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 19:02:43 GMT
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Viewed:
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599 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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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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Really? So you’re not saying that there’s an absolute “wrongness” in such a
marriage? I confess, that surprises me. And if our culture evolved (despite
the best efforts of hardcore traditionalists), then you’d agree that there’s
nothing inherently wrong with a brother/sister marriage (other than the
aforementioned genetic issue)?
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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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Unfortunately, that’s an escape clause copout for absolutely anything at all,
and it thereby elminates the value of anything in the bible or in any other
apologetic work.
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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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But it’s also (and probably not coincidentally) the period of greatest
technological advancement in human history; the downside is that our societal
development has not kept pace.
However, your point is often phrased as “look at what these atheists did,” in an
attempt to show the inherent evil forestalled only by the light of faith. Since
you and I have discussed that very issue before, I’ll take it as admissable to
our current debate.
But can you say that every Jew murdered in the holocaust was killed by an
atheist? Every serf killed under Stalin’s campaign was killed by an atheist?
Every citizen massacred by Pol Pot was killed by an atheist? I would suggest
that, although the dictators themselves rejected/suppressed religion, it is
unlikely that all of their followers were equally atheistic. Therefore, the
actions of those non-atheist murderers must be explained before atheism can
uniquely be condemned for genocidal mania of this kind.
Additionally, I’d say that the only reason that the Inquisitors wasn’t able to
kill more people is that they lacked the technology to do it. If they’d had the
industrial age efficiency of the 20th century, then the Inquisition would
certainly have murdered many more than it did.
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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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Okay, but that doesn’t do me any good. How about this: do you ever question
your faith? Do you accept that your faith could be incorrect? That is, how do
you, as a finite, biochemical organism, conclude with certainty that your
assessment of the infinite is correct? If the answer is “faith” once again,
then I can only infer that the statement “I have faith” is the same as “I’ve
stopped questioning it.” That, to me, is the height of intellectual dishonesty,
if only to oneself.
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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.
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Do you suggest that Russian Communism failed because it was atheist? Or do
you accept that Reagan’s outspend-them-until-they’re-bankrupt policy was
involved? Either way, Russian “Communism” was not real communism, but was in
fact an oligarchy made up of a few wealthy hardliners (much like our current
administration in that regard) who recognized that religion is another form of
power-control that they needed to dominate in order to rule the masses.
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I would assert when religion is eradicated, something replaces it, and
that something is not necessarily better.
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I would agree with that. Sometimes the replacement is better, sometimes it’s
worse, and sometimes it’s just another religion.
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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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In the immediate sense, I would be annoyed if I knew that my life were about to
end because of it. Likewise, I would be saddened to know that my progeny would
die if the universe ended in the near future. But in an absolute sense, I would
care because, to the best of my knowledge, I prefer to be alive rather than
dead, not to mention my evolutionarily-developed compassion for my fellow living
organisms. Once I’m dead, though, there’ll be no “me” to care one way or the
other, so I can only speculate upon it from the vantage of my current existence.
And why would you care if we blew up the universe? Wouldn’t that send more
people to God all the more quickly? That sounds like a cause for rejoicing!
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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 lose them to God (in service to humanity).
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Can I, as an atheist, work to the betterment of humanity without doing God’s
work?
Dave!
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