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 20:40:14 GMT
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Viewed:
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631 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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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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Perhaps I was too light in my characterization. While I think that
brother/sister unions are deeply taboo, I also believe that they are
pathological, and that their “wrongness” possibly stems from genetics.
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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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I have to believe that God is good. Anything done in God’s name that isn’t good
is suspect IMO. A fig tree bears figs, not dates. A Godly person’s work is
good, not evil.
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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.
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We have replaced God with machines. We need both.
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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.
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I have no use for highlighting the barbarism of atheists but to merely point out
that atheism isn’t an advancement on religion.
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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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You may indeed be correct, especially in the light of today’s muslim terrorists
who adhere to an understanding that is, for all intents and purposes, 500 years
behind the times. They certainly are using technology to murder as efficiently
as they can.
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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 will never know until I die for certain whether what I believe is in fact
true. I don’t question my faith, because it is my faith that gives me hope.
It gives me strength; it gives me purpose. If I don’t have that, I loose my
reason for existing. It is not intellectually dishonest at all to stop
questioning it, because my intellect does me no good in the arena of the
infinite. I think it is intellectually dishonest to reject the concept of God
because of lack of proof when in fact by definition this is not possible.
Further, it is Science that is intellectually dishonest by not acknowledging its
own leap of faith with respect to the origin of the universe. Belief in God and
belief in Science both require faith.
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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?
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Communism is fundamentally flawed. Our system works because we believe in the
rights of freedom and liberty as bestowed upon us by God. Without this
recognition, people are subject to the domination of governments and regimes.
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Or do
you accept that Reagan’s outspend-them-until-they’re-bankrupt policy was
involved?
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That certainly hastened their demise.
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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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If people respected each other’s rights, any form of government would work
(including anarchy).
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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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I”m curious. Have you an example in mind of a replacement that is better IRL?
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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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lol We are here to experience the greatest gift to its fullest extend that we
have ever been given-- life, and to help others experience it as well.
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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?
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Very interesting question. It is certainly possible in part. But I would have
to ask-- what would be the motivation for doing so? Though much of doing God’s
work involves meeting people’s physical needs, the Gospel also provides for
people’s spiritual needs-- namely Hope, Comfort, Courage, Strength. Such
wouldn’t be provided by an atheist I would imagine. Existentialism is a hard
sell;-)
JOHN
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