(January 29, 2016 at 3:39 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:

(January 29, 2016 at 11:47 am)Drich Wrote: But again I am not pushing for one morality over another...

Then we can forget the prohibitions in the bible as arbitrary and meaningless?

for the saved yes absolutely, this standard means nothing outside of describing the behavior you will naturally want to produce/with in your ablity. for the rest, they are the absolute measure you will be found wanting against.

Quote: You're still basing your idea of atonement on a set of standards, elsewise what is there to atone for?

A purpose built impossible standard. Not Morality because again morality is the perversion of this standard to make it 'doable.' This standard is not meant to be followed but designed to show sin, and that everyone is in sin. Again sin and immorality not being the same thing. Remember I gave examples where it is possible to sin and still be found moral, and vise versa.

Quote: 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.  

Again no.
Morality is the substituationary response. It is man's way to try and be righteous without following the absolute perfect standard. one that only God himself can live by.
Again the standard was never intended for us to live by, only to show we can't possible live by it. Morality All forms of it seek to lower the bar enough for us to clear it.

Quote: 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.

but again according to whom?
We already have the vechicals in placed in our society that would allow us mass genocide, not only that we have the tools they didnt have. Again look at abortion, for all but well placed marketing campaign and a supreme court ruling bottom line we are a soceity who kills babies inurtro by pulling them apart with power vacuum tools, or we induce labor give partial birth, insert scissors into the base of the skull and suck out the brains.. (i can post youtube videos again if you like) Now the debate has turned to the elderly, and although it's not completely on the books Hospice is little more than assisted suicide. despite how you feel about hospices current role do you think it will remain content 'killing off' those with in it's current mission statement? What if soceity can justify lumping another group in with the 'dying?'

What I am point to is the fact that if we simply dress up the acts of the nazi's and use the right marketing, nothing the Nazis did would be out of bounds. All a soceity need do is go slow and errode our value systems slowly and over large amounts of time.
Instead of the jews, look at what we are doing with Muslims, or rather radical muslims.. (do you see how you perception changed?) for most people what you say radicalized the gloves come off. and everything is fair game, and it can be strongly argued rightfully so.. But bottom line we are sanctioning the wholesale slaughter of millions, which at it's core is what the Nazis did.. Remember they like us were 'under attack' by monsters and more so 10's of thousands of germans were starving to death because of a direct result of thier actions. or so they were told.

With out an absolute to guide you how do you know/how can you say the bottom line action of one country is justifiable and the bottom line actions of another are not?

Quote: 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.

No, I'am saying morals do not define my actions nor do they make me a good or bad person.
I know I am a sinner, and I sin all the time (again has nothing to do with immorality) therefore in order to obtain righteousness I sought atonement. Per our romans study We know that being redeemed frees us from the law as a means to righteousness. meaning I am not a good person because of what I do. I will be judge good, because I taken the righteousness of Christ, and now His righteousness/Morality is what is being judged. So then why follow the law? Again we can completely. we live in line with the law not as a means to being 'moral' but as a result of being saved. it is a effect of salvation not a cause. so what happens if we 'back slide' we are and always will be 'back slid-en' as our best will never be good enough. So we simply repent and move on.

So what happens if the life we live resembles nothing of the life of Christ? It's a good indication that we are not saved. Again the direct result of salvation is what most of you would identify as a 'christian moral life.' But again it is not this life we live or code we live by that defines our righteousness.

(January 29, 2016 at 4:35 pm)loganonekenobi Wrote: 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".

You better ask for your money back.. because your version of 'free thinking' is falling short.

Quote: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.

1 thess 5:21
Question ALL Things and Hold on to what is Good!
This does not mean question only the questionable, it means question the foundational.. How is it do you think I can answer your questions if I first did not ask them myself?

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

No, the atonement in which I refer is God making up for our short comings on the cross.

Quote: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.

Book chapter and verse please.
this is not ANYWHERE in the bible. We are talking about completely different religions.

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

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

Hitchens is a simple minded tard who doesn't understand the basics.
We got sick, and God offers to make us well.

Quote: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.

