Examples of non-Christian Moral systems.

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If people fail to respect God's authority in the morals their society adheres to the society will eventually either fall apart or not be free.

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That's actually not true.Some of the best, most free and egalitarian places to live in the world are secular countries in which most people are not religious, such as Sweden and Denmark.Considering that the US is one of the most religious and Christian countries in the world, yet we kill each other with guns at a ridiculously high rate should tell you that something might be flawed in your hypothesis.

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Any objective person can find moral truth by conscience or reason apart from the Bible. But without God's authority, these are just his opinions.

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So, what you are saying is that, in effect and in practical ways, there is no difference?If I am judging two people based upon their actions, and they are both moral, I have no way of knowing if either is a believer or not.So, from a moral code perspective, and the perspective of what is good for society, there is no benefit to belief, only to having a moral code.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 07-02-2004 08:02 AM

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Take this passage and the passage that commands husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church and you can obviously classify spousal abuse as immoral. Not to mention all of the other passages that deal with relationships.

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Well, there's quite a bit about relationships in the Bible that doesn't turn out too good for women.There's that whole bit about women not being allowed to speak in church.There's also the bit in Genesis in which God punishes all women for Eve's sin by putting them under the domination of men forever.In the OT, it is clear that the rape of a woman is not a crime against her, but a crime against her father or husband, because she was considered property. A raped daughter was useless to a father, so he had to be compensated, either with cash, or by the rapist marrying his victim.Paul tells wives to submit themselves to their husbands in every thing, as though their husbands were god.

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I know you envy our dental care.

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I envy your dental care, because I don't have it, even though I live in the US, just like you do.See, it's not covered under our insurance anymore. Too expensive for the employer.So, now we pay out of pocket, so now I will get a cleaning once a year instead of twice, and I won't be getting x-rays, because we can't afford it.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 07-02-2004 08:49 AM

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Money alone does not make it slavery, especially like the kind of slavery we had here in America.

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Tell me, are you saying that slavery of any kind is good?

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In the sense that if someone wanted to be a slave. Then it would be fine. If it was widely accepted way back then and people didn't have a problem with it. including the slaves themselves, then it would be fine.
To them maybe being a slave was like having a job.

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..except the for the whole "being owned by another human being" thing, not being paid anything, not ever being allowed to say no to anything your master wants you to do, not having any freedom to go or do anything you want to do, yeah, I guess it's exactly like having a job.

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Or maybe it was a means to survival. Nothing was easy back then, and you couldn't just walk down to the local grocery store and pick up a loaf of bread and a glass of wine.

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It's all relative.

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So, are the people in the OT who's lands were invaded, all the male adults and children killed, and all the women and cattle taken as spoils of war, happy about it?The women, I mean. The women who were taken and enslaved. Was it pretty much just a job to them, according to you?

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I mean this in the sense that maybe not all slavery was bad back then.

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Do you have any evidence beyond the Bible that support your notion that slavery in that area and during that time was a lot like having a job and not very much like what we think of as human bondage?

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I am not including modern day salvery, or slavery that is against people's will. Those are bad IMO.

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OK, so slavery against people's will is bad.Isn't the definition of slavery is that you are owned by someone else?Regardless of how the slaves are treated, do you really think that any owning of a human being by another human being could ever be considered good, just, and moral?It's amazing to me the lengths people will go to to rationalize and make rosy the ugly parts of their religion's or country's histories.

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I do have dental care, and I've had a temporary cap on my tooth for the past year. To get the permanent cap and bridge would cost $1,500.00 with insurance, and that's more money than I see at once, ever.

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Yeah, ain't health care in the US great, if you can afford it?

Yep, you get great care in the US as long as you are perfectly healthy.(laughs bitterly)

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Just MHO, but I think slavery had a very essential place back in the day. How else are you going to assimilate the people that you just conquered into your society? I mean seriously, supposing we were imperialistic and decided to make Iraq a sovereign territory of the US, all hell would break loose. The only way peace and order would be established in the American state, Iraq is by iron discipline and by initially giving the conquered no rights. After many years time to cool down and get humbled and accept US culture (and dare I say beliefs) and allow any plans of rebellion to die off, offer them citizenship... I think that is pretty much how slavery worked back then in Israel. Slavery in the 19th century US was totally different, because we didn't conquer them and we didn't offer them freedom and we became racist against them which did not permit them to be assimilated into our society.

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Oh dear, where to begin?In the OT, the Egyptians enslaved the Jews.Was that a "very essential" thing to have happened?Was that just and good, because it's exactly what you are describing when the Jews did it.They "assimilated" Moses, didn't they, and yet he rose up and freed the Jews later. Why would he do that if slavery was good?I find it pretty creepy that you are not filled with revulsion, as I am, at the idea of slavery EVER being justified, for any reason.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 07-04-2004 12:33 AM

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No, but maybe it was a long time ago in some sort of fashion.
Maybe 2000 years from now, we will look back at how we live, once we get freed from this life we live, and say was it ever right?

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What kind of moral relativism are you pushing here?I thought that Christians were all about moral absolutes, but here you and Hangdawg are hedging on the moral jusifications for slavery, and here I, the Agnostic, am arguing that slavery of any kind is always immoral.The next time you or hangdawg try to make that "nonbelievers can't be moral because it's all relative to them" argument, I'm going to refer you right back here.

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The problem is that men are sinful so they will never be able to create a completely correct moral code. Society made of fallible men has never created a perfect moral code. There are two forces working in those who create such codes: sin/arrogance/subjectivity and humility/objectivity/good.

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What a negative view of humanity, and very sad.I think that people are basically good and are pretty naturally adept at understanding issues of fairness and justice, even from an early age. Given the right love and discipline as children, most people grow up to pretty much do the right thing most of the time.

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The benefit of belief is that it completely and firmly establishes the moral code and prevents deviation from the code by giving God's authority to it.

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That is interesting to read considering your moral relativistic take on slavery a couple of messages ago.Belief in God doesn't establish moral codes; people do. Religion, which is a subset of society, serves to indoctrinate people into moral codes, but it is hardly necessary.

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I am not saying a society's government must mandate belief; this is disastrous indeed. But a society's believing rulers (in our case the people) can determine laws based on their beliefs (and good sense). When they all drop God's authority and a single moral standard, the battle of subjective opinions begins. Some might say this is good, but...

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But everyone, especially believers, base their morals on subjective opinions; namely, their own.

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In a free self-governed society, adherence to a standard moral code is absolutely essential because individual integrity is what keeps the society running.

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Agreed.

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Other societies have maintained adherence to a moral code apart from God through strict social structure (from slaves to aristocrats) or iron discipline.

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...or in the US, with a constitutional democracy.

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In a monarchy, the society is only dependent on the integrity of a monarch. In a free Republic the society is only dependent on the integrity of the acheivers (those who have already demonstrated integrity). In a democracy the society is dependent on the integrity of ALL it's citizens, yet time and time again when people are given a choice, most will choose wrongly, thus democracy has earned the term "mob rule".

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I disagree.When people are given an INFORMED choice, they often choose right.If the US people have made nothing but a long series of wrong choices, why are we currently the most powerful and wealthy country in the world?

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We have practically become a democracy. When the majority of our people lose their moral base and God's authority in it

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...except in our government, the authority comes from the people, not God or gods.

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and step foot on the shifting sands of modern relativistic philosophy,

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...like "sometimes slavery is neccessary and good"?That kind of moral relativism?

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their integrity will be wiped out, because as usual, when given a choice the average joe makes the subjective one: the wrong one.

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I think the average Joe makes many perfectly good, moral choices every day.You have a really terrible view of humanity, you know that? How depressing to live your life thinking that everybody is bad by nature.OTOH, I suppose you get to feel superior because you have figured all of this out already, eh?

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The moral absolute is that slavery in itself is not evil, but is just another social institution. However, like everything else it can be perverted.

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Wow.The ownership of one human being by another human being is not evil, according to you, and is just another social institution?I sure am glad I'm not a Christian.They are some radical ideas about morality.Did you know they don't have any moral objections to slavery?

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How very sad that you are so divorced from reality...

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Ahhh, the arrogance of Christian youth.Yes, please instruct all of us on the nature of reality, oh wise one.

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It IS very sad if humanity is all we're living for anyways, so I can see how it would be hard for you to accept this, since doing so would destroy any motivation to make a difference in this life.

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Interesting that I have a LOT of motivation to make a difference in this life, because, as far as I can tell, it's the only life I've got.Tell me, have you done much reading on Humanisic philosophy? I strongly suspect you have not, because you are making ignorant mistakes regarding it.

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What if you and I met at the local coffee shop to debate our views in person. What if the argument became a little heated and I just out of the blue told you to go sexually amuse yourself and then gave you few slaps in the face. What do you think would be your first urge immediately afterwards?

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I know what my first urge would be, but I am a grown up and can choose to act on my urges in a number of ways.I would probably run away and call the police. I would probably reflexively try to shield myself from your blows.

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It is only after we gain control over our will that we can hold back our sinful urges.

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Right. That's what teaching children the self-discipline they need to follow the rules is all about.

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As I pointed out this is why self-discipline works so well in the Eastern religions. The thing is that they believe they are really good, but have to "realize" this and our good will then materialize. But they also place huge amounts of effort into becoming more self-disciplined. If humans are naturally good, why is self-discipline SOOO necessary to become good? Of course if we attain any freedom from subjectivity at all we also have urges to do good to others.

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But everyone who lives with other people will have learned some degree of seslf-discipline, regardless of belief, because the group will enforce the behaviors that are generally best for the group.This is basic sociology.

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If humans were naturally good, then when I cussed you out and slapped you in the face a few times, you'd IMMEDIATELY have the urge to hug me or bake me a pie or something and it would take self-discipline to start doing bad things.

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Silly example.Self defensse isn't "bad".It wouldn't be good to hug you in that situation, it would be stupid.I will agree that humans can be violent when we are not taught to use our intellects.

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There is potential to do both good and bad in all of us.

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I agree.However, I choose to focus on the good and positive in our nature and you choose to focus on the bad and negative in our nature.I think that is depressing and leads only to guilt, shame, and a life focused on the punitive.I don't want to live like that. It's too depressing.Just to be clear, I hold to the position that humans generally choose to do the right thing.After thinking about it more, I do not think that humans are inherently good, nor do I think they are inherently bad.

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The problem is that even the slightest amount of bad makes us unacceptable to God's perfect Righteousness and Justice... but you do not understand this, so I won't go into it again.

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God made us this way; imperfect, so God made us unworthy.

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How does this explain the French revolution or the Nazi's or the Inquisition or Saddam's and countless dictator's evil regimes? Oh. Right. Their environment caused it all...

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Well, the French revolution was precipitated by the have-nots rebelling against the haves because were tired of the INJUSTICE of it all. the same with the Nazis, except their sense of outrage was misdirected.

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Everyone bases their morals to some extent on subjective experience and reason. It is the Bible that gives us confirmation or refutation of what this has found and lets us know with certainty what is right and wrong.

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...and yet, I believe slavery is ALWAYS wrong, and you, drawing from the Bible, are not so sure it is always wrong.

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Since the Bible did not come from us, but God, it is not self-made and, which is more, it is truth, and therefore provides an objective view of the world.

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Men did not write the Bible?Men did not comprise the Council of Nicea?Men have not translated it thousands of times over the millenia?King James wasn't a man?You, as your own interpreter of what you read in the Bible, are not human?

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and where does the people's moral authority come from?

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Themselves.Societies reach general consensus on what is good for societies as a whole.If it's true, as you say, that the only correct morality is the code found in the Judeo/Christian bible, then it would be clear by their actions that these are the most peaceful, loving, humane societies.We do not see this.

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To what extent have you experienced the real world? How often as I asked before do you get out and talk to ALL different kinds of people with ALL different kinds of views?

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You cannot explain all the hate, violence, bitterness, misery, persecution, destruction, poverty, perversion etc... in human history by saying humans are inherently very good.

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It doesn't matter what I've done or you've done.It's arrogant for anyone to think they have it all figured out, and especially arrogant to think this when one is still a teenager.It is the arrogance of youth, born out of the limitations of your limited time on the planet. Very natural, but still arrogance.You choose to focus on the negative, I choose to focus on the positive.Anyway, as I said, after thinking about things I am not saying that people are inherently good or bad by nature, but that given the choce, most people choose to do good rather than evil.Not all the time, and only as much as they are capable given the values they were raised in.I think it's harder in some ways to be good to each other in a capitalist society like the US where individuality is so valued, and easier to be good to each other in a society like many Asian or African cultures where the group is valued over the individual.

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You choose to focus on the good and positive and somewhat ignore the bad and explain it away, saying "Oh people weren't informed enough" etc.

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Oh, no, you have this wrong.I think that people need to ALWAYS take responsibility for their own adult actions, barring severe psychological impairment.However, it seems to me that you are inappropriately thinking of humans as sinful, or bad, by nature.I guess I consider our natures to be both good and bad, with our cultures and intellects influencing what behaviors are accepted or approved of or not by others and ourselves.

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This is ignoring part of reality. I don't choose to focus on the good or bad. I am only demonstrating the bad in us here to prove that we are inherently bad.

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...and inherently good.Both.

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I know that we all have a constant battle going on in us to choose one over the other. If you ignore your enemy (bad), he will overtake you.

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Ignoring our dark sides isn't good, but neither is is healthy to focus on "man's sinful nature" all the time. What about our great capacity to be altruistic, or for love, or for selflessness? Why not focus on proactive promotion of our nobler aspects rather than condemnation of our less admirable traits?

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Well, I read the humanist manifestos for a class last year and remember thinking that it was a lot of B.S.

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Maybe you just didn't understand it. You are making basic mistakes regarding the philosophy.

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Human history is cyclical. Things come and go. Powers rise and fall. Societies reach a grand peak and then decline. You have no guarantee that what you are working for will make a lick of difference in the greater scheme of things, in fact history shows it probably won't.

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I disagree.I do my best to make a positive difference in the lives of other people every day.I am a pebble thrown into a pond.I don't have to cure cancer to make an impact on people's lives.

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You have no guarantee that human history will not go back to the dark ages a hundred years from now.

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True, but if the fundamentalists get their way, we would go back there.Remember, the Dark Ages were a time when religion and superstition were rampant, and the only thing that got us out of it was reason and science.

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You have no guarantee human history will not be wiped out 200 years from now. You are just going to die soon anyways, so any power, money, acheivements, and whatnot will disappear.

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Ah, but my memory will not die as long as I touch lives in a positive way now.

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You will just vanish. Even if you are incredibly famous, people will forget about you. Those who love you will get over their loss. Your impression in this life is like a foot print in the sands on a beach.

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And so it is with every person who has ever lived.Maybe this idea makes you uncomfortable.I have made my peace with it without inventing an afterlife to ease my discomfort.

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RARELY is this the case.

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Um, this is ALWAYS the case.

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Usually it has been a monarchy or oligarchy or aristocracy or plutocracy that has decided what is good for societies as a whole. And when people do, they usually do not re-invent the wheel every time.

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Sure, if you are only limiting the definition of "society" to recent European nation states. Nation states are a very recent socio/political construct.Human civilization goes back a whole lot farther than that, and they have all had some form of general consensus of what is acceptable behavior of the members of the group.European style governments just built on what had been started amny thousands of years ago, thousands and thousands of years before there were any Jews or Jesus or Christians, or the idea of a monotheistic deity.

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It's interesting that those under the guise of Christianity who cause all the atrocities and make names for themselves are the one's who have plotted and schemed their way into power and wealth. A true Christian does not care about such things.

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No True Scotsman fallacy.No true Scotsman - WikipediaNo true Scotsman is a term coined by Antony Flew in his 1975 book Thinking About Thinking. It refers to an argument which takes this form:Argument: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."Reply: "But my friend Angus likes sugar with his porridge."Rebuttal: "Ah yes, but no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."This form of argument is a fallacy if the predicate ("putting sugar on porridge") is not actually contradictory to the accepted definition of the subject ("Scotsman"), or if the definition of the subject is silently adjusted after the fact to make the rebuttal work.You are simply rationalizing away the bad behavior of Christians in the past by redefining what a Christian is in a way that is acceptable to our current moral standards.According to the moral standards of the time of the Crusades, for example, killing the Infidel in the name of God was considered just and morally sanctioned by God.There's a reason that Bush has used the term "Crusade" when referring to the war in Iraq, you know. He wants to stir up that old Christian hatred of the Moslem.

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Hey, my Birthday is tomorrow!

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Happy birthday!

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Shoot, I know I don't know everything. But I can be guaranteed that what I learn from the Bible is truth and therefore know it with certainty.

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Which translation of the bible?Interpereted by whom?Oh, and there are a lot of peope who have said the same as you who have gone on to leave their sect, or leave Christianity altogether in favor of another religion, or leave their faith behind in favor of non-beief.Be very wary of certainty of belief, hangdawg, particularly of a holy book like the Bible. Unwavering certainty makes you inflexible and might force you to make a choice later in life that might result in the loss of your faith.Let me ask you this; do you worship God or do you worship the Bible?

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When I match what I learn with what I see, it makes perfect sense. Call this post-hoc or whatever, but it definately fits reality.

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Lots of religions fit reality if you interpret them after looking at reality.Why not look at reality first, determine what reality is without your religious filter, then go back to your beliefs and see if it fits.That would be the most honest way to check yourself instead of justifying and rationalizing all the time.

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It seems that humanism and similar philosophies have been born recently out of the unprecedented prosperity we see. People that relied on these philosophies became terribly disillusioned during the two World Wars, but they have made their come back. I can only hope and pray that God will give you a strong dose of "reality" to shake your philosophies as well.

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Humanism was born with the ancient Greeks and has been with us ever since, to greater or lesser degrees. It tends to rise as education and reason become more accepted, and fall as superstition and religion become more prevalent combined with an anti-intellectual or fearful populace.Many of our Founding Fathers adhered to it's ideals.

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Why I place emphasis on that we are sinners, is that even if a person only does ONE bad thing in life, he is impure and unacceptable in comparison with God's perfect righteousness and needs reconciliation.

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See, that is depressing and unfair to boot.That people aren't perfect as a product of nature is clear.I like not being perfect. Perfection is boring. It's our flaws that make things interesting.

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Were the Popes like leo and the kings like Henry VIII fundies?

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Um, YES!You do know that I was talking avout the Dark Ages, long before Leo and Henry VIII, right?It's really only been very recently that Popes have been mostly religious leaders to the masses; during the Dark Ages, and for a long time after that the Popes were extremely powerful political players who served themselves/Church.

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And why were the people ignorant? Because the monarchs and church officials wanted to keep and expand their power and wealth... A most un-christian concept.

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Didn't you read the definition of the No True Scottsman Fallacy I provided?You just did it again.