Subject:
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Re: Holy crap! (was Re: The partisian trap in California)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 15 Oct 2003 17:56:00 GMT
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Viewed:
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715 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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The fact is that we as a society need to draw the line (legally)
somewhere. Perhaps you would care to defend someone’s “right” to marry
their sister or brother?
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Absolutely, if they’re both legally consenting adults. If the problems
inherent in genetic problems inbreeding can be overcome, I don’t even know
why they shouldn’t be allowed to have children.
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Then we disagree.
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Aside from these genetic issues, on what basis would you prevent
brother/sister marriages?
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Cultural values.
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You may believe that, but it’s hardly a fact. Great atrocity also comes
from religion, as Hop-Frog has already aptly shown from the actual text of
actual scripture.
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So what do you conclude about that? That religion is bad or evil? Shoot
the messenger, not the message.
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I’m talking about early OT stuff, like God immolating priests who used the
wrong incense. That’s not God’s followers misinterpreting His Word; that’s
God Himself acting immorally.
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As far as we (or they) were able to ascertain God’s will. I start from a point
that God is Absolute Morality, Absolute Goodness. Any perception of God that is
less than that reflects misunderstanding.
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I am 100% atheist; do you therefore assert that it is impossible
for me to have non-religion-based morality?
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Eventually, yes. I believe that there is no compelling reason to be good
without God.
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I would go further and say that there is no transcendent “good” or “evil.”
That’s not to say that these concepts are wholly arbitrary, but I argue that
they are artifacts of our evolution as social organisms.
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We disagree. I would define God as “Good”, and the absence of God “Evil”.
Since you are atheistic, your assertion would make sense.
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The compelling reason to be “good,” in the sense that you describe, is
societal pressure consistent with evolutionary pressures.
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Hmm. I don’t see humanity as a whole progressing towards goodness. On the
contrary, the most horrific acts of barbarism in history occured in the 20th
century.
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God is holy, mysterious, and good. Characterizations of God other than that
are at best inaccurate.
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Without being (particularly) dense, I’m not sure exactly what “holy” means.
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Holy would be ultimate goodness, worthy of worship and adulation.
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However, I’ve said before that if God (or the Deity of one’s choice) is
beyond human comprehension, then there is no way to assess His goodness or
holiness, and He’s only mysterious if He actually exists. And, if He does
exist, then He could be transcendently vile, cruel, and evil, but if He
convincingly pretends to be good, how would you know?
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You can’t; it’s all faith.
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In short, there’s no way, short of a pure leap of faith, to conclude that God
has any particular characteristic (except mysteriousness).
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Exactly.
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“Derived from” does not mean “wholly beholden to.” I think we as a society
will have made real progress once we can divorce ourselves from the fiction
that selective quotiation of 2000+-year-old myths are the best foundation
for morality, society, or law.
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How is this possible without the wholesale erradication of religion? Or do
you feel that this would be a Good Thing®? I believe that religion keeps
man from the brink of chaos and gives us meaning in life.
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I absolutely think that the eradication of religion (and the willingness to
believe in other unsubstantiated fictions, such as astrology, Jon Edward, or
trickle-down economics) would be incredibly beneficial to humanity.
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Again, we disagree. I would point to the failure of Russian Communism, but that
is another debate. I would assert when religion is eradicated, something
replaces it, and that something is not necessarily better.
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Without (religion), we are lost and doomed to self-destruction.
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But which religion?
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I should have said, “without God, we are lost and doomed to self-destruction”.
Religion is merely a particular group’s understanding of God.
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Besides which, there is no evidence that we, like countless species before
us, are not ultimately “doomed” to extinction. I find great comfort in that,
in fact; we likely won’t ever be powerful enough to do any real damage to the
universe at large!
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Seriously, why would you care if we blow up the whole universe?
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If religion makes people feel better, that’s swell. But that doesn’t mean
it’s correct. An uncomfortable truth is better than a comforting falsehood.
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Religion (talking about Christianity here) is not about “feeling good”. It is
about how we treat and serve each other. We love God by serving humanity. To
save our lives we must loose them to God (in service to humanity).
JOHN
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