And if I were to say ALL morality is Bad? even all forms of Christian morality? would it make you think that you don't know what i am talking about? From my side of the computer it's obvious that as 'free thinking as you like to think yourself to be, you haven't even asked enough questions to understand what is being discussed let alone create a proper position against the OP. Yet here you are just jabbering away at how closed minded theists are... Hmm How embarrassing would it be if the theist is the one who has spent IDK the last 15 years studying this very topic, and you are the one who doesn't have a clue? im mean after that big long speech about 'free thinking and all'

(January 30, 2016 at 3:29 pm)Drich Wrote:

(January 29, 2016 at 12:08 pm)Nihilist Virus Wrote: "ever wonder why if a particular species of a given genus shows any variances it is reclassified with a different species name or placed in a sub species category? All except Humanity? Well, in the 1930's was indeed subdivided. This division is what the Nazi's used to justify their claims of racial superiority/ablity for higher reasoning and cognitive abilities. They were not just pulling random facts out of the air. they were using real science, that at the time the world recognized. what's more they (the citizens of Nazi germany) like any of us do not generally have access to facts beyond what a given discipline wants circulated. I point back to the 'fact' that we are no longer subdivided into different or sub species categories. Our knowledge of the 'truth' is capped by the same society that provides us with 'morality.'"

Evolution is defined in terms of breeding.  A human of any race can breed with a human of any other race and the offspring will itself be fertile. In no sense are humans of different races belonging in a different species.

Google "definition of species".

Very nice sport, now look up the word: SUB Species!
(Also you do know you arguing with History and not me right?)

Sub species:



A taxonomist decides whether to recognize a subspecies or not. A common way to decide is that organisms belonging to different subspecies of the same species are capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring, but they do not usually interbreed in nature due to geographic isolation, , or other factors. The differences between subspecies are usually less distinct than the differences between species.





So even though the Jews were scattered throughout the world, they generally did not interbreed with gentiles (sexual selection criteria of subspecies met); and also Africans were originally geographically isolated.  Therefore Hitler, presumably being a self-proclaimed taxonomist, made the necessary determination that Jews and Africans were indeed of a different subspecies than the Nazis.



So I didn't read it carefully before, but now yes, it's clear that Hitler perverted science to further his agenda.  As you note, the scientific community does not divide humanity into different subspecies.



I find it regrettable, though, that you won't take a firm stance on your moral absolutes.  Please respond to this:





1. The Jews made 600+ Do and Don't laws


2. These laws were very specific (don't cook a goat in its mother's milk?!)

3. These laws covered minor and major offenses (and punishments were applied accordingly)

4. The Jews were aware of what rape is (there was the rape of Dinah, the rape of Tamar, and the dusk-till-dawn-rape-to-death of the levite's concubine in )

5. There is no law against rape


6. There is no law against pedophilia


7. There is no law against fornication (unless one of the parties is married/engaged, in which case it is adultery)



So I find a remarkable coincidence here.  We savage atheists have no morality, absolute or otherwise, and therefore our favorite pastime is of course raping babies.  Yet your absolute morality does not outlaw this behavior, so you have no actual way of knowing that it is wrong.  You can't admit that you know raping babies is wrong, because if you do then you admit that the atheist and the Christian both invent their own morality.

Sub species:



A taxonomist decides whether to recognize a subspecies or not. A common way to decide is that organisms belonging to different subspecies of the same species are capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring, but they do not usually interbreed in nature due to geographic isolation, sexual selection, or other factors. The differences between subspecies are usually less distinct than the differences between species.





So even though the Jews were scattered throughout the world, they generally did not interbreed with gentiles (sexual selection criteria of subspecies met); and also Africans were originally geographically isolated. Therefore Hitler, presumably being a self-proclaimed taxonomist, made the necessary determination that Jews and Africans were indeed of a different subspecies than the Nazis.



So I didn't read it carefully before, but now yes, it's clear that Hitler perverted science to further his agenda. As you note, the scientific community does not divide humanity into different subspecies.



I find it regrettable, though, that you won't take a firm stance on your moral absolutes. Please respond to this:





1. The Jews made 600+ Do and Don't laws

2. These laws were very specific (don't cook a goat in its mother's milk?!)

3. These laws covered minor and major offenses (and punishments were applied accordingly)

4. The Jews were aware of what rape is (there was the rape of Dinah, the rape of Tamar, and the dusk-till-dawn-rape-to-death of the levite's concubine in Judges 19)

5. There is no law against rape

6. There is no law against pedophilia

7. There is no law against fornication (unless one of the parties is married/engaged, in which case it is adultery)



So I find a remarkable coincidence here. We savage atheists have no morality, absolute or otherwise, and therefore our favorite pastime is of course raping babies. Yet your absolute morality does not outlaw this behavior, so you have no actual way of knowing that it is wrong. You can't admit that you know raping babies is wrong, because if you do then you admit that the atheist and the Christian both invent their own morality.

(January 29, 2016 at 9:19 pm)Brakeman Wrote:

(January 29, 2016 at 8:58 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: The importance of consent is with one with which I agree. ..

Except when it applies to your god's directed rape of captured virgin girls of other tribes, right?

As a posed to what the philosopher's/thinking mans reason for have sex/talking a child into sex?

Do you seriously want to pretend one is better than the other based on 'your moral values?'

(January 30, 2016 at 4:18 pm)Drich Wrote:

Quote: 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.

but again according to whom?
We already have the vechicals in placed in our society that would allow us mass genocide, not only that we have the tools they didnt  have. Again look at abortion, for all but well placed marketing campaign and a supreme court ruling bottom line we are a soceity who kills babies inurtro by pulling them apart with power vacuum tools, or we induce labor give partial birth, insert scissors into the base of the skull and suck out the brains.. (i can post youtube videos again if you like) Now the debate has turned to the elderly, and although it's not completely on the books Hospice is little more than assisted suicide. despite how you feel about hospices current role do you think it will remain content 'killing off' those with in it's current mission statement? What if soceity can justify lumping another group in with the 'dying?'

What I am point to is the fact that if we simply dress up the acts of the nazi's and use the right marketing, nothing the Nazis did would be out of bounds. All a soceity need do is go slow and errode our value systems slowly and over large amounts of time.
Instead of the jews, look at what we are doing with Muslims, or rather radical muslims.. (do you see how you perception changed?) for most people what you say radicalized the gloves come off. and everything is fair game, and it can be strongly argued rightfully so.. But bottom line we are sanctioning the wholesale slaughter of millions, which at it's core is what the Nazis did.. Remember they like us were 'under attack' by monsters and more so 10's of thousands of germans were starving to death because of a direct result of thier actions. or so they were told.

With out an absolute to guide you how do you know/how can you say the bottom line action of one country is justifiable and the bottom line actions of another are not?

Quote: 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.

No, I'am saying morals do not define my actions nor do they make me a good or bad person.
I know I am a sinner, and I sin all the time (again has nothing to do with immorality) therefore in order to obtain righteousness I sought atonement. Per our romans study We know that being redeemed frees us from the law as a means to righteousness. meaning I am not a good person because of what I do. I will be judge good, because I taken the righteousness of Christ, and now His righteousness/Morality is what is being judged. So then why follow the law? Again we can completely. we live in line with the law not as a means to being 'moral' but as a result of being saved. it is a effect of salvation not a cause. so what happens if we 'back slide' we are and always will be 'back slid-en' as our best will never be good enough. So we simply repent and move on.

So what happens if the life we live resembles nothing of the life of Christ? It's a good indication that we are not saved. Again the direct result of salvation is what most of you would identify as a 'christian moral life.' But again it is not this life we live or code we live by that defines our righteousness.

You didn't actually answer either point. Care to try again, this time reading what I actually wrote?

(January 30, 2016 at 2:08 am)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote:

(January 29, 2016 at 8:58 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: The importance of consent is with one with which I agree. Yet why should sexual interactions between adults and children be treated any differently than interaction in other areas. For example, adults can compel children to eat things, take medicine, take music lessons, etc. without their consent because the adults believe it is good for the children. Now of course most people in today's Western culture know that adult-child sexual relationships are generally traumatic and psychologically crippling for children.

All I am saying is that evil people are very good and rationalizing very harmful things especially with respect to primal desires like greed and lust. But if perversity becomes part of the culture then people become blind to the harms it causes. It is conceivable that at some point pederasty could be the new "civil right". Afterall, some people say you cannot legislate morality and complain about other people pushing their morals onto them.

I've been (and remain) very ill, these past few days, so I missed a chance to respond to Drich and to participate in this ongoing conversation, but I feel I need to chime in on this.

We keep hearing the question, loosely phrased, "If it's okay to have sex in __this__ formerly-forbidden way, then why is it still forbiddable to do __this___?" (particularly, the first blank is homosexuality and the second blