounds boils down to some kind of pragmatism (it works and I get something out of it). Of course behaving morally works, but a truly moral person does things because they are right, not because they work.
So are there moral atheists? Absolutely, I have known some. Are they more moral than Christians? I can't say. I have known many Christians who have done astounding work for the disadvantaged, some even at the cost of their lives. Having said that, I am grateful for every atheist who seeks to do the right thing because he ought to. I am glad he's operating better than his principles, but I do wonder how many generations that attitude can continue when it seems so disconnected from the wholly self-centred principle of "the survival of the fittest."
I'm not sure the "moral ought to" is an explanation. As the article points out, those with a religious up-bringing are more likely to serve jail time or feel bigotry. But the study does not address active moral action, just negative statistics. Do the active humanitarian acts our churches encourage indicate that serving Christ promotes compassion? Or...as some here actively argue...is compassion not a godly quality?
Lee you missed the entire argument! I was saying that without God there is not moral grounding to do option A over option B. This is moral ontology.
Alright, Brent. Granting, then, that either [1] God is working as effectively in the atheist as in the believer, or [2] the believer typically ignores God's moral instruction entirely, your assertion fits the facts of the study.If I'm still missing the point, can you enlighten me? I wasn't asking about the existence or nonexistence of God in the OP, but whether worshiping him makes any difference.
Lee wrote: "Alright, Brent. Granting, then, that either [1] God is working as effectively in the atheist as in the believer, or [2] the believer typically ignores God's moral instruction entirely, your assert..."Lee to me that article you shared at the outset to is not worth talking about:
(1) Zuckerman is giving us his opinion on the longitudinal research of Bergston i.e. everything is second hand filtered by a journalist.
(2) I see no data, no discussion of methodology, no mention even of how the study defined "bigot" and how they determined who belongs in that category.
(3) It's suspicious to me that it gives no indication that some of the data did not fit the conclusion. Studies like this are rarely that clean.
(4) The article delivers precisely the conclusion that I would have predicted given the general tendency of the mainstream media. I'm supposed to "have faith" in Zuckerman and take his word for it.
(5) I'm also pretty sure had the study reached the opposite conclusion, the story would never have been published because it wouldn't be unusual or radical enough to be pique the interest of the readership.
So how can I take that synopsis (or even the study) seriously when it offers up the only kind of conclusion that would be newsworthy and expects me to take Zuckerman's word for it when he doesn't even tell me his religious/anti-religious background or bias? Does he really care about the truth and want to give all parties a fair hearing or is he only interested in getting his name up in lights? I can't tell. Zuckerman gives me no real information.
What are good family values: Adopting a rescue pet, recycling, feeling compassion for gays, going to earth day celebrations, eating kale, hugging a tree, favoring a carbon tax? I suppose you can put me in the category of one who believes worship of God is a necessity to separate secular good family values from those put forth in Scripture featuring humility for a family of Faith .
There are lots of problems with that article.1. He seems to conflate those of no-religion with those who are secular. Those terms need definitions. Most who leave religion qualify as spiritual but not religions and are not atheists. So such people could still base their morality on God, though not religion.
2. He contrasts the Golden Rule with God-based ethics with a quote from someone saying if you question God then you may question your ethics. Thus, the argument seems to be, basing on the Golden Rule seems better. But what if you question the Golden Rule? What inherent value is there in this? It seems an arbitrary choice.
3. Comparing secular teens with non-secular ones or religious prisoners with lack of atheists in prisons seems pointless since atheists are a small amount of the population. In our culture most people still grow up with religion. I would bet most who reject God tend to be higher-educated, for example. So is it the atheism or the higher-education that leads them to not commit crimes? My point is that since so many people are considered religious, it stacks the deck somewhat. In a hypothetical future world where non-religion is the norm, we may end up seeing the opposite.
I wasn't asking about the existence or nonexistence of God in the OP, but whether worshiping him makes any difference. You mean worship, like going to church? Following teachings?
This goes back to the thread on how we are all biased and influenced. I would argue that to some degree, worshiping God or not may not make a huge difference in western culture. We've inherited a lot of morality which even those who reject God continue to hold to (i.e. the Golden Rule).
What if we were not raised in this culture?
*You are a pagan Roman living in 50 CE. Your wife gives birth to a baby that is deformed (or a baby that is a female, for that matter). What do you do? The cultural norm, not immoral at all, is to expose it to the elements. Now, if a secular person in America in 2015 says infanticide is a crime, this is due to the (I argue) Christian value placed on life that overturned the Roman norm.
*You are a secular person living in England and a fetal scan shows your baby has down syndrome. Following Richard Dawkins advice, you abort and try again. A Christian valuing of life deems this wrong, but why is it wrong on a secular one?
*You receive a $500 bonus from work. You can either write a check to a non-profit that builds wells in Africa or you can buy a new flat screen TV. You do not really need the TV, but you would enjoy it.
Under a pure non-religious, godless view, there is no reason you can say any choice made above is wrong or immoral. I would argue that under a Christian view, some choices are wrong. So upon reflection, when we move past what people simply do to what people think they should do, we do see a difference.
In other words, in 2015 in America whether you worship or not may not make a difference. But as more reject God the next step is questioning the inherited morality and it is not hard to envision a world where worshiping makes a huge difference.
YES Lee, apparently this is a great topic to tackle. Glad you brought it up.
Great stuff David. I will be quoting you to atheists.
Morals are like grammar - you learn from your community.
"Under a pure non-religious, godless view, there is no reason you can say any choice made above is wrong or immoral."
Statute books in jurisdictions worldwide are replete with non-religious, godless reasons.
Putting aside for a moment whether or not biblical laws actually came from Yahweh, Jewish and Christian believers make non-religious decisions about which "Laws of God" they follow. Lighting a fire to cook cheeseburger on the Sabbath are 3 non-religious choices made by believers to break Yahweh's laws. And we all know of many more we twist our way out of.
If Christians can make conscious decisions to ignore religious moral codes, by the same token atheists are perfectly capable of deciding, through experience in their community, what is morally acceptable in that community - without cherry-picking the bits they like from the ancient writings another community.
The cherry-picked laws of the biblical writings are inadequate to run a society - hence the statute books: many of which are based on pre-Christian Roman law.
Primates have a primitive sense of social propriety and morality - which, I suggest, comes through experience.
If Adam and Eve had evolved from primates, they may not have committed the Original Sin.
And then this discussion would be pointless.
Oh, and beware the sin of sanctimony - that one's probably not in the secular statute books.
"Under a pure non-religious, godless view, there is no reason you can say any choice made above is wrong or immoral."
Statute books in jurisdictions worldwide are replete with non-religious, godless reasons.
Putting aside for a moment whether or not biblical laws actually came from Yahweh, Jewish and Christian believers make non-religious decisions about which "Laws of God" they follow. Lighting a fire to cook cheeseburger on the Sabbath are 3 non-religious choices made by believers to break Yahweh's laws. And we all know of many more we twist our way out of.
If Christians can make conscious decisions to ignore religious moral codes, by the same token atheists are perfectly capable of deciding, through experience in their community, what is morally acceptable in that community - without cherry-picking the bits they like from the ancient writings another community.
The cherry-picked laws of the biblical writings are inadequate to run a society - hence the statute books: many of which are based on pre-Christian Roman law.
Primates have a primitive sense of social propriety and morality - which, I suggest, comes through experience.
If Adam and Eve had evolved from primates, they may not have committed the Original Sin.
And then this discussion would be pointless.
Oh, and beware the sin of sanctimony - that one's probably not in the secular statute books.
Morals are like grammar - you learn from your community. Okay, but grammar changes. How do we know our community is right? I mean, I am not interested merely in functioning today, I am interested in what is right on a larger scale. Put me in Alabama in the 1950s and my community teaches me racism is right. But, by your logic, its like grammar and learned from the community so it must be right.
Or, why have confidence in today's morality if I recognize we will have a different one in the future? I can't have confidence in much if my descendants will look back and see me as an immoral person.
This is the point - we are searching for something that allows us to question the morals our community taught us, to confirm if they are right or overthrow them if they are wrong.
Putting aside for a moment whether or not biblical laws actually came...
We are not talking about the specifics of any religion or holy book moral code. We are at a more basic point - what is the justification for any form of morality?
In other words, you can spend all your time attacking and refuting Christian morality or the Bible. But I am waiting for a positive argument for a pure godless morality. Just refuting the existing one does not give you the win, as if your view is the default. You need to provide me with positive reasons for why to believe in a godless morality.
Honestly, I think moral relativism is much more likely if there is no higher power. And your statements on grammar and learning from the community reinforce this fact. Any moral belief I have - whether blessing gay marriage, working to end slavery, saving the environment, or telling the truth - is only tentative. It was not always so in the past and will not always be so in the future.
If Christians can make conscious decisions to ignore religious moral codes, by the same token atheists...
We can talk about what a Christian ethic looks like. But that is a separate discussion, in my opinion.
Primates have a primitive sense of social propriety and morality - which, I suggest, comes through experience.
Interesting. Maybe I'm not smart enough, but I am not sure how this relates.
Oh, and beware the sin of sanctimony - that one's probably not in the secular statute books.
Thanks. Was I being sanctimonious? I apologize. I thought we were discussing morality and ethics.
If we want a way forward, here are my suggestions:*What tools do we have to question the community we are in and ethics we are taught?
*If you are an atheist, how do you question/evaluate your community?
*If you are a theist, how do you question/evaluate your community?
*Once you commit to atheism, how do you construct a morality I can trust in to guide my life? Don't just tell me how dumb Christianity is, give me positive reasons and tools to live well.
*Once you commit to a Christian form of theism, how you deal with ancient, archaic points of your scripture, as Stuart brought up? Prove you are not "cherry picking" by not following such laws.
I offer that all moral codes are godless.
Moral codes were codified long, long before the biblical writings appeared.
Biblicists will have it that these codes were not from "God", because the Jewish deity Yahweh is "God".
That leaves us with only the code of Yahweh - which means, we need to establish that Yahweh is God. No one ever does that.
I suggest Jewish humans wrote the code of Yahweh, based on experience. And, of course, the human codes carry much heavier gravitas for the common folk if the priests write that they were inscribed in stone on the top of a smoky mountain by the finger of their local deity.
The Yahweh code has been used to justify homophobia, racism, slavery, misogyny, genocide and more ... and biblicists turn into selective atheists by choosing to decide that "God" got it wrong 2,000 years ago and ignoring or amending to suit the community experience and expectation of their own day - just like the men who wrote them in the first place.
I have never seen anyone demonstrate that any version of Divinity had any input into any moral code. It all comes down to believing that you favourite deity did. Which is what the priests intended in the first place. if you thought it was just them making stuff up to keep you faithful and obedient, you wouldn't remain faithful and obedient.
Just as a bit of an aside: one doesn't usually commit to atheism - there is no credo or catechism or dogma or belonging - one simply stops doing any form of "God", or one just never did God in the first place and scarcely gives it a thought.
But then again there is not codified set of Atheist morals. Perhaps I could write one? But as an atheist how will I have the moral compass to decided which Laws of God to plagiarise from the Bibles and which to sweep under the altar? Maybe I can get some help here? Some folks are very deft ....
Moral codes were codified long, long before the biblical writings appeared.
Biblicists will have it that these codes were not from "God", because the Jewish deity Yahweh is "God".
That leaves us with only the code of Yahweh - which means, we need to establish that Yahweh is God. No one ever does that.
I suggest Jewish humans wrote the code of Yahweh, based on experience. And, of course, the human codes carry much heavier gravitas for the common folk if the priests write that they were inscribed in stone on the top of a smoky mountain by the finger of their local deity.
The Yahweh code has been used to justify homophobia, racism, slavery, misogyny, genocide and more ... and biblicists turn into selective atheists by choosing to decide that "God" got it wrong 2,000 years ago and ignoring or amending to suit the community experience and expectation of their own day - just like the men who wrote them in the first place.
I have never seen anyone demonstrate that any version of Divinity had any input into any moral code. It all comes down to believing that you favourite deity did. Which is what the priests intended in the first place. if you thought it was just them making stuff up to keep you faithful and obedient, you wouldn't remain faithful and obedient.
Just as a bit of an aside: one doesn't usually commit to atheism - there is no credo or catechism or dogma or belonging - one simply stops doing any form of "God", or one just never did God in the first place and scarcely gives it a thought.
But then again there is not codified set of Atheist morals. Perhaps I could write one? But as an atheist how will I have the moral compass to decided which Laws of God to plagiarise from the Bibles and which to sweep under the altar? Maybe I can get some help here? Some folks are very deft ....
Stuart assumption:"Moral codes were codified long, long before the biblical writings appeared."
Please prove this as a fact. I'll wait... Hopefully you are smart enough to see the comedy of it. You aren't one of those atheists who assume the Bible was written in 1611 are you? (But when did JOB or GENESIS factually appear? Or did those disappear over time?)
Re#15Putting aside for a moment whether or not biblical laws actually came from Yahweh, Jewish and Christian believers make non-religious decisions about which "Laws of God" they follow. Lighting a fire to cook cheeseburger on the Sabbath are 3 non-religious choices made by believers to break Yahweh's laws. And we all know of many more we twist our way out of.
Ceremonial law and moral law are not the same thing. Ceremonial laws point to moral law, to our inability to keep moral law, and serve to distinguish the Jewish people. Christians do not "twist our way" out of keeping ceremonial laws, we recognize that they point to, and are fulfilled and perfected in Jesus Christ.
http://www.gty.org/resources/bible-qn...
Thanks Ned. It's amazing how many people confuse Ceremonial Laws, Moral Laws, Unclean laws, Clean Laws, Cosmic justice...and general Godly advise. And I have yet to meet an atheist (or recovered christian - fancy term for bitter sour loser who didn't get their lusty rebellion stamped and approved by their local pastor.) who understands any fulfillment Jesus declared or accomplished.
Stuart comment:"The Yahweh code has been used to justify homophobia, racism, slavery, misogyny, genocide and more"
AS a post-christian Stuart you obviously aren't dumb enough (especially from all those years of Bible-study and theological church meetings?) to agree with ignorant atheist propaganda based on a 2 hour comprehension of the Bible?
If you are that dumb - then I may not be able to respond for a while...until I stop laughing!!!
But like I said; "AS a post-christian Stuart you obviously aren't dumb enough..."
I'll give you the benefit of your doubt. Mostly it's the racism, misogyny, genocide that you couldn't possibly confuse. That would prove to ALL OF US that you failed Bible study 101.
But the more you talk Stu the more worried I get.
Rod wrote: "Stuart assumption:
"Moral codes were codified long, long before the biblical writings appeared."
Please prove this as a fact. I'll wait... Hopefully you are smart enough to see the comedy of it. Y..."
Earliest Yahwist code: DSS c. 200 BCE
Babylonian law code: c. 1754 BCE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_...
Ur-Nammu law code: c. 2050 BCE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_...
Code of the Assura: c. 1070 BCE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian...
How that for a laugh ...?
"You aren't one of those atheists who assume the Bible was written in 1611 are you? (But when did JOB or GENESIS factually appear? Or did those disappear over time?)"
This is just ridiculous. I'm going to put you in the same Sunday school class as Joshua and Robert, and have nothing more to do with you until you have grown up and learned something beyond your fundamentalist literalism.
"Moral codes were codified long, long before the biblical writings appeared."
Please prove this as a fact. I'll wait... Hopefully you are smart enough to see the comedy of it. Y..."
Earliest Yahwist code: DSS c. 200 BCE
Babylonian law code: c. 1754 BCE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_...
Ur-Nammu law code: c. 2050 BCE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_...
Code of the Assura: c. 1070 BCE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian...
How that for a laugh ...?
"You aren't one of those atheists who assume the Bible was written in 1611 are you? (But when did JOB or GENESIS factually appear? Or did those disappear over time?)"
This is just ridiculous. I'm going to put you in the same Sunday school class as Joshua and Robert, and have nothing more to do with you until you have grown up and learned something beyond your fundamentalist literalism.
Quote:" The sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi, enacted the code, and partial copies exist on a human-sized stone stele and various clay tablets."
So let me get this straight Stu (even though you have nothing to do with me anymore...)
Whoever has the oldest chunk of clay WINS? So anything carried down orally or culturally loses? If something was borrowed then whoever has the chunkiest copy gets declared the official?
Now these wiki statements are indeed useful data - but you are making material assumptions.
Stuart if I steal one of your books, put my name on it, and burn the other copies: does that make me the factual author and every bit of information in it officially mine?
I'm not saying the Bible wins by default. I'm just saying becareful about blind factual assumptions. Don't discount Satan and other Bible data from your quest so easily.
Quotes:Assyrian law... was discovered in the course of excavations by the German Oriental Society (1903–1914).[citation needed]
The Code of Ur-Nammu is the oldest known law code surviving today... in two fragments found at Nippur, was translated by Samuel Kramer in 1952;Further tablets were found in Ur and translated in 1965
In 1901, Egyptologist Gustave Jéquier, a member of an expedition headed by Jacques de Morgan, found the stele containing the Code of Hammurabi in what is now Khūzestān, Iran
So just to be scientific and factual:
All 3 bits of info didn't really appear until the 1900's?
And yet the Bible goes back, and back, and back through each century rather specifically - for several thousand of years.
But instead Stuart builds on some VERY MODERN dirt findings? Valuable indeed - but play carefully with these old chunks of rock.
Ned wrote: "Re#15
Putting aside for a moment whether or not biblical laws actually came from Yahweh, Jewish and Christian believers make non-religious decisions about which "Laws of God" they follow. Lighting..."
Not going to study in depth but:
"The greatest barrier between Jew and Gentile was the ceremonial law, the Law of commandments contained in ordinances. The feasts, sacrifices, offerings, laws of cleanliness and purification, and all other such distinctive outward commandments for the unique separation of Israel from the nations were abolished.
That God’s moral law was not abolished is clear from the phrase contained in ceremonies."
Seems to me the writer here has turned "ordinances" into "ceremonies" to suit his purposes. I find Christian (and other) believers very good at playing Humpty Dumpty and having words mean just whatever they choose them to me - may not be the case here, but it looks like it at first glance.
Nonetheless, given the general lack of specificity in much of what we read in the NT, and allowing that Jesus is the Son of Yahweh and that Jesus may have been involved with his Father in the punitive flooding the planet and inscribing the Ordinances in stone on Mt Sinai himself, if we make the distinction that Jesus repealed some of his earlier "ceremonial" Ordinances by inference (but didn't think to mention keeping other humans as slaves), leaving it up to Christians to detail which ones they preferred, it still leaves us with everything else that we pick and choose from, like:
Stoning to death for picking up sticks on the Sabbath
Stoning to death for an engaged virgin and the man who lies with her in a town, together, since she did not cry out.
Stoning to death for rebellious children (Yahweh chose to drown most of his - a lesson in divine parenting).
Stoning to death for getting married as though a virgin, when not a virgin - only applies to women, of course.
Stoning to death for having a familiar spirit.
And then there's all the stuff about tattoos and polyester and men with testicular cancer entering church ... and are they ordnances, or shall we call them ceremonial and maybe we don't need to concern ourselves with these clearly-written Laws of Jesus ... because Jesus is God, and we can't pick and choose when we want Jesus to be God and when we don't want Jesus to be God.
And can we demonstrate that any of them came from Yahweh? Just because some folks claim they came from the Jewish deity Yahweh, does not mean they were not developed by Yahweh's priests to suit their society of the time. Personally, I don't know, so I'm not making a claim either way, but I have my doubts and wait for those who make claims to back them up with more than belief.
P.S. I have not learned how to italicise text that I copy and paste ...?
Putting aside for a moment whether or not biblical laws actually came from Yahweh, Jewish and Christian believers make non-religious decisions about which "Laws of God" they follow. Lighting..."
Not going to study in depth but:
"The greatest barrier between Jew and Gentile was the ceremonial law, the Law of commandments contained in ordinances. The feasts, sacrifices, offerings, laws of cleanliness and purification, and all other such distinctive outward commandments for the unique separation of Israel from the nations were abolished.
That God’s moral law was not abolished is clear from the phrase contained in ceremonies."
Seems to me the writer here has turned "ordinances" into "ceremonies" to suit his purposes. I find Christian (and other) believers very good at playing Humpty Dumpty and having words mean just whatever they choose them to me - may not be the case here, but it looks like it at first glance.
Nonetheless, given the general lack of specificity in much of what we read in the NT, and allowing that Jesus is the Son of Yahweh and that Jesus may have been involved with his Father in the punitive flooding the planet and inscribing the Ordinances in stone on Mt Sinai himself, if we make the distinction that Jesus repealed some of his earlier "ceremonial" Ordinances by inference (but didn't think to mention keeping other humans as slaves), leaving it up to Christians to detail which ones they preferred, it still leaves us with everything else that we pick and choose from, like:
Stoning to death for picking up sticks on the Sabbath
Stoning to death for an engaged virgin and the man who lies with her in a town, together, since she did not cry out.
Stoning to death for rebellious children (Yahweh chose to drown most of his - a lesson in divine parenting).
Stoning to death for getting married as though a virgin, when not a virgin - only applies to women, of course.
Stoning to death for having a familiar spirit.
And then there's all the stuff about tattoos and polyester and men with testicular cancer entering church ... and are they ordnances, or shall we call them ceremonial and maybe we don't need to concern ourselves with these clearly-written Laws of Jesus ... because Jesus is God, and we can't pick and choose when we want Jesus to be God and when we don't want Jesus to be God.
And can we demonstrate that any of them came from Yahweh? Just because some folks claim they came from the Jewish deity Yahweh, does not mean they were not developed by Yahweh's priests to suit their society of the time. Personally, I don't know, so I'm not making a claim either way, but I have my doubts and wait for those who make claims to back them up with more than belief.
P.S. I have not learned how to italicise text that I copy and paste ...?
I hear you there, the LORD was awfully inconsistent in following through with His punishments. the guy picking up sticks was stoned, but when people disobeyed and went out to gather manna on the Sabbath no-one was punished at all.One thing that just fascinates me about the law is that it has a get out of jail card for absolutely everything. According to Leviticus if anyone acknowledged their mistake they weren't punished.
Most people think it is a concession for mild offenses only, however David invokes this clause after murdering Uriah and taking his wife!
Of course I understand that makes no sense to our western mindset. I would have to defer to the Jews for a better explanation.
Most people don't realize how much God (especially Jesus) used the laws to reveal much about our humanity and hearts.People get mad whenever God bends the laws, reveals the laws, or fulfills the laws...and yet ALL OF US beg that of him. WE are too stupid to see ourselves in the laws. The best is when people MOCK God for not stopping evil... (philosophy has never been humanities strength.)
I guess it's what I like about the old testament. It reads like God actually has a personality.The world went really evil, He was so upset He wished he hadn't even made people, Later He had another try with a bunch of rag tag ex-slaves to get people on the straight and narrow. It started well but then they made him so angry He wanted to wipe them out! But He didn't. You can see Him wrestling with the emotions all through scripture. Then the strangest thing happens. He begins to fall in love.
People don't get God because they think He's like a robot. He's not. Some people approach God like a mathematician trying to explain Monet.
Ezekiel 16
Look, I think reasonable people agree the Old Testament is an improvement on earlier law codes but still is pretty immoral, the New Testament is an improvement on the Old Testament but still needs a little help, and that we continue to improve our moral understanding as time marches on. Decent people have outgrown Paul's homophobia, for instance. The interesting question is whether or not this moral march onward would happen without God or whether God has a hand in steering the world.
Joshua, I'm not talking about personal taste. I'm talking about the moral fiber to overcome bigotry and treat people like people, regardless of religion, gender, race, sexual preference, etc. We are growing up.
eew, I'm with JOSHUA and Paul on that one. :cD
This is the sort of "truth" we've been getting from the Sunday school class right here:
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=...
Different "scriptures", different/ish God concept, same "reasoning".
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=...
Different "scriptures", different/ish God concept, same "reasoning".
Stuart what do you expect to get from numerous sects of untrained sunday school teachers?Imagine the teachings a bunch of atheist adults would give children about humanity and reality:
History of Moonshine stills,
How to pick up Hookers in Vegas,
How to cheat on taxes,
How to get your abortion paid for by the gov't,
How Ken & Barbie represent Cross-dressing Gay America,
How to cheat on your spouse and fund a 2nd family,
How religion restricted my meth-lab profits...
How science says you are no better than a SLUG.
I don't think reasoning and atheism should ever be PROUDLY friends.
Thanks for the reply Stuart, good stuff.But it seems much of your response is talking more about history then about philosophy and ethics. I am not really interested in the former for this debate.
Just as a bit of an aside: one doesn't usually commit to atheism - there is no credo or catechism or dogma or belonging - one simply stops doing any form of "God", or one just never did God in the first place and scarcely gives it a thought.
But then again there is not codified set of Atheist morals. Perhaps I could write one? But as an atheist how will I have the moral compass to decided which Laws of God to plagiarise from the Bibles and which to sweep under the altar? Maybe I can get some help here? Some folks are very deft ..
Fair enough, though if I were to reject belief in God I would still need to live and make choices. Are you saying you cannot give me any instruction/help/assistance as I do this? So far the best you have done is point to grammar and trust in community.
I am looking for some sort of positive argument from you on why I ought to live by such morals. You have not responded to any of my hypotheticals. If I were incredibly intelligent or powerful, why should I not simply seek to exert my will over people? If I reject God, and there is no credo to replace it, what is wrong with me creating my own credo?
I am tempted to add further hypotheticals, but since you have not tackled my previous ones I guess that is not helpful. It seems the best you leave me with is a sort of agnosticism in regards to ethics - once I reject God I really have no way of knowing what I ought to do, I just kind of drift and hope I am in a halfway decent community that does not contain any supermen to overpower us, exert their will on us, or lead us into darkness.
The rest of your response attacked the Bible. You bring up some random laws from the Old Testament which always makes for good rhetoric, but shows you either have not made an attempt to understand Christian (or Jewish, for that matter) ethics of the last 2000 years or you are more interested in building a straw man.
I will let Jewish people try to explain how they deal with the ancient Laws. As a Christian, Paul figured this out for us 2000 years ago in Galatians. However God reveals to humanity, which may be a relevant question, there is a clear progression that Christians have pretty much always argued culminates in Jesus. So if we are going to talk Christian ethics, we can tackle the Sermon on the Mount because that, and not the Mosaic law, is the height of biblical ethics. Or we could talk on the greatest commandments - love God, love others - which Jesus said sum up the Law.
I do not think Christian ethics moves simply "God commanded it so we do it", though some Christians may take that path. I instead argue that God is the fount of all goodness, beauty and truth. There is no contrast, for example, of God and good. What is good is in line with God. What is good and beautiful is what leads to human flourishing. I'd say I have Aquinas in my corner here too.
So when we get more specific - being generous is better then being greedy because generous people live more satisfactory lives, in the long run, then greedy ones. It is better being other-centered, helping others, rather than self-centered. These things objectively lead to a more satisfying life. It is not that God merely commanded us to be generous while being greedy is more fun. To flourish as a human, generosity and helping others is better.
You can talk to the others about YHWH or what sort of ethics people had in 1700 BC or whatever. I am not interested in that, and don't think it is too relevant to the issue of godless vs. god-centered values and ethics.
I look forward to your response.
Josh and Rod, "eew"? really? I'm with Lee, such comments are not too mature.
I enjoyed your post David. Some great paragraphs dismantling any atheistic core of goodness. (although you seem to have no concept of God's justice whatsoever! Which is a huge issue in any discussion with atheists - to sweep it under the table and just promote love is irresponsible and embarrasses The very reason Jesus was on the Cross.)
Of course you are with Lee in your lack of disgust. I would be shocked if you weren't. God seemed to think this was an "EEW" factor in His Word. It's weird that you disagree with him. Typical liberal religion - anything goes except what God desires.
I think what is at the heart of this debate, but which is not being addressed, is the old Is/Ought problem.You can't draw an 'ought' conclusion from an 'is' proposition - at least, not on the surface.
All men should be mortal.
Socrates is a man.
No fact follows from this because, while it shows Socrates should be mortal, it does not imply that he is.
All men are mortal.
Socrates should be a man.
This proves nothing whatsoever (Moral judgments in minor premises cannot ever prove anything) since the middle term is undistributed. This, of course, means we can dispense with considering the argument 'Men should be mortal, Socrates should be mortal etc.'
Finally,
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
This last proposition is important for the following reason: You can substitute the terms with whatever you wish, but you will never and can never, deduce a moral judgment. Moral judgments cannot be derived from facts, period.
The importance of these considerations is that it immediately brings up the question of how, then, do we get moral judgments in the first place?
I know of one way.
I took a toy Millenium Falcon away from my three year old once (for good reasons, of course), and they responded by saying, 'Parents shouldn't take toys from kids!'
Notice the very important fact that they did not say, 'You should not take that Millenium Falcon from me.
He universalized it. But what are the facts? Is there a material (and remember that Materialism is the claim that everything is material) quality about me, my three year old, or about the Millenium Falcon that could possibly allow him to pass logically from facts about these objects to the moral claim that 'No parent should take a toy from a kid' - presumably for all time?
His moral judgment comes from what he wants, and is logically equivalent to saying, 'I want that.'
But what of us adults? Surely we must have a better way!
Consider the logic of a typical argument about politics:
'The President should lower taxes on businesses. He raised them, however.'
What does this prove?
That he raised them does not contradict that he should lower them. There is no logical interaction between the propositions. Nothing new is deduced and nothing is contradicted.
Or consider:
'People shouldn't horde wealth for themselves while others starve to death, but Richie Rich did.'
What does it prove?
X should Y, Z is not Y, ergo nothing.
To understand this we must look beyond the words and look at the speaker. It is a failure to do so that renders most ethical conversations (and the bulk of philosophical ethical systems) meaningless, as David Hume expected to be the case after observing the Is/Ought Problem.
So long as we merely look at the arguments without plunging deeper, we will never solve it.
But question is not, 'what does the proposition 'X should Y' SAY, the question is how does the speaker actually use it.
When we argue against the selfishness of Richie Rich, for instance, we are trying to proves something - we are trying to prove something about Richie Rich from the fact that he does not do what he should. But 'does not' does not contradict or oppose 'should' verbally.
Except that we, like my three year old, are not talking facts.
'Parents,' in my son's argument, 'should not take toys from kids,' not because of any fact, but because he WANTS to have the toy. That is the missing element. It is the goal - the object of his desire - that grounds the moral judgment.
I submit that if we did not assume, imply and understand at every step of the way that we are speaking of a goal, moral language would be jibberish and would be received as jibberish.
In fact, in all such arguments (like the argument against the President and against Richie Rich), the point being proved depends upon taking moral judgments in relation to a goal. Unless you understand that the moral judgment about Richie Rich assumes he should be caring for others, or seeking the well-being of conscious creatures, the two propositions together amount to nothing. The logical procedure of ethical argumentation depends upon this understanding of moral propositions.
So the question is, what is the goal?
Why should Richie Rich care about the hungry?
What is the goal we are seeking, and why?
But more importantly, how can there be a goal, given materialism, where, again, there is only matter? There are no moral facts. The world is everything that, 'is the case,' Wittgenstein wrote - but morals are no part of it, and cannot be learned from it.
It can be more clearly shown that moral judgments depend upon specific assumed goals by adopting the opposite of the unstated goal and observing its impact on the judgment itself. If, for instance, we assume that the goal of a man's life is to get the most money before he dies, then Richie Rich should do as he has done. It is only because we are assuming he ought to be generous, kind, helpful, supportive of other creatures etc. and not assuming the opposite that the moral judgment that he should not horde his wealth appears.
If we wish to maintain that our moral judgments are true, we need, therefore, to address the question of whether or not the goals we are pursuing are right.
First of all, if there ARE goals for life in the first place - and I mean objective goals, not personal-fulfillment goals - then the atheist runs afoul of the Teleological Argument, their denial of which requires the denial that there is a goal (telos) for which man exists (it is the improbability of the universe having attained said goal in man that warrants the teleological inference).
But supposing we have a moral controversy, where one man wants to get rich, and leave the rest to rot, and another man wants him to be generous, what goal do we prefer, and what is the ground of the preference - and what do preferences have to do with facts?
Nothing actually.
To kill or not to kill?
The question is, 'what is the goal?'
Assume that the existence of living things is evil, and see if any of your morals stand - moral judgments to love your neighbor, to save the environment, to foster peace. Assume that suffering is good, and what becomes of moral judgments in support of peace and gentleness?
Then ask yourself honestly if your opposition to suffering and those who cause suffering is based on a fact (hint: it isn't) or is it based on what you want or what someone else wants (and which you empathize with - which means you also want it).
So, with this clarified, given atheism, what TRUTH is there in the grounding moral imperative? Genocide is wrong, you say? Only if it is man's goal to foster the survival of other men - or of that specific race of men. Prove this without reference to human will, and we will have something to talk about. Until then, materialistic morality is jibberish.
Actually, it is not jibberish. It means something, and we can now see what it means. It means, 'I want.'
But when ethics is grounded in wants, two opposite desires possess equal credentials, and the morals they generate have no preference one over the other. Epicurus clarified his ethics by saying that his pursuit of pleasure was not about sex and alcohol, but about sober reasoning. But the point missed by many is the fact that pleasure is subjective! If two people in the same household can disagree utterly on whether fish tastes good or not, why should we expect that every man would get more pleasure out of sober reasoning than sex? For this reason I have to appreciate Cicero's joke, where he says, 'Epicurus boasts that he didn't have a teacher - and this I can easily believe!'
Who decides which desires is 'right' when two wills collide? Shall we appeal once again to our own private desires and goals? (There are, of course, no public desires - which is why Epicurus' ethics is 'ethics' in name only.)
The Christian, on the other hand, if they are correct, receives their moral judgments straight from the one who decides what man, as an object, was made to do. So he, again, if he is correct, can ground his ethics in the received moral judgment, and not pretend that they are rooted in nature, matter or anything else that does not and cannot justify moral judgments.
I have only addressed the one side of this debate, since this is a forum and my space is limited. But I think if you honestly consider it, you can see how the piece this discussion is based on does not even attempt to get to the real meat of ethical reasoning, and simply assumes and asserts an assortment of liberal political goals as good, then declares non-religious children to be better suited for those assumed goals. No atheists in jail. Well, if you want your kids to stay out of jail, then tell them there is no God, maybe. But if man's goal is to know God...
Just remember who it is that wants these kids to stay out of jail - it is the parents, it is the police - it is 'society at large.' But there is no fact here.
I apologize for the length of this post - to be honest it is a lot shorter than I thought it would end up being. I was attempting to bring some clarity, but I understand from the outset that there are probably few who agree and few who want to agree with my understanding of ethics.
The truth is, I don't think ethics fairs any better in theism - at least, not in what I would consider theism. But I simply don't have the space to address the other side right now.
Great point Jake. I like it when people take the time to describe so eloquently what I only have a one liner for.Belief governs reason.
Good points Jake, especially about the goals. Reminds me of Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue (probably a must read for ethics). He argues it is the loss of that end-goal that makes arguing about ethics today a mess, for that end goal was something shared by Aristotle, Christians and others (though they disagreed on the specifics of what the end goal was).
Also I would like to point out the problem with the law of Moses is not about the morality but about the severity of the punishments.People rail against God for severity of punishments that were possibly the social norm at the time(considering they practiced child sacrifice). However they forget that it was Israel that asked for the laws and God that introduced the "get out of jail free" card.
When God gave Moses the ten commandments there were no associated punishments and Moses wrote "He added no more". It was only after Israel asked for law that the punishments were introduced.
David wrote: "Thanks for the reply Stuart, good stuff.
.. "Relevant to the issue of godless vs. god-centered values and ethics." (Hey I did the italics thing! Thanx David)
OK, from Baptists to Buddhists, pretty much everyone who belongs to a belief system tells me their origins/ laws/morals/ethics/whatevers that they are emotionally attached to, are in some way or another associated with some form of Divinity or other.
But from Buddhists to Baptists, absolutely none of them offers me the teensiest bit of good, old-fashioned, down-to-earth, feet-on-the-ground evidence to back the tiniest little bit of the Divinity claim up. Nothing.
Often they will disappear behind a smokescreen of religio-babble and use words like "metaphysical" as excuses for physical events that defy the laws of physics (or even common sense) and name-drop all manner of scholars and philosophers who have also dodged and danced at great length around the all-belief-and-no-evidence issue.
And if I press the issue, the level of emotion will rise and rise, and the Sunday school choir will chant slogans louder and louder, and evidence for Lord Krishna, Lord Buddha, Lord Jesus, Lord Whoever remains absent, and heads are left comfortably in the sand.
Since, from Baptists or Buddhists, I never get a straight "here's the evidence WE have" answer for history/morals/whatevers, or a straight "we don't have anything beyond the writings of earlier believers" answer, I think it more than reasonable to expect, until further notice, that NONE of the morals etc. are Divinely inspired. I am not saying that they are not, however.
So, unless we can first establish that ANY moral code has anything to do anyone's concept of the Divine, the god v godless issue is pointless.
Simply believing does not make it so.
Based on what we don't have, it seems to me that all moral codes and supposed Words of God are simply human writings - derived through experience, cultural interchange and an evolved sense of imagination.
.. "Relevant to the issue of godless vs. god-centered values and ethics." (Hey I did the italics thing! Thanx David)
OK, from Baptists to Buddhists, pretty much everyone who belongs to a belief system tells me their origins/ laws/morals/ethics/whatevers that they are emotionally attached to, are in some way or another associated with some form of Divinity or other.
But from Buddhists to Baptists, absolutely none of them offers me the teensiest bit of good, old-fashioned, down-to-earth, feet-on-the-ground evidence to back the tiniest little bit of the Divinity claim up. Nothing.
Often they will disappear behind a smokescreen of religio-babble and use words like "metaphysical" as excuses for physical events that defy the laws of physics (or even common sense) and name-drop all manner of scholars and philosophers who have also dodged and danced at great length around the all-belief-and-no-evidence issue.
And if I press the issue, the level of emotion will rise and rise, and the Sunday school choir will chant slogans louder and louder, and evidence for Lord Krishna, Lord Buddha, Lord Jesus, Lord Whoever remains absent, and heads are left comfortably in the sand.
Since, from Baptists or Buddhists, I never get a straight "here's the evidence WE have" answer for history/morals/whatevers, or a straight "we don't have anything beyond the writings of earlier believers" answer, I think it more than reasonable to expect, until further notice, that NONE of the morals etc. are Divinely inspired. I am not saying that they are not, however.
So, unless we can first establish that ANY moral code has anything to do anyone's concept of the Divine, the god v godless issue is pointless.
Simply believing does not make it so.
Based on what we don't have, it seems to me that all moral codes and supposed Words of God are simply human writings - derived through experience, cultural interchange and an evolved sense of imagination.
Based on what we don't have, it seems to me that all moral codes and supposed Words of God are simply human writings - derived through experience, cultural interchange and an evolved sense of imaginationthanks Stuart, you are helping me understand the mindset of the atheist.
The fact is every religion is started by someone having a "spiritual" experience, they don't make it up, it just happens. If one, like yourself, were to believe the spirit realm doesn't exist what we are left with is a world full of crazy liars!
Without a paradigm for spiritual reality it's all gibberish. The atheist is a shadow boxer fighting an enemy that doesn't exist in a world full of madmen.
Well said Joshua:". If one, like yourself, were to believe the spirit realm doesn't exist what we are left with is a world full of crazy liars!"
Mankind doesn't invent religions (we are too busy sinning and pursuing pleasure and greed). It takes Satan and demons to create false religions.
For instance: read the quran and the book of mormon; these things are hilarious and dull ramblings... and yet they influence billions of people. That is supernatural and FREAKY!!! Honestly mankind would have written WAY BETTER BOOKS.
Give me Lord Of The Rings over the Quran anyday.
Stuart, you are doing an admirable job of poking holes in a theist view of ethics. But you still have not offered any positive argument for any other sort of ethics. If anything, you are throwing up your own smokescreens. Its not enough to simply negate one view, that leaves us drifting in the abyss of nothingness. You haven't answered any of my other hypotheticals, but I'll ask one more: Let's say I decide you are right and there is no god. I've shaped my entire life on god-based morality. What do I shape my life on now? How do I live? What should my goal be?
Why should I not cheat at my job, stab people in the back, to get to the top? Why should I stay with my wife when things get hard?
Moving on,
What sort of "evidence" are you talking about? This is not a scientific endeavor we can solve in a lab, after all.
I think that all those people, from Baptists to Buddhists, end up with much overlap in their moral codes leads me to think they are all on to something. The universality of religion is, to me, evidence for some divinity, not evidence against it.
I also think that certain things are objectively better. There are always exceptions, but a person who is generous lives an objectively better and more fulfilling life then one who is greedy. To me, this is evidence for god based ethics because in a godless world why wouldn't greed be more satisfying?
haha, wait until Stuart learns from Rod that the reason the Quran is immoral is because Satan and demons wrote it. I wonder if they wrote with a trident?
Lee wrote: "haha, wait until Stuart learns from Rod that the reason the Quran is immoral is because Satan and demons wrote it. I wonder if they wrote with a trident?"
FFS ...! Then again, what more would I expect?
FFS ...! Then again, what more would I expect?
David wrote: "Stuart, you are doing an admirable job of poking holes in a theist view of ethics. But you still have not offered any positive argument for any other sort of ethics."
Oh yes I have. I've said a couple of times that in my view all the sorts of ethics are human ethics - given the absence of anything at all to confirm that the Lord Buddha or anyone else's semi-mythological (or completely fictional) Leader was behind them.
Christians have been using atheistic principals for centuries to dilute, distort and discard the things that Jesus gave them - because Jesus is "God" even when you don't want him to be - in the Hebrew Bible. And Christians (and everyone else in a belief system) will massage and manipulate the bits they do like of "God's" never-changing, yesterday today forever Jesus is the same, into what they want to hear.
Didn't actually pay too much attention to hypos - they must be back up there somewhere. But let's do hypothetical:
My neighbour is Asian (he is) and he lives in a better house than me, and his wife is hotter than mine, and his land is flowing with milk and honey.
Because I'm a Christian I can go to the OT and look at the codes Jesus gave us when he was still in Heaven with his Father Yahweh and maybe the Holy Ghost, and I can conveniently overlook the couple of verses here and there about killing and covetousness and such, and focus my attention on the fact that Huong worships false gods, so I'm instructed to break down his altar, exterminate him, his pet dog and his adult son, and maybe his wife, but his teenage daughter is (hypothetically) still a virgin, so I can keep her as my sex slave - and just in case the other neighbours get upset, my Yahweh will cast a magic spell over their places to keep them in, just like he did with the Holocaust of the Hivites incident, and if his son Mark (he tried to give him a Christian name for crying out loud) is objecting to the Christian purification of his household and putting up a lengthy resistance, Yahweh will just hold the sun steady in the sky for a while so I can finish him off, and if I need any further justification for ethnically cleansing my street of these biblically "unclean" Asians, I can simply refer to Robert's hypothesis (which may have a Divine imprimatur by now, like his earlier work) which tells me that Asian's bear the Mark of Cain in the eye shape (it used to be black skin, but since the whole American Civil War business and Civil Rights, you can't really say that anymore) and there you are, I have God on my side.
