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Was it me?
morality is a set of behaviors and attitudes that facilitate voluntary, cooperative, and mutually beneficial relationships.
of course, tyrants hate every aspect of this.
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If God were real, you wouldn’t need a book
- Thread starter domer76
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of course, tyrants hate every aspect of this.
So you admit to being in a position you cannot say what the Nazis did was objectively wrong by a universal standard of absolute right and wrong.
And you are in no position to say ritual human sacrifice or female genital mutilation are really and truly wrong because they are social conventions of those cultures.
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
MAGAts loooove Nazis. They are weak both morally and physically thus requiring a Daddy to protect them.
Monad Portal
Was it me?
Monad Portal
Was it me?
what's a woman?
ZenMode
Well-known member
I disagree, but that's a separate topic.
Absolutely not.
Yes. Lots of immoral behaviors were acceptable, and endorsed by the Bible/God, thousands of years ago. Man, who wrote the Bible and was the determiner of right/wrong and moral/immoral, was far more barbaric and far less civilized in OT times and less barbaric in NT times, which is why God changed his mind about what was moral/immoral in the NT.
Maybe. Maybe not. Someone(s) had ronstaet the conversation that questioned certain behaviors. It could have been me!
Yes. Morality has improve from OT to NT and continues to improve today, though ,even among Christians, there is disagreement because some are slower to adjust because some want to hold on to the barbaric morality of their God's book longer than others.
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Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
Atheism is the religion of communism, as proved by both Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. They murdered millions of innocent people in the name of an atheist state.
As Lord Acton is famous for saying, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely".
China’s Cultural Revolution was a power grab from within the government, not from without, Stanford sociologist finds
China’s Cultural Revolution – a rebellion that followed Chairman Mao’s appeal in 1966 to reassert communist ideology in China – was a brutal conflict that according to new calculations by Stanford sociologist Andrew Walder led to the deaths of 1.6 million people.
ZenMode
Well-known member
Correlation doesn't mean causation.
Atheist, agnostics and religious people of all types have come up with bad ideas and done terrible things. That doesn't mean their religious views were the direct cause of that. For example, I bet that every single school shooter, in the US, has eaten french fries.
In some cases it does. Islamic fundamentalists are known to slice up the genitals of their females and murder homosexuals specifically because of their religious views.
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There is no universal standard of absolute right and wrong in your moral relativism.
You have no basis to say there is an absolute right or wrong.
In a world where nothing is real but matter and energy, morality is a delusion. It's not based on any objective truth. All you have are opinions and social conventions that could change with time and whim.
ZenMode
Well-known member
Again, there are two separate questions. One is whether or not the Christian God/Jesus IS the determiner of absolute right/wrong and moral and immoral. I'm saying that is clearly not the case based on a lot of evidence... evidence that also adds to my belief that there is no Christian God.
The other question is whether or not there is an objective basis of right/wrong and moral/immoral.
The arrest, oppression and murder of Christians and Muslims in the USSR, Buddhists in communist Cambodia and China, and of priests and bishops in revolutionary France was a direct result of the atheism of state authorities. It wasn't just a few rogue people committing those crimes.
You may desire to hold out religion as a uniquely vile form of cruelty and injustice, but that is turning a blind eye to the crimes of atheism, capitalism, socialism, science, colonialism.
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
Oh, so that only works for religions not atheism. Got it. Thanks!
Religion, atheism, capitalism, socialism, science, colonialism have all killed many people.Oh, so that only works for religions not atheism. Got it. Thanks!
Anyone who is attempting to hold out religion as somehow being particularly and uniquely responsible for cruelty and death in the world has an agenda and an axe to grind.
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
Agreed, which explains why the atheist heroes, Joseph and Mao, had no problem murdering millions of people in the name of stamping out religion.
As the atheist hero Karl Marx preached:
“Religion is the opium of the people. It is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of our soulless conditions.”
Why Stalin Tried to Stamp Out Religion in the Soviet Union | HISTORY
Joseph Stalin led a uniquely brutal campaign against religion and religious leaders.
Many atheists behave morally because they have a moral conscience imprinted on their mind which is somehow more than just matter and energy, and more than is required by simple scientific Darwinian survival. I think that's why they stumble around so much trying to defend moral relativism.Agreed, which explains why the atheist heroes, Joseph and Mao, had no problem murdering millions of people in the name of stamping out religion.
As the atheist hero Karl Marx preached:
“Religion is the opium of the people. It is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of our soulless conditions.”
Why Stalin Tried to Stamp Out Religion in the Soviet Union | HISTORY
Joseph Stalin led a uniquely brutal campaign against religion and religious leaders.www.history.com
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
It's social conditioning. Europeans, culturally, are antisemitic. Americans are culturally racist. Education seems to mitigate those issues.
Culture, by its very nature, is immersive. It's all around us in many ways be it the overt claims of bigots (be they racial, sexist or religious), the more subtle influences of media (especially television including entertainment older than a couple generations), and local cultures of friends, family and work associates. Culture is very difficult to change and overt attempts to change it are often met with resistance. "The Culture Wars" being a common observation.
IMHO, like the story of the Tortoise and the Hare, slow and steady wins the race. Education is the key. Not "Whites bad, blacks good" or any other finger-pointing but teaching the value of tolerance and teamwork. This is one of the top reasons why I believe eliminating the draft had a negative impact upon what used to be the Great American Melting Pot. We were no longer melting together, but subdividing ourselves into enclaves.
The Impact of Education on Inter-Group Attitudes: A Multiracial Analysis - PMC
How does education affect racial attitudes? Past studies focus almost exclusively on Whites’ attitudes toward Blacks, neglecting important minority populations. This study extends previous research by analyzing the effects of education on beliefs ...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Culture wars: How identity became the center of politics in America
The so-called culture wars taking over politics ahead of the 2024 presidential election have been decades in the making.
abcnews.go.com
Not going to get much chance to agree with you often, Zen...so I will take this opportunity to do so.
Anyone who "believes" the god of the Bible is actually a GOD...and who attempts to justify or rationalize the many disgusting and reprehensible actions and commands of that god...has no real self-esteem. The god, as I have indicated in several posts through the years, seems to be a god invented by a relatively unsophisticated, unknowledgeable, superstitious people who had many enemies with barbarous, vengeful, wrathful, unforgiving, demanding, murderous, petty gods. In to combat those gods, the people (ancient Hebrews) made their invented god a particularly barbarous, vengeful, wrathful, unforgiving, demanding, murderous, petty god...who could easily kick the asses of their enemies' a relatively unsophisticated, unknowledgeable, superstitious people.
Rationalizing the killing of the "first born" of Egypt** is pathetic. Rationalizing the "commands" of the god enumerated in Leviticus and Deuteronomy is even more pathetic.
The god seems to me (it would be my guess) about as real as the gods of Egypt, Greece, Rome, and Scandinavia.
I can easily understand the ancient Hebrews inventing the god, I am dismayed that any modern people still feel the god is what the ancient Hebrews thought it was.
**Pharoah was almost certainly a "first born"...as were the fathers of many of the babies killed. I wonder why they were not killed.
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
The same goes for all ancient cultures. Humans, by our very nature, are both curious and problem-solvers. Solving the problems of survival on a hostile planet is conducive to ensuring one's progeny, much less themselves, can live to a ripe old age.
All ancient religions tend to focus upon natural phenomena of which humans have little to no control: volcanoes, storms, flash floods, drought, etc. Thor was the God of Thunder. Pele is the Hawaiian Goddess of Volcanoes. Poseidon is the Greek God of the Sea.
The ancients realized that the first step to solving a problem is to identify the problem. If storms are a problem, then finding a way to appease the Storm god is reasonable. It's common among many ancient religions to offer prayers and sacrifices to their particular god, be those sacrifices human, animal or vegetable.
The story of Cain and Abel is more than just one brother murdering another, but the reason behind the murder: a dispute over sacrifices.
The question about why a God needs material sacrifices is a very sophisticated question, but the behavior seemed perfectly natural to less sophisticated cultures.
Genesis 4:3-5
3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord.
4 And Abel also brought an offering—fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering,
5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.
ZenMode
Well-known member
Well, yes. Atheist generally don't have books and other imaginary beings pushing them to do things.Oh, so that only works for religions not atheism. Got it. Thanks!
So no defense or rationalization of moral relativism?
You are obsessed with complaining about Christianity. All I'm saying is that there seems to be a universal moral law humans cultivate which seems to somehow be more than just matter and energy, and which is more than the requirements for scientific Darwinian survival.
God didn't write either the Old testament or the NT.
They were written by men. Your complaints should be directed towards those men.
The Hebrew scribes didn't get God right, Galen didn't get medical science right, and Aristotle didn't get physics right.
But that doesn't mean they were not basically on the right track in probing the boundaries of a higher truth or higher reality.