(January 29, 2016 at 10:40 am)Drich Wrote:

(January 28, 2016 at 12:01 pm)Whateverist the White Wrote: And if you happen to be born into the wrong religion, will your belief in the wrong 'objective' values help you to transcend your predicament?

That the exact question I'm asking isn't it? What do you have that will help you see through whatever you've been taught?

Sadly you never seem to turn your questions inward.  You give the impression of someone entirely lacking in self reflection.  Is it a show you put on to help you land those souls for Jesus or are you really that shallow?

(January 28, 2016 at 12:52 pm)Esquilax Wrote: The facts don't have a filter, Drich. That the Nazi claims regarding the Jews were factually wrong, both at a genetic, societal, and historical level, does not change depending on where I was born. Considering the verifiable data would lead one to the conclusion that the Nazis were wrong;

Disagree. This Maybe from your perspective now, from your current culture. But how could you come to a different conclusion if the 'verifiable' data simply lends it's self to the propaganda? What you don't seem to get or acknowledge is this was not just the general population, but this country's whole scientific community not only accepted these facts, they help shape and model nazi Germany align itself to with these facts. Not only that, at the time they were the world's authority on leading edge of genetics and evolutionary theory. What they discovered then, is still the basis or foundation to what we know today, minus the superiority aspect which it itself maybe propaganda. How then if you were living in that society would be able to 'look at the facts' any differently than the scientists who lived then?

Quote: that someone might be indoctrinated into failing to do that in favor of dealing in their inculcated preconceptions is not a failure for what I'm suggesting any more than someone disagreeing with your biblical morality is a failure for yours.

How is it that you still do not understand that I am NOT setting up the bible's morality as being better than any other version? MAYBE I'm offering an alternative to any form of morality. MAYBE I have found all forms of morality to be wanting/share a critical flaw.

Quote:If I tell you that my moral framework comes from a rational consideration of the facts, saying "yeah, but what if someone didn't rationally consider the facts, huh?" is not a rebuttal of that framework.

That is why I never said the Nazi's did not rationally consider the facts.
I'm saying that government owned all that was known and they Were legitmatly the best of the best the world had to offer at that time, and they released or shaped the facts that demanded the course of action those people took.

So in turn, all anyone need do to own you, and people like you, is to control the facts. Or rather pre-package 'facts' in the 'rational bundle' you have been train to look for, and they can manipulate not only your sense of morality, but how you think or view the world around you?

Can you not see how this is akin to the absolute power the church of the dark ages had on people? But, rather pledging allegiance to God, you pledge allegiance to science? And all anyone need do is control 'science' and people like you jam in line to get measured for their knee high boots. Why? because you all assume science can't ever be bought. (*Cough Global warming/climate change) http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/...74ffc6988d

Quote:No glasses. No biases. You look at the facts, that which can be verified, not "the facts according to X, Y, and Z."

So is the planet warming because of man made carbon emissions or not? will the purchase of the "carbon credit" offset the sky from falling?

Quote:Are you just going to ignore everything that I said, while attempting to refute what I said? At the time that being gay was considered immoral, that moral claim was wrong. There was, at that time, as now, a moral claim regarding homosexuality that is right, but society then was not accepting of that claim. Now, happily, we have moved on to accept the correct claim. What determines which claim is correct? The facts! Were one to consider the claims made about homosexuality as justification for calling it immoral 50 years ago, what you would find is that not a one of them aligns with the evidence: they all relied upon things that are objectively wrong. How can you have a morally valid conclusion if the justification for it is literally incorrect?

Again i point to post 25, answer that hypothetical.

Quote:Why, without just asserting that it's god's opinion, is homosexuality wrong?

Wrong according to whom?
Kill God/God does not exist= Why, without just asserting that it's God's opinion, is homosexuality wrong.
Again if you remove the absolute in an equation then you can represent the variables any way you like, which brings us back to the question I've been asking since the OP. without the absolute God offers what in soceity allows you to keep from making an evil turn. You claim 'science' is your answer. I've shown you where science has been manipulated both in the past and in present day to represent what a given government wanted to tell/try and sell the public on.

So then if your anti corruption fail safe has shown to be unreliable how then can you know that your 'moral values' are safe?

Quote: if you want to put that logic and reason to the test I ask you to answer the 'hypothetical' I asked crossless1 a few posts back.

Quote:Why bother? All it's going to be is "I've found a single piffling possible exception to what you're saying, therefore the entire argument is invalid."

Yes I can see why you were voted best debater 4 years running now, you always take on the topics and never run from a serious challenge

Quote:Except, again, I don't accept that whatever culture deems moral, is moral. I'm appealing to the objective reality that these cultures coexist in. Do you disagree that we live in a real world that doesn't change depending on what we think of it?

*Cough carbon emissions=global climate change.. Ohhh, nooooooesss we never lives in a world, that would dare misrepresent 'the facts' in order to force change how/what we think.

Quote:Reality. It'll always be there to correct us. Were the claims of a Jewish conspiracy that Hitler used to justify the holocaust true, or false?

they were based in truth, and largely verifiable. It was indeed Jewish controlled banks that was the direct cause of german poverty, and their was verifiable scientific fact that pushed a wedge of separation between humanity. Which is exactly my point. If information is packaged in such away as the population has been trained to accept and process it, then all one need do is float information down that channel and without some sort of absolute, stating otherwise that information can change society completely.. Good bad or indifferent will largely depend on who is left to judge, and what influences their perception of 'morality.'

Quote:Why, they were false, and hence, any moral claim made on the basis of them were similarly false. Were the claims made about the sub-humanity of the Aboriginal people that white settlers used to justify their mistreatment of them true, or false? Oh, they were false too: turns out that genetically there wasn't a great amount of difference between the settles and the Aborigines. Therefore, how could a moral claim made on those bases be true, if the bases themselves weren't? It's like if you were to make a moral judgment on the idea that people can grow back limbs: it's okay to dismember people, since they'll just grow back their limbs like a starfish, right?

But again, you are missing the big picture... You can only say they were false because our grandfathers won the war! If they won the war this would all be absolute unquestionable undeniable fact!!!

You want to believe that 'fact' is your absolute. that Fact is your anchor like God is mine. The problem? Facts are bent all the time to fit how it is we want to live. (hole in ozone, Global cooling, global warming, the jews are the cause of all of our problems, the indians are killing and raping our settlers in the west, black people are meant to serve...) all of those were undeniable scientific/ scientific backed facts in their time, that now only because soceity has moved past those ideas do you have the benefit of saying yeah they were not true/false facts, but again and here's the part you are missing in ALL you arguments. What if you lived then when those 'facts' were the only knowable truth? How then could a 'fact driven person' not make an evil/immoral decision if all facts supported the evil in question?

Where you fail in your 'the facts are your absolutes' argument is you are under the impression that you are in/you live in a society that is in the final stages of enlightenment where all facts known to you now are the same as absolute truth.. the problem with that besides that it is foolishly naive, is we have proof that our facts are just as corrupt if not more so than those of previous generations. Why? Because all of this scientific research costs butts loads more money than it did.. So then where does the money come from and why?

Quote:... Except that people verifiably do not grow back their limbs, we're biologically incapable of that. Given this, in what sense would a moral idea based on an untrue statement be correct?

But we weren't talking about anything so obvious that people could experience were we? What the Nazi's did was provide absolute proof that the Jews controlled the banks incharge of the reparations Germany had to pay for WWI. They provided news stories and eye witness accounts of Jews throwing people out of their homes/foreclosing on them. the provided real accounts of Jewish people acting on the behalf of the reparations act (leaving that part out) as the leading cause too the great depression the people were made to endure for an entire generation. Then again were shown scientific fact from the world's authorities on genetics that what they were doing was just apart of their evolutionary nature as 'human roaches.' Again if a society is based solely on facts presented in a certain 'official way' to define truth, then how easy would it be to control what and how people think?

Quote:Also, how is "my morality is based on whatever god thinks," any better than the "my morality is based on society," claim that you're deriding here?

Again not my claim, if you would pull you head out of the sand long enough you would see that. You are so quick to judge so quick to formulate an opinion so quick to assume you know what my position is, you've missed the whole argument completely.

Again, ALL Morality is BAD! Even the Morality of the Church. we can see how 'moral' the church can be by looking at the dark ages, the inquisition, or even to the west borough baptist now. ALL Morality contains sin. Because ALL Morality judges one sin/act greater or less than another. when infact the purpose of God's law is to identify sin in everyone so we would seek atonement rather than works based morality for our righteousness.

being moral=living and accepting some measure of sin.
God's standard is to be sinless. something we can not do, therefore we must seek another way to righteousness other than our acts/actions/moral behavior of any kind. Because again the only acceptable form of moral behavior is to be absolutely sinless, as Jesus was this equals righteousness. This is offered to us when we accept what has been done to atone for our sin.

So if you are still paying attention, your question might then be: so, why does God's righteousness get to trump your morality? Because it's God's righteousness is the standard that He will use to judge all 'moral'/unatoned people by.

Quote:Oh, and you can't just assume your conclusion or make a circular argument, nor can you present claims you can't demonstrate, in justifying the difference. So go right ahead: how are god's opinions superior to society's?

I can see a strawman, does that count?

That you have chosen to describe all morality as bad implies yet another moral value system fundamental to your conclusion.  I assume that one must be bad too, since they're all bad...so why should anyone care?

Hell, why do you.....do you...?

(January 29, 2016 at 11:47 am)Drich Wrote:

(January 28, 2016 at 12:45 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: God's righteousness is nothing but the pop morality of several thousand years ago.  First we had the Jews and their version of pop morality.  Then along comes Jesus, and he teaches a different sort of morality, based on blood sacrifice and atonement.  Then we have Mohammed's version which builds on that.   And eventually we get to Baha'ullah's version further on down the road.  You aren't defending a specific morality because they all share the same traits of 'pop morality' regardless of from when and where they come.  You're simply arguing a preference for dogmatic truths, ones that don't change, over those that do.  But your God's righteousness is just another link in a chain of relativistic morals.  It's no different, and no better.  Matter of fact, by its inability to accommodate changes in our knowledge about the world makes it worse in that it is a slave to past errors.  (And yes, Virginia, God's righteousness isn't immune to mistakes.)

But again I am not pushing for one morality over another...

Then we can forget the prohibitions in the bible as arbitrary and meaningless? You're still basing your idea of atonement on a set of standards, elsewise what is there to atone for? Atonement is always atonement for something. All you've done is substitute what you consider to be a moral response to our violating those standards for a punishment based one. If you ask me what keeps me from becoming a Nazi monster then I would say nothing but the inertia of evolved tendencies and culture, which is to say that there is nothing sufficiently substantial to forbid my becoming a Nazi, just that it is improbable. What prevents you from becoming beholden to a specific morality, or are you saying that you have no morals? I think you do, and they include what you consider to be a moral response to your violating God's standards; that itself is a form of morals.

We all have our own morality, it's just some people like to claim theirs is somehow "the best" without explaining what this means in terms of anything that actually matters a single fuck.

I couldn't care less what weird superpowered suspiciously human-like creatures crawling around the non-existent outside of the universe think about things.

The Bible is a snap shot in time of the pop morality of a particular culture in a particular place and time.

(January 28, 2016 at 2:15 pm)Jenny A Wrote: Yes I understand that you think no one can be moral by your god's standards, and so we must seek atonement.  That is the point of the whole Christian myth isn't it?  Well that settles heaven versus hell.  But it doesn't help with morality in the real world where we must still get along with one another. And it's no great consolation to me if your god forgives you for theft, rape, murder, or as is more likely, general unkindness. That's where relative current mores come in.  You dismiss man's morality as pop morality.  Call it what you want.  We need it.  It's what makes society run.

But again, is that a good thing? are all societies 'moral?' they all certainly think they are. Even though they stand in stark contrast with one another, so much so we have wars over our ideals of what is and is not 'moral.' And guess what decides what is and is not 'moral' in soceity without the God you are so quick to dismiss??

It might. Might makes right without God. Might says the germans were wrong for killing jews by the millions (Because we killed millions more germans) Might says it was right to take the land from the indians and not give it back as it all stands developed now, Might says deploying 2 nuclear bombs on the people of Japan was right.
Is this truly what you believe?

'We' need pop morality because it makes society run?

What if it is running in the wrong direction and their is no one mightier to challenge them? What then would effect change if the mightiest society peruses evil? How would anyone in that society even know that they were indeed evil?
Do you truly think the Nazi's thought themselves to be evil?

Quote:In other words, in practice, it is not an objective standard anymore than pop morality is an objective standard.

No all morality if flawed. even Christian morality. Because all forms of morality accept sin on one level or another because at it's core all morality judges acts/sin on varying levels, rather than assigning all sin the same consequence.

Quote:I think you greatly exaggerate the clarity of the law of Moses even as further explained by Jesus and Paul.  Parts of it may be clear, but much of it is not.  Some of it is just plain contradictory (in the OT men are required to marry their brother's widows and also prohibited from marrying their brother's widow). Other parts are so morally repugnant that it's hard to believe anyone could consider them in anyway associated with a righteous pig, let alone a god.

As per my Romans study Paul simplfies this whole thing in the span of 3 or 4 chapters, which I will try and further bake down to a few lines:
As Jesus said The whole law is still completely in effect.
Jesus also Expands the Law to include sinful thought, which now means we are all sin, all the time.
Jesus says ALL Sin=The same Death, That all sin is equal.
Paul says that accepting the atonement of Christ, the Law no longer is used to judged the saved's righteousness.
The laws purpose per Christ is to only Identify sin, which according to Paul push one to seek atonement.
Once we have atonement we now have the righteousness/"morality" of Christ himself before God.
Meaning to God the Father we are as sinless as Christ is sinless, which is the only way to Heaven.
Therefore the Law (still being in effect per Christ) now is only used to judge the unsaved.

This means ALL Morality (the act of grading sin and managing acceptable levels of it) is completely meaningless, because our actions are not being judged by God per-say.. It's our obedience.

Quote:That is a very dangerous idea.   Every society of men has always maintained a sense of proportion about varying degrees of turpitude for the simple reason that some crimes injure society more than others.  Treating all crimes alike is tantamount to asking for murder to be as common as white lies.

So we then enter varying stages of pop morality. then the question becomes how far off center will we allow ourselves to be before we look up and see that white lies and murder become the unpunished norm?

Which again is what happened to the 'good people' of Nazi Germany. To the Indians of our west, to all of the societies who's might was not equal or greater than our own.

The problem you are not seeing is murder has indeed become just as easy as telling a white lie, in this society and no one says boo about it, because it has been packaged and sold in such away as to be found not only acceptable but a guarded right that one dare not stand against. E.g. Abortion.
This is in stark contrast to you shall not murder, and yet because we repackaged the deed and change a few words and made it a clinical process we somehow over look the brutal dismemberment of a baby as if it were no different or even less immoral than telling a white lie.

How can you not see the point I am making here? How are you any different than those who lived in Nazi Germany who all bought into the labels the Nazi's gave the jews, that turned their extermination into a state sponsored procedure no different than what the role of planned parenthood does here and now?

This is a PERFECT Example of how modern/pop 'morality' can be corrupted and society can/has made a hard turn and embraced an evil act, and made it moral. So then I ask what's to stop the slaughter of old people? or some other undesirable part of the culture or population? Look at how abortion was marketed and made acceptible.. Now be honest with yourself even if you are not honest with me.. They bottom line are killing babies, what Deity is allowed to kill a child with out some self-righteous moral judgement levied on him and his followers? and yet because of proper marketing/propaganda we in this country have killed 100's of millions of babies and not given it a second thought.

So then how will your morals keep you from lining up your parents when 'hospice' or some other organization starts asking us to line up our old people?

Quote:Oh, I see, you want to solve our real world moral problems by saying we must own our sin.  I agree, we must own our own immorality.  Why else would we even try to be moral?  But, I don't see that looking at all sin as equal is going to get us there. Nor is thinking that it will all be forgiven later.  

We can use morality to justify things we should not.  But more often it is people's view of god's morality that is used to justify evil.  Many people terrorizing Jews, killing Aztecs, burning heretics, executing Muslims, or whipping servant women for wearing ribbons, felt they were doing god's will.  Man's attempt to see god's will is as slippery as the modern notion of relative morality.  

'Morality' is an extremely sharp double edge sword that we can use to cut injustice as well as Justice out of society. we need unchanging standards to center us and guide a fair distribution of realistic sin management even for those with out God. which I consider to be laws. If one want's to live by the law and not God then what need do any of you have for 'morality?' Because without any standard or absolute, morality becomes a self sustaining system of self righteous justification for increasing wickedness.

Those who live under God seek to do their best to naturally follow his laws in so far as we are able. Not as a way to earn righteousness but as a natural occurring result of it.

Quote:Once again, if we cannot define the absolute law to the letter, it is not useful as an absolute for determining our behavior now. Christians are incapable of agreeing on what god's law is, so it is not a useful absolute standard.  

That aside, from what I see in the Bible, god's law is a crude, barbaric standard that shows at every crack and seam that it was created in a harsher time, where there was more casual cruelty, and less equality.  It's a damned good thing, your god seems incapable of enforcing it because it is by today's standards gross and evil.  And I do mean evil.

Based on what? Your current morality? Let's just say for the sake of arguement, you had adopted Nazi German morality. would you identify your current system of right and wrong as also being evil? So then without any guidline besides your own feelings how then can you identify evil, if you can't vet yourself as not being evil?

Quote:I am suggesting that a god unable to either make his will clear to all men or enforce it here on earth, and a nonexistent god look the same.  That suggests to me that there is no such law making god.

and turtles withdraw into their shells when they feel danger is looming.. now just because from where they look (with in their shells) they can not see any danger does it mean the danger does not exist?
Or does it simply mean you are not willing to acknoweledge it and hope that it will simply go away?

Quote:Again, a very dangerous idea for the real world.  Real world consequences affect real world behavior and it's real world behavior that matters.

Your god and the afterlife he promises, are no concern of mine until there is some credible evidence he exists.  And he is a dangerous fantasy because it is dangerous to suppose you will be forgiven equally for all moral infractions or that anyone other than the person you injure can forgive you. It is also dangerous to suppose that lying and murder are equally bad.

It seems to me that you are the one who has diluted herself on 'real world behavior.' (abortion)

Quote:As is your attempt to follow god's law.  I am interested in doing the best we can with what we have. You appear interested in being forgiven.

This would be true if i were trying to earn righteousness..

But again we are no longer judged by the law as a means to righteousness. God only judges the unsaved by the law. My alignement with the law as far as I am able to be aligned with it is a testament/effect or result of my atonement, not the cause of it.

(January 28, 2016 at 2:56 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote:

(January 28, 2016 at 2:19 pm)Drich Wrote: but if not society who teach you empathy?

But empathy is just not as simple a concept as 'you are either taught it or not.'  To a degree, our species is hard wired for it, probably for evolutionarily advantageous reasons.  I've posted this article before but I'll offer it to you as well.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the...ce-empathy

Do you argue that empathy is not controllable on a societal level? if it is controlled, it can be taught.

From this thread it seems that you are trying to point out the flaws in morality thinking and replacing it with "attonment". Right?

A couple of things came to mind. First it's always good to question ones ways of thinking to check against reality. That's okay. Of course that's what "free thinkers" do. So in answer to your question on what makes a person believe they can see through cultural teachings the answer is "free thinking".

I know you will not agree but think about it. Most religions tell you to follow unquestioningly a policy in a holly book or face some horrible punishment. A non religious is under no such obligation. To me this seems like one would have a much better chance at seeing through cultural bias. Is it perfect? No. It is human.

Second "atonement" is trying to make up for something you did wrong. Right?

In the monotheistic case it about being born to Eve. Nothing else. Even if you do everything possible to be the best person you can it wont matter.

This is rediculous of course and I will quote Mr. Hitchens on this one

"we are made sic and commanded to be well."

you understand all that implies so i wont go into a long explanation of it.

I will say this, I see no steady morality coming from a sence of guilt.

(January 29, 2016 at 3:01 pm)Drich Wrote: Disagree. This Maybe from your perspective now, from your current culture. But how could you come to a different conclusion if the 'verifiable' data simply lends it's self to the propaganda? What you don't seem to get or acknowledge is this was not just the general population, but this country's whole scientific community not only accepted these facts, they help shape and model nazi Germany align itself to with these facts.

Are you suggesting that the Jewish people were significantly genetically different from the Germans during the time of world war 2, but then their genes shifted suddenly to be more similar once the war was over? Or that they were involved in a huge, government controlling conspiracy during that period, but that this conspiracy ceased to be once the war was over?

No? Then you accept, as I do, that objective reality was not influenced, in any sense, by the misguided beliefs of the Nazi party. What we understood about biology, for example, even during the thirties and forties, would disprove the claim that the Jews were somehow subhuman: homology might have a fancy name, but it and other anatomical studies have been a part of biology since Darwin's day. There is no sense, even were one to discount our current knowledge of genetics and so on, in which a conclusion that the Jewish people represented a distinct, lesser race, given that they're anatomically identical to other humans.

Which is, of course, beside the point, since I already specified that people learn things. Someone being wrong about reality does not alter the efficacy of using evidence to come to moral conclusions, it's a suggestion that the human capacity to monitor the facts is imperfect... which is sort of what the scientific method exists to counter.

Quote:How is it that you still do not understand that I am NOT setting up the bible's morality as being better than any other version? MAYBE I'm offering an alternative to any form of morality. MAYBE I have found all forms of morality to be wanting/share a critical flaw.

Maybe you're just renaming your particular brand of morality as righteousness, even though what you're describing is not significantly different from the definition of morality. I'm not going to sit here and play word games with you, just so you can avoid answering questions.

Quote:That is why I never said the Nazi's did not rationally consider the facts.

But they didn't, though. One big ol' history lesson the Nazis taught us, echoed again and again in their testimonies of "just following orders," is that it's very easy to get people to unthinkingly bow to authority, to the point of big, nationwide pogroms, even. Not rationally considering the facts was central to the success of the Nazi party.

Quote:I'm saying that government owned all that was known and they Were legitmatly the best of the best the world had to offer at that time, and they released or shaped the facts that demanded the course of action those people took.

So in turn, all anyone need do to own you, and people like you, is to control the facts. Or rather pre-package 'facts' in the 'rational bundle' you have been train to look for, and they can manipulate not only your sense of morality, but how you think or view the world around you?

So, you're suggesting that if I lived in some sort of 1984-esque dystopia, could I be induced to believe incorrect things? Yes, if you put me in an extreme enough situation, extreme results can be attained. Shocker. This is only a problem if you're suggesting the possibility of being wrong while using a given method means that the method itself is wrong, which would be a death knell for both of our methods, and also an unreasonably high expectation that, again, your own methodology would not survive.

Quote:Can you not see how this is akin to the absolute power the church of the dark ages had on people? But, rather pledging allegiance to God, you pledge allegiance to science? And all anyone need do is control 'science' and people like you jam in line to get measured for their knee high boots. Why? because you all assume science can't ever be bought.

Science is a method for obtaining facts, it isn't what I'm talking about here.

Quote: (*Cough Global warming/climate change) http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/...74ffc6988d

Did you do any research into this at all before you posted it? Dumb question, I already know you didn't: for starters, what you've got there are a series of quote-mined emails taken out of context from a single research institute, so even if you had something there what you'd have is a sample size so small and subjective that it'd be useless for forming cogent conclusions on the entire field of climate science, let alone science as a whole... not that that stopped you from doing so anyway.

But leaving that aside, we also have the fact that, indeed, the emails were both quote mined from their original context and unlawfully stolen. Nine separate independent inquiries unanimously exonerated those scientists of the wrongdoing you're accusing them of- funny how that bit doesn't show up in your post- and when read in context the quotations tend to show a meaning almost precisely opposed to what you anti-science conspiritards assert them to mean. In fact they were a discussion that happened six fucking years beforehand, and weren't at all about a concerted conspiracy to hide evidence, but were in fact two guys discussing what should and should not be included in a report they were in the process of writing. Here's some sources, since you've evidently not gone a step further than what confirmed your own biases, here.

Quote:So is the planet warming because of man made carbon emissions or not? will the purchase of the "carbon credit" offset the sky from falling?

Maybe if you'd done any research at all, you wouldn't be asking that question, because you'd know the facts.

Quote:Wrong according to whom?

Why do you think that "because X person says so" is sufficient reason to make a moral judgment? That's the implicit, unjustified assumption in what you're asking there.

Quote:Kill God/God does not exist= Why, without just asserting that it's God's opinion, is homosexuality wrong.
Again if you remove the absolute in an equation then you can represent the variables any way you like, which brings us back to the question I've been asking since the OP. without the absolute God offers what in soceity allows you to keep from making an evil turn.

You sort of dodged the question there, so I'll ask it more plainly: why is god an "absolute" at all? How do you get there, without making a circular argument?

Quote: You claim 'science' is your answer.

Actually, I didn't.

Quote: I've shown you where science has been manipulated both in the past and in present day to represent what a given government wanted to tell/try and sell the public on.

You only showed you're willing to be taken in by the dishonest quote mining of agenda driven spivs, and also that you're happy to just lazily swallow what fits your presuppositions without fact checking it in the least, so I'm not surprised that you think everyone else works that way too, but I've got news for you: we don't.

Quote:So then if your anti corruption fail safe has shown to be unreliable how then can you know that your 'moral values' are safe?

The same question could be asked of you and your god, of course. Does it trouble you at all that your entire argument here relies so heavily on everyone else not thinking to apply your contentions back onto you?

Quote:Yes I can see why you were voted best debater 4 years running now, you always take on the topics and never run from a serious challenge

Nothing you've ever presented has been a "serious challenge," in the past, so based on the evidence, what you're trying to present now is equally specious. Part of being a debater is knowing what is and is not a good question to debate, after all.

Quote:*Cough carbon emissions=global climate change.. Ohhh, nooooooesss we never lives in a world, that would dare misrepresent 'the facts' in order to force change how/what we think.

I wonder whether you'll even read the sources I linked you to before disagreeing with them out of hand?

Quote:they were based in truth, and largely verifiable. It was indeed Jewish controlled banks that was the direct cause of german poverty, and their was verifiable scientific fact that pushed a wedge of separation between humanity. Which is exactly my point. If information is packaged in such away as the population has been trained to accept and process it, then all one need do is float information down that channel and without some sort of absolute, stating otherwise that information can change society completely.. Good bad or indifferent will largely depend on who is left to judge, and what influences their perception of 'morality.'

So how is god an absolute?

Quote:But again, you are missing the big picture... You can only say they were false because our grandfathers won the war! If they won the war this would all be absolute unquestionable undeniable fact!!!

That's solipsism. The facts don't change just because of what we think of them.

Quote:Where you fail in your 'the facts are your absolutes' argument is you are under the impression that you are in/you live in a society that is in the final stages of enlightenment where all facts known to you now are the same as absolute truth.. the problem with that besides that it is foolishly naive, is we have proof that our facts are just as corrupt if not more so than those of previous generations. Why? Because all of this scientific research costs butts loads more money than it did.. So then where does the money come from and why?

I'll give you a hint, here: another part of this is not being a credulous buffoon and just absorbing the first thing that agrees with me as gospel, the way you do. If you do your research, hone your bullshit detector and accept the utility of probabilistic conclusions (such that you, for example, avoid the risk of hurting people over a conclusion with the highest, but not sufficiently high, probability of being true), if you're actually careful about your moral conclusions and the actions you take based on them, then you come out far better.

Quote:Again not my claim, if you would pull you head out of the sand long enough you would see that. You are so quick to judge so quick to formulate an opinion so quick to assume you know what my position is, you've missed the whole argument completely.

Again, ALL Morality is BAD! Even the Morality of the Church. we can see how 'moral' the church can be by looking at the dark ages, the inquisition, or even to the west borough baptist now. ALL Morality contains sin. Because ALL Morality judges one sin/act greater or less than another. when infact the purpose of God's law is to identify sin in everyone so we would seek atonement rather than works based morality for our righteousness.

Again, I'm not going to play this game with you. You were asked how god's standard (his opinion) is superior, now it's time to account for your own goddamn position before you get to act as though it's some unassailable edifice fit to judge the rest of us from. I'm so damn tired of you christians interrogating us about morality while refusing to answer even the simplest of questions about their own position.

Quote:being moral=living and accepting some measure of sin.
God's standard is to be sinless. something we can not do, therefore we must seek another way to righteousness other than our acts/actions/moral behavior of any kind. Because again the only acceptable form of moral behavior is to be absolutely sinless, as Jesus was this equals righteousness. This is offered to us when we accept what has been done to atone for our sin.

So how is god's standard an absolute?

Quote:So if you are still paying attention, your question might then be: so, why does God's righteousness get to trump your morality? Because it's God's righteousness is the standard that He will use to judge all 'moral'/unatoned people by.

So, to be clear: your standard rests on "might makes right," and is otherwise completely unjustified, and yet you're willing to judge other people's standards inferior?

Quote:I can see a strawman, does that count?

How is it a strawman when you just got through assuming your conclusion, exactly like I described?