What are you praising and thanking The Lord Thy God for today?

Started by 1liesalot, May 15, 2015, 02:04:25 PM

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Odoital778412

Quote from: Mike Cl on May 24, 2015, 09:17:17 AM
This is a part of christianty  that has puzzled me deeply.  The 'deserving nothing more than punishment' part.  Why do you think you deserve punishment??
Because I am self-consciously aware that I haven't lived up to my own moral standards, to say nothing of God's higher moral standard.  I know I'm guilty and I'm self-consciously aware of my guilt.  I feel a responsibility to be better than I am, and I'm unable to be even as good as I want to be and can't even come close to God's standard of moral perfection.
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” - C.S. Lewis, Is Theology Poetry? -

Mike Cl

Quote from: Odoital778412 on May 24, 2015, 09:25:30 AM
Because I am self-consciously aware that I haven't lived up to my own moral standards, to say nothing of God's higher moral standard.  I know I'm guilty and I'm self-consciously aware of my guilt.  I feel a responsibility to be better than I am, and I'm unable to be even as good as I want to be and can't even come close to God's standard of moral perfection.
I started looking at that aspect--morals and behavior--as a child in Ala. when I sampled the Southern Baptist and Methodist branches of the prot. branch of christianity.  I could not really wrap my brain around it then, nor during the various stages of my life when I studied the subject.  So, you indicate you have your own set of morals and god has another set of morals.  Where does yours come from, and where does god's come from and how do they differ?  I have come to the conclusion that morals are developed from each society.  There is not been one moral behavior that has been universally taunted as such nor followed as such.  There is no universal set of morals.  Therefore, I see morals as being subjective to each person who is then influenced by the society he belongs to.   
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?<br />Then he is not omnipotent,<br />Is he able but not willing?<br />Then whence cometh evil?<br />Is he neither able or willing?<br />Then why call him god?

Aletheia

Quote from: Odoital778412 on May 24, 2015, 09:25:30 AM
Because I am self-consciously aware that I haven't lived up to my own moral standards, to say nothing of God's higher moral standard.  I know I'm guilty and I'm self-consciously aware of my guilt.  I feel a responsibility to be better than I am, and I'm unable to be even as good as I want to be and can't even come close to God's standard of moral perfection.

Puts quite a damper on any effort you employ if you already know that your best isn't good enough and you will never rise to these standards.

To feel guilt is to imply that you could reach these standards. However, in this scenario, you lack the capacity to ever reach these standards. If you were born without legs you would not feel guilty for being unable to walk "naturally" on your own. If you were given prosthetic limbs you would not feel your guilt is absolved - rather, you would feel that technology has given you a chance to expand beyond your own innate limits.

Many religions are replete with psychological manipulation - one of which is convincing a person they are unworthy and then implying the only way to make things better is by following the teachings of a given religion. You cannot be made to feel unworthy when it's clear that you have worth, and you cannot be made to feel guilty for not rising to standards that are unrealistic.

If it is your goal to be a better person, than by all means, go for it. However, don't feel that you are some lowly creature unworthy of taking credit for your own efforts and should feel guilty for not rising up to standards which do not take into account your own unique potential. Manipulations such as this are considered child abuse when a parent uses them on a child. If this God is supposed to be a father figure, then why does he employ tactics which are detrimental to your mental well being? This is not love - it's all about control.
Quote from: Jakenessif you believe in the supernatural, you do not understand modern science. Period.

Mermaid

Quote from: Odoital778412 on May 24, 2015, 09:25:30 AM
Because I am self-consciously aware that I haven't lived up to my own moral standards, to say nothing of God's higher moral standard.  I know I'm guilty and I'm self-consciously aware of my guilt.  I feel a responsibility to be better than I am, and I'm unable to be even as good as I want to be and can't even come close to God's standard of moral perfection.
You make God sound a lot like my mother.
A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities â€" all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. -TR

Aletheia

I thank the Christian God for taking good people and making them accept and at times, do horrible things. If not for him, people would not consider the Bible the "Good Book" even though it has genocide, rape, slavery, misogyny, bigotry, child molestation, infanticide, war, conquest, and lust for power. Had God not intervened, then people would've immediately realized that a "Good Book" in which to base your morality would never have even a tiny amount of these attributes. Blessed is the Lord who willingly lulls people into a false sense of security by having them believe that "God will provide" for them and their family in times of need and then lets them starve, whither from disease, or die in such a way to where their death is meaningless. Finally, oh how holy thou art for implying that God has a plan for everyone without ever mentioning what the plan is or that it's even beneficial to the pawns people. 
Quote from: Jakenessif you believe in the supernatural, you do not understand modern science. Period.

aitm

Quote from: Odoital778412 on May 24, 2015, 09:25:30 AM
.. to say nothing of God's higher moral standard. …………..and can't even come close to God's standard of moral perfection.

so you think that murdering innocent children by drowning them in front of their terrified parents, or by the children watching their parents drown and then slowly drown themselves is a better way of wiping out humanity than by simply waving ones omnipotent hand and having them all simply vanish from existence? I find your idea that this is moral as very sick indeed, perhaps the reason you feel so self-conscious is because you realize you enjoyed that scenario and how sick it must be. You are indeed a sick puppy. You are probably so morally bankrupt that the believe in a god is the only way you can stop yourself from fucking puppies and stabbing babies and eating liver. Weirdo.
A humans desire to live is exceeded only by their willingness to die for another. Even god cannot equal this magnificent sacrifice. No god has the right to judge them.-first tenant of the Panotheust

Odoital778412

#21
Quote from: Mike Cl on May 24, 2015, 09:36:49 AM
I started looking at that aspect--morals and behavior--as a child in Ala. when I sampled the Southern Baptist and Methodist branches of the prot. branch of christianity.  I could not really wrap my brain around it then, nor during the various stages of my life when I studied the subject.  So, you indicate you have your own set of morals and god has another set of morals.  Where does yours come from, and where does god's come from and how do they differ?  I have come to the conclusion that morals are developed from each society.  There is not been one moral behavior that has been universally taunted as such nor followed as such.  There is no universal set of morals.  Therefore, I see morals as being subjective to each person who is then influenced by the society he belongs to.
I believe that the moral law is properly basic to human existence, which is to say that we have immediate and intuitive access to the moral law in a basic sense.  It generally takes some level of care and teaching or instruction over time to help us refine and increase our recognition of and understanding of how to apply that moral law when it comes to our daily living.  I see this as being the development of, the forming of, and the informing of what can be called the conscience.

Upon reflection, I believe that the moral law that we have access to is objective, in that it is independent of human beings or any contingent thing.  Why is that?  Well, because I believe in the existence of moral facts, in that some things are genuinely wrong for all people, in all places, and for all time.  Let me give you an example to draw a distinction between an ordinary fact and a moral fact though.  And before I give this example, I need to insert a caveat here.  I'm going to use an extreme example, not meant to offend, but merely to help guarantee that we are operating on some common moral ground.  So please see my example in that light.  So here we go.  Facts and moral facts are different things.  I happen to have an 11 year old black and tan Dachshund named, Soldier.  And it's a fact that my dog, Soldier, sometimes eats grass from the backyard.  So what has to be the case for the idea that my dog, Soldier, sometimes eats grass from the backyard to be a genuinely true & factual statement?  It has to have been instantiated in reality or in other words, it has to have actually taken place or happened.  But what if I were to throw out a different kind of fact.  Let's say that I told you that it's wrong to torture handicapped babies for fun.  Is that a true and factual statement?  I suspect that you'd say yes.  Here's the next question.  Does that act have to have happened or taken place for you or I to know, in advance, that it's wrong?  If you'd say no, you're correct!  So moral facts are true and objective in a way that ordinary facts are not.  And developing moral facts by way of a non-independent contingent process like evolution doesn't work because all of the moral facts would have to have been instantiated, and likely multiple times, for them to be considered wrong.  So in other words, you wouldn't be able to tell, in advance, if something were wrong.  You'd have to wait until it had happened and happened enough that there was some level of response to that particular stimuli, which ultimately made some kind of difference in the direction of evolution with respect to morality.  In addition, you'd be saying something different than what I said about torturing handicapped babies for fun.  Wrong would refer, not to an objective (i.e. independent of human beings or any contingent thing) fact or reality, but it would refer to a non-objective or broadly subjective (i.e. evolution or environment dependent) fact or reality.  Also, the wrong would no longer refer to a thing that, in the context of humanity, would always have been wrong.  Wrong developed by way of any evolutionary process would refer to a wrong that had been wrong, even theoretically, for only a finite or limited period of time.  In other words, it would possible, at least theoretically, if not actually, to say that at some point, it wasn't wrong to torture handicapped babies for fun.  And of course, this doesn't comport with our moral intuitions at all.

So from the Christian perspective, the only explanation for the existence of non-instantiated moral facts that can predict the wrongness even of future behaviors is the existence of an objective moral standard, independent of any contingent thing.  The Christian would term this moral standard, God's character & nature.  This is where morality finds its grounding and ultimate perfect expression, consistent with God's nature & status as who He is (i.e. the incommensurable good) and the authority and prerogatives such a nature & status would naturally and logically give Him.

And generally speaking, if you look throughout cultures, you can find a number of basic moral principles that are widely held to across cultures.  One of them is obvious, but most cultures believe that it is actually wrong to take the life of an innocent human being without proper justification.  When you see a culture that appears, at first blush, to be violating this standard, you have to ask whether the people violating this standard actually believe that they have a justification for doing so, and you need to ask yourself whether they believe that they are dealing with a human being.  For example, in the United States, people abort babies all of the time.  Well, if no one thought that the lives of human beings were actually being extinguished in that process, abortion would never have been an issue.

Also, regarding morality, you have to make sure you're not confusing the difference between values and understandings.  In other words, there is a difference between an absolute moral value and the changing understanding of that value.  For example, it was once the case that witches were sentenced as murderers, but now they are not.  What changed was not the moral principle that murder is wrong.  Rather, our understanding changed about whether witches really murder people by their curses.  One’s factual understanding of a moral situation is relative, but the moral values involved in the situation are not.  I hope that makes sense?

Anyway, regarding a universal morality, you'll find that in most cultures murder, adultery, stealing, lying, and dishonoring or failing to honor your parents are often considered to be immoral things.  Can you find exceptions?  Sure you can, but that's why you have to keep in mind that the conscience works both ways.  We can be socialized against what we know is true.  We saw this in Nazi Germany with the murder of the Jews, and you can see it today in the suicide bomber.  So it is possible for dysfunction to pop up and become entrenched in a culture.  It's happened in virtually every culture at one time or another.  We used to buy and sell human beings at auction in the United States, and we even had people attempting to justify such immoral behavior using religious texts and modern science (i.e. newly developed evolutionary theory written in tooth & claw).  The fact that these things can and do happen does not negate the fact that, in general, there is a basic moral code that we follow.  And our ability to follow it and apply it in more refined ways can also vary from culture to culture and from person to person.

If morality is subjective, then we cannot say that slavery was wrong or that Hitler was wrong.  We can say the words, but they have no more meaning than I don't like chocolate.  Certainly, it would be no reason to be outraged because the immoral has been turned into a mere difference of opinion.  And ultimately, if there was no genuine difference between Hitler and Mother Teresa, beyond whatever difference I was to subjectively apply based on whatever feelings I might have, then I see no reason why everything is not permitted.  There would simply be no moral standing for anyone to raise an objection against their own impending murder beyond, "I don't like that."  Or maybe "Yuck!"  I hope you see the problem?
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” - C.S. Lewis, Is Theology Poetry? -

Aletheia

Quote from: Odoital778412 on May 24, 2015, 10:44:12 AM
If morality is subjective, then we cannot say that slavery was wrong or that Hitler was wrong.  We can say the words, but they have no more meaning than I don't like chocolate. 

This idea is not new and nor is it as ironclad as you think it is.

Here you go:

Quote from: Jakenessif you believe in the supernatural, you do not understand modern science. Period.

Odoital778412

#23
Quote from: Aletheia on May 24, 2015, 10:53:30 AM
This idea is not new and nor is it as ironclad as you think it is.

Quote“If we don’t know how to tell whether a given thing is morally wrong, how can we know that it’s morally wrong in the first place?”

So he’s saying that if someone doesn’t understand how he knows that murder is wrong, he’s not justified in believing it to be wrong?  Really?  Please…does he think we’re 5 years old?


Quote“A given act is moral or right when it promotes happiness, well-being, or health.  Or it somehow minimizes unnecessary health or suffering or both.  A given act is immoral if when it diminishes happiness, well-being, or health.  Or it somehow causes unnecessary health or suffering or both.”

He’s cheating by smuggling in moral concepts.  If nature is all there is and we are essentially just matter in motion, then the ideas that happiness, well-being, or health don’t even make sense.  In other words, unless you have some way to distinguish goodness or badness of happiness and sadness from any given natural process of creation and decay, there is no way to determine the moral quality (i.e. goodness or badness) of happiness or sadness from anything else.  Why should we prefer happiness over sadness or despair?  What about mere matter being in motion actually makes sense of any preference?  Happiness or despair would each just be natural out-workings of matter in motion and would be no more preferable to any other concept.  You have to have some kind of objective standard of goodness to be able to distinguish the difference between the good and the bad, and he just deceives people and asserts it without warrant.  Anyone can assert a subjective definition of something and then claim that the concept can be objectively referred to as pertaining to that particular subjective definition, but that’s not objective morality.

I don’t have time to listen to the entire thing right now, but I’ll try to listen to the rest of it later.  He’s trading mostly on the fact that he’s dealt with a lot of relatively uninformed Christians (Not Surprised At All!) and on the work of Sam Harris, who needs A LOT of help if you’ve listened to his explanations. 

This might help you.

Enjoy!
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” - C.S. Lewis, Is Theology Poetry? -

Johan

Quote from: Odoital778412 on May 24, 2015, 06:19:23 AM
No parody.  I'm quite serious.
Yeah, we know. I guess sarcasm isn't really covered in that book of yours. :rolleyes:
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false and by the rulers as useful

Johan

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false and by the rulers as useful

Munch

Great, fundie cop came to ruin the fun. Let's get it back on track.

I'm thankful to gawd that Christians don't go to church on Sundays so they can sit at home trying to teach us atheists how important he is.
'Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners' - George Carlin

PickelledEggs


Munch

'Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners' - George Carlin

PickelledEggs