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Questions for Atheists, Christians, or anyone interested:
Do you believe in the concept of right and wrong? Is there some ethical code that defines what right and wrong is? If there is no Author of moral or ethical concepts then who gets to decide where the line is drawn?
3) The Problem of Morality
Most atheists claim to have a moral code, but their code lies on a shaky foundation because they suppose that there are no moral absolutes. If there is no God and no moral absolutes, then why is it necessary or important to live a morally upright life? Who has the right to even define what a morally upright life consists of? And why would one person's opinion of what is morally right be any better than someone else's opinion?
Apart from moral absolutes no one can declare something to be right or wrong. He can only share his own personal opinion, which is no better than anyone else's opinion. If he judges something to be wrong, that judgment is subjective and is based on no objective standard. It is only what he thinks is wrong, and others can easily disagree because they have their own subjective opinions.
Problems for Atheists
Ok... Which religion has the right to make absolute moral judgement? Voodoo, Santeria the ancient Greek Gods of yore, The pantheon of the Norse, WHO has the last word here? Silly thread. If we are not mentally ill, we understand that respect for others is a basic precept. Beyond that, can't say. The Gods are silent on this.
Ok... Which religion has the right to make absolute moral judgement? Voodoo, Santeria the ancient Greek Gods of yore, The pantheon of the Norse, WHO has the last word here? Silly thread. If we are not mentally ill, we understand that respect for others is a basic precept. Beyond that, can't say. The Gods are silent on this.
From what I understand, MaryL
we are each judged according to our own words and works.
So whatever values we upheld, and especially what we used to judge others by,
we ourselves are held to our own words and standards.
The Christians preaching Christianity and the Bible are held to follow their own preaching.
The politicians and government are held to corrections by the Constitutional laws or party principles they claimed to follow.
Where they fail, that is where they are judged as hypocrites and answer to their peers.
What we reap we sow. As we judge others, we are judged. What we forgiven unto others is forgiven unto us. The justice we give or live by, either retributive or restorative, we receive in return.
Just a thought. Act on what you know to be true.
Questions for Atheists, Christians, or anyone interested:
Do you believe in the concept of right and wrong? Is there some ethical code that defines what right and wrong is? If there is no Author of moral or ethical concepts then who gets to decide where the line is drawn?
Problems for Atheists3) The Problem of Morality
Most atheists claim to have a moral code, but their code lies on a shaky foundation because they suppose that there are no moral absolutes. If there is no God and no moral absolutes, then why is it necessary or important to live a morally upright life? Who has the right to even define what a morally upright life consists of? And why would one person's opinion of what is morally right be any better than someone else's opinion?
Apart from moral absolutes no one can declare something to be right or wrong. He can only share his own personal opinion, which is no better than anyone else's opinion. If he judges something to be wrong, that judgment is subjective and is based on no objective standard. It is only what he thinks is wrong, and others can easily disagree because they have their own subjective opinions.
Ok... Which religion has the right to make absolute moral judgement? Voodoo, Santeria the ancient Greek Gods of yore, The pantheon of the Norse, WHO has the last word here? Silly thread. If we are not mentally ill, we understand that respect for others is a basic precept. Beyond that, can't say. The Gods are silent on this.
Problems for Atheists
I always find it comical that it's the really angry, self-hating fundies who litter threads with this kind of nonsense.
Problems for Atheists
I always find it comical that it's the really angry, self-hating fundies who litter threads with this kind of nonsense.
And yet you seem drawn to them. Amazed by them. Even to the point in participating in them.
Have a nice weekend.
Problems for Atheists
I always find it comical that it's the really angry, self-hating fundies who litter threads with this kind of nonsense.
And yet you seem drawn to them. Amazed by them. Even to the point in participating in them.
Have a nice weekend.
I'm drawn to them as a way of exposing the fraud that defines so much of the angry, self-hating fundie agenda.
I'll have a great weekend. I'm making sacrificial slaughter of livestock to appease my angry gods. If they get riled up, all hell breaks loose.
Is There Such A Thing As "Right" And "Wrong?"
Yes. Agnostics are right and everyone else is wrong.
And yet you seem drawn to them. Amazed by them. Even to the point in participating in them.
Have a nice weekend.
I'm drawn to them as a way of exposing the fraud that defines so much of the angry, self-hating fundie agenda.
I'll have a great weekend. I'm making sacrificial slaughter of livestock to appease my angry gods. If they get riled up, all hell breaks loose.
You're back. Hi again. You sound so happy and non-angry. Have fun with your sacrificial rites. See ya.
I'm drawn to them as a way of exposing the fraud that defines so much of the angry, self-hating fundie agenda.
I'll have a great weekend. I'm making sacrificial slaughter of livestock to appease my angry gods. If they get riled up, all hell breaks loose.
You're back. Hi again. You sound so happy and non-angry. Have fun with your sacrificial rites. See ya.
Yep. And so are you. Happy animal sacrifice.
A god of love and justice who drowns the world, sends plagues, brings down civilizations, he allows maniacal generals to slay thousands upon his command. He will allow vials of death and disease and chaos and mayhem to reign supreme, and he will let you go to hell for all time for not "choosing correctly".
Well, yeah, either he gets his dead lambs or all hell breaks loose. No wonder you're so angry and self-hating.
YES! I agree with the interpretation of the fall of man as having self-awareness before reaching full spiritual maturity in how to handle the responsibility of knowledge of the laws.
To answer your second point,
I interpret the whole Bible as showing the universal process of humans reaching spiritual or social maturity.
Based on what a Buddhist monk said to summarize the Bible, the OT is about living by the letter of the law, the NT is about living by the spirit of the law.
The NT is about "restorative justice" or living by the spirit of truth, love of justice and peace for all humanity.
The key to fulfilling the process is mutual forgiveness and correction to establish lasting peace and justice.
So that is where faith in Christ Jesus represents faith in the spirit of "Restorative Justice"/Justice with Mercy
that saves humanity, our individual relations broken by wrongdoing, and restoring peace and justice for all.
All our relationships, and stages we go through in life similar to the stages of grief and recovery, follow these same patterns as symbolized in the Bible. The believers see it as man is made in the image of God and reflects the trinity by being of body/mind/spirit; the secular gentiles see it as man made up God and religion by projecting ourselves onto these symbols for our experiences on the physical/psychological/collective levels of humanity.
1. I believe we can align our points and principles. And if they don't, we find out where is the conflict and correct that. Usually I find it is a matter of not defining terms the same, such as using God to mean conflicting concepts, or as in another message not talking about the same thing when we talk about forgiveness so our perceptions are in conflict. these can all be corrected, and it is usually a mutual process, where both people adjust to include the other person's added perspective. Like learning a new language or translating between two languages, making sure we really are referring to parallel equivalents.
2. if people cannot acknowledge something, it is usually from some unforgiven issue inserting a bias against something. this is usually mutual and can be resolved where both people equally forgive and accept differences in experience and how we see/say things.
if it is a factual or information/perception error, the content needs to be addressed.
As long as both people are equally open to seeking the truth, regardless how much both sides need to change in relation to the other, then there is no problem finding and correcting what is causing conflict.
This happens in mediation all the time, the facts and points per se need to be addressed separately from the "emotional factors" in people going through the facilitation process.
3c. Where it probably interferes, is if the ADHERENCE to this view is used to divide and stir conflict, to keep other people away as a BARRIER. So it is a SIGN of some other fear issue going on.
4.PT said:Some beliefs about a personified God have got to be just wrong. How can we have free will if our names were written in the Book of Life from the beginning, or not? Revealed religions have way too many insurmountable contradictions.
4b. As for literal answers to your literal example questions:
4b1. because humans have limited perception, we are not going to know what all is or has happened even if it were all planned out as one huge script from beginning to end.
If you look at how we enjoy movies, even if we know how the story is going to end, we still go through "suspension of disbelief" and go through the ups and down, as if we don't know if the hero is going to make it or not to the happy ending.
4b2. humans already have limits to our free will
we cannot turn into butterflies, cannot put a chicken back into the egg.
So our free will is already limited to natural laws on how the physical laws and world work.
the spiritual laws are the same way.
If I was not meant to be born as a white European male like Thomas Jefferson, but I came out as Emily Nghiem to Vietnamese parents who moved to America and got my education here, that is going to affect how I come out and the choices I follow in life. So when I study and promote Constitutional laws, as an Asian female Democrat, it is going to take a different path than if I were a white male and perceived a different way by society.
Honestly I would never have chosen any such path by my own. I have no interest of my own in history, much less politics and religion. But the problems kept bothering me and gave me no peace, my family and relations with others were all tied to the same process, and that was clearly not my plan or anything I decided or chose. "God's will" or fate is greater than my will not to mess with any reconciliation of conflicts with church and state law. I am the last person on earth to want to get near the politics and corruption of either one.
But I found out that my relations with my parents and family, affect my relations with others, and collectively this affects how all people operate in the world. There is a natural connection by conscience, and not something I can avoid or get away from. It is the way it is. The same natural laws shape and govern all our human relations, individually and collectively, connected by conscience from local to global as one intertwined process.
This is not my choosing, not my free will. (and believe me, I fought with this path worse than Jesus saying take this cup from me. I wasn't so polite and used curse words like hell no I am not going to have anything to do with anything with the church or the state. FU no)
Where free will comes into play is some of these things will not physically take place until I "agree or choose" to accept which choices are going to work mutually with other people choosing things in harmony and for the common good. So that is God's will, to choose what works for the greater good of humanity, as opposed to what is ill will, selfish or not for the greater good and benefit of all people. What is the ideal route? Where we work to establish agreement on that, then we agree on "God's will" and take those steps.
only when I am ready to "choose" to let go and agree to go with the flow and work with the people, steps or process as given, then "my will is aligned with God's will or the collective good will" and things can proceed peacefully.
So we have "free will" in that we must "choose" to forgive and let go of what we thought we wanted, and that cannot be forced. No "forgiveness" or "faith" is ever real if it is forced, it must be "freely chosen"
5a. one step is to distinguish the two. like if arguing over what color to paint the house can be resolved by painting some rooms red and others blue, or painting separate houses.
with politics many of the conflicts now could be resolved by agreeing to separate, and not impose one policy for all people which isn't fair to the groups with different ways or beliefs
As for politically and legally, the check on any religious or political group
is to enforce the same checks and balances and limits on govt as in the Bill of Rights etc.
So for all groups with "Collective" authority, influence and resources,
I would hold them responsible for respecting "due process," equal protection of the laws,
right to petition to redress grievances, etc. to prevent such abuses.
this way, by introducing conflict resolution to redress grievances,
we find the source of the conflict internally BEFORE it is projected externally and collectively as with nazi-fascists or the way both parties are acting right now.
Instead of just checking govt, I would recommend corporations, political parties, religious nonprofit or business institutions, media conglomerates, any group with collective power authority or resources that is greater than a single individual, to adopt some ethical standard on procedures similar to the Bill of Rights and constitutional checks on govt. I know a number of companies or organizations that already have conflict resolution or some intervention/grievance processes built into their policy. I would recommend if not require this for any institution that gets licensed under the state to operate as its own independent entity. In general I would support conflict resolution training and assistance/access to mediation as part of citizenship and civil government, to ensure equal rights and interests are protected at all levels from top to bottom.
Most atheists claim to have a moral code, but their code lies on a shaky foundation because they suppose that there are no moral absolutes.
If there is no God and no moral absolutes, then why is it necessary or important to live a morally upright life?
Who has the right to even define what a morally upright life consists of? And why would one person's opinion of what is morally right be any better than someone else's opinion?
Apart from moral absolutes no one can declare something to be right or wrong. He can only share his own personal opinion, which is no better than anyone else's opinion. If he judges something to be wrong, that judgment is subjective and is based on no objective standard. It is only what he thinks is wrong, and others can easily disagree because they have their own subjective opinions.
Problems for Atheists
Ok... Which religion has the right to make absolute moral judgement? Voodoo, Santeria the ancient Greek Gods of yore, The pantheon of the Norse, WHO has the last word here? Silly thread. If we are not mentally ill, we understand that respect for others is a basic precept. Beyond that, can't say. The Gods are silent on this.
You're back. Hi again. You sound so happy and non-angry. Have fun with your sacrificial rites. See ya.
Yep. And so are you. Happy animal sacrifice.
A god of love and justice who drowns the world, sends plagues, brings down civilizations, he allows maniacal generals to slay thousands upon his command. He will allow vials of death and disease and chaos and mayhem to reign supreme, and he will let you go to hell for all time for not "choosing correctly".
Well, yeah, either he gets his dead lambs or all hell breaks loose. No wonder you're so angry and self-hating.
Hi again. Back so soon to this awful thread.
I don't sacrifice animals. Christ sacrificed Himself in our stead which is much greater than animal sacrifice.
God can be very loving but He can also be vengeful. Most of all, He's just. If He sent floods, plagues, droughts, etc. it's because mankind hated Him and mocked Him and failed to follow His will. Just so you know ... He's planning on a real doozy when Christ returns with His angels.
Matthew 13:38-43
Yep. And so are you. Happy animal sacrifice.
A god of love and justice who drowns the world, sends plagues, brings down civilizations, he allows maniacal generals to slay thousands upon his command. He will allow vials of death and disease and chaos and mayhem to reign supreme, and he will let you go to hell for all time for not "choosing correctly".
Well, yeah, either he gets his dead lambs or all hell breaks loose. No wonder you're so angry and self-hating.
Hi again. Back so soon to this awful thread.
I don't sacrifice animals. Christ sacrificed Himself in our stead which is much greater than animal sacrifice.
God can be very loving but He can also be vengeful. Most of all, He's just. If He sent floods, plagues, droughts, etc. it's because mankind hated Him and mocked Him and failed to follow His will. Just so you know ... He's planning on a real doozy when Christ returns with His angels.
Matthew 13:38-43
Many cults gave similar "end times" predictions. Fear is a powerful motivator.
It is possible to free yourself from the tyranny of fear and superstition.
Hi again. Back so soon to this awful thread.
I don't sacrifice animals. Christ sacrificed Himself in our stead which is much greater than animal sacrifice.
God can be very loving but He can also be vengeful. Most of all, He's just. If He sent floods, plagues, droughts, etc. it's because mankind hated Him and mocked Him and failed to follow His will. Just so you know ... He's planning on a real doozy when Christ returns with His angels.
Matthew 13:38-43
Many cults gave similar "end times" predictions. Fear is a powerful motivator.
It is possible to free yourself from the tyranny of fear and superstition.
Let's compare them then and see if there is a God that really can see the end from the beginning. I'll start:
The God of Abraham said that He would gather the Jews to their homeland on May 15, 1948. He also said that Israel would be born in one day. When the Jews went to bed on the 14th, there was no Israel. When they woke up the next day there was.
Now you....
Yep. And so are you. Happy animal sacrifice.
A god of love and justice who drowns the world, sends plagues, brings down civilizations, he allows maniacal generals to slay thousands upon his command. He will allow vials of death and disease and chaos and mayhem to reign supreme, and he will let you go to hell for all time for not "choosing correctly".
Well, yeah, either he gets his dead lambs or all hell breaks loose. No wonder you're so angry and self-hating.
Hi again. Back so soon to this awful thread.
I don't sacrifice animals. Christ sacrificed Himself in our stead which is much greater than animal sacrifice.
God can be very loving but He can also be vengeful. Most of all, He's just. If He sent floods, plagues, droughts, etc. it's because mankind hated Him and mocked Him and failed to follow His will. Just so you know ... He's planning on a real doozy when Christ returns with His angels.
Matthew 13:38-43
Many cults gave similar "end times" predictions. Fear is a powerful motivator.
It is possible to free yourself from the tyranny of fear and superstition.
Many cults gave similar "end times" predictions. Fear is a powerful motivator.
It is possible to free yourself from the tyranny of fear and superstition.
Let's compare them then and see if there is a God that really can see the end from the beginning. I'll start:
The God of Abraham said that He would gather the Jews to their homeland on May 15, 1948. He also said that Israel would be born in one day. When the Jews went to bed on the 14th, there was no Israel. When they woke up the next day there was.
Now you....
Why would you offer such silliness?
Where, precisely did any god "say" he would gather the Jews to their homeland on May 15, 1948?
Now you....
I expected my question would go unanswered.Let's compare them then and see if there is a God that really can see the end from the beginning. I'll start:
The God of Abraham said that He would gather the Jews to their homeland on May 15, 1948. He also said that Israel would be born in one day. When the Jews went to bed on the 14th, there was no Israel. When they woke up the next day there was.
Now you....
Why would you offer such silliness?
Where, precisely did any god "say" he would gather the Jews to their homeland on May 15, 1948?
Now you....
Can you predict the future?
God gave the timeline to Jeremiah. Daniel calculated it. You can too. Keep in mind that Hebrew years are 360 days in a year, and not the 365 we use.
Hi again. Back so soon to this awful thread.
I don't sacrifice animals. Christ sacrificed Himself in our stead which is much greater than animal sacrifice.
God can be very loving but He can also be vengeful. Most of all, He's just. If He sent floods, plagues, droughts, etc. it's because mankind hated Him and mocked Him and failed to follow His will. Just so you know ... He's planning on a real doozy when Christ returns with His angels.
Matthew 13:38-43
Many cults gave similar "end times" predictions. Fear is a powerful motivator.
It is possible to free yourself from the tyranny of fear and superstition.
Most cults borrow from Scripture. It's no wonder that they want to try to copy the true religion while placing their own spin on things. That's been happening since Christ delivered His message to His disciples.