However, being a conscientious Christian, I'm going to ask myself the perennial question "what would Jesus do" - and I mean do after he appeared on the planet of his creation through the uterus of a human virgin on the frontier of the Roman Empire.
Jesus told me to sell my cloak and buy a sword - this is 2015, so I sold my Nikes and bought an AK47. Check that one.
Jesus said "do not think that I am come to bring peace to the world". Right with you there Lord on that one.
Jesus told me my enemies would be within my own household, and I think my son has been getting to know Huong's daughter biblically, and I've never heard her cry out, and he's been cheeking me lately - so that's them both gone.
And Jesus told us a parable - but we know it's really about him when he comes back to Earth with the armies of angels to exterminate the Hindus and the homosexuals - about the nobleman and we are to bring his enemies and slaughter them before him. So I'm going to drag Huong's scrawny little Buddhist ass into the nearest church and slit his throat and cut his head right off, just like the faithful Islamic State guys do when they are following God-given ethical guidelines.
Yes, I know I've taken bits and cobbled them together to have the Word of God say what I want it to say. That's how religions work. Just ask your local priest/pastor/rabbi/imam.
I usually find that people who ask me what sort of evidence I require don't have any. People who do, flop it out on the table for everyone to admire. I don't trust bashful people.
As far as a godless ethics code goes, I'm going to pretend that the libraries full of centuries' worth of secular statute books don't exist, and I'm going to examine all the "god-given scriptures" of every culture that claims to have been given a code of ethics on top of a smoky mountain or whatever, and I'm going to notice that they overlap on the plain old common sense stuff that comes through common cultural experiences - like greed and murder and stealing and such - and they direr in aspects that are specifically cultural, which says to me that if "God" is the one Supreme Creator, then "God" wouldn't need to inscribe in stone with his own finger on the top of Mt Sinai that Jews were forbidden to take the name of their ethnic deity Yahweh in vain, but Yahweh/God makes no mention of his name or taking it in vain - or the Sabbath or other Jewish things, and why "God" didn't tell Buddhists not to eat shrimps.
That'll do for this lunchtime rant. Back to work.
You probably noticed I didn't proof this.
Oh yes I have. I've said a couple of times that in my view all the sorts of ethics are human ethics - given the absence of anything at all to confirm that the Lord Buddha or anyone else's semi-mythological (or completely fictional) Leader was behind them.
Christians have been using atheistic principals for centuries to dilute, distort and discard the things that Jesus gave them - because Jesus is "God" even when you don't want him to be - in the Hebrew Bible. And Christians (and everyone else in a belief system) will massage and manipulate the bits they do like of "God's" never-changing, yesterday today forever Jesus is the same, into what they want to hear.
Didn't actually pay too much attention to hypos - they must be back up there somewhere. But let's do hypothetical:
My neighbour is Asian (he is) and he lives in a better house than me, and his wife is hotter than mine, and his land is flowing with milk and honey.
Because I'm a Christian I can go to the OT and look at the codes Jesus gave us when he was still in Heaven with his Father Yahweh and maybe the Holy Ghost, and I can conveniently overlook the couple of verses here and there about killing and covetousness and such, and focus my attention on the fact that Huong worships false gods, so I'm instructed to break down his altar, exterminate him, his pet dog and his adult son, and maybe his wife, but his teenage daughter is (hypothetically) still a virgin, so I can keep her as my sex slave - and just in case the other neighbours get upset, my Yahweh will cast a magic spell over their places to keep them in, just like he did with the Holocaust of the Hivites incident, and if his son Mark (he tried to give him a Christian name for crying out loud) is objecting to the Christian purification of his household and putting up a lengthy resistance, Yahweh will just hold the sun steady in the sky for a while so I can finish him off, and if I need any further justification for ethnically cleansing my street of these biblically "unclean" Asians, I can simply refer to Robert's hypothesis (which may have a Divine imprimatur by now, like his earlier work) which tells me that Asian's bear the Mark of Cain in the eye shape (it used to be black skin, but since the whole American Civil War business and Civil Rights, you can't really say that anymore) and there you are, I have God on my side.
However, being a conscientious Christian, I'm going to ask myself the perennial question "what would Jesus do" - and I mean do after he appeared on the planet of his creation through the uterus of a human virgin on the frontier of the Roman Empire.
Jesus told me to sell my cloak and buy a sword - this is 2015, so I sold my Nikes and bought an AK47. Check that one.
Jesus said "do not think that I am come to bring peace to the world". Right with you there Lord on that one.
Jesus told me my enemies would be within my own household, and I think my son has been getting to know Huong's daughter biblically, and I've never heard her cry out, and he's been cheeking me lately - so that's them both gone.
And Jesus told us a parable - but we know it's really about him when he comes back to Earth with the armies of angels to exterminate the Hindus and the homosexuals - about the nobleman and we are to bring his enemies and slaughter them before him. So I'm going to drag Huong's scrawny little Buddhist ass into the nearest church and slit his throat and cut his head right off, just like the faithful Islamic State guys do when they are following God-given ethical guidelines.
Yes, I know I've taken bits and cobbled them together to have the Word of God say what I want it to say. That's how religions work. Just ask your local priest/pastor/rabbi/imam.
I usually find that people who ask me what sort of evidence I require don't have any. People who do, flop it out on the table for everyone to admire. I don't trust bashful people.
As far as a godless ethics code goes, I'm going to pretend that the libraries full of centuries' worth of secular statute books don't exist, and I'm going to examine all the "god-given scriptures" of every culture that claims to have been given a code of ethics on top of a smoky mountain or whatever, and I'm going to notice that they overlap on the plain old common sense stuff that comes through common cultural experiences - like greed and murder and stealing and such - and they direr in aspects that are specifically cultural, which says to me that if "God" is the one Supreme Creator, then "God" wouldn't need to inscribe in stone with his own finger on the top of Mt Sinai that Jews were forbidden to take the name of their ethnic deity Yahweh in vain, but Yahweh/God makes no mention of his name or taking it in vain - or the Sabbath or other Jewish things, and why "God" didn't tell Buddhists not to eat shrimps.
That'll do for this lunchtime rant. Back to work.
You probably noticed I didn't proof this.
Are there still some here who believe worship of God is necessary for good family values? Is this a topic we should be tackling in an apologetics forum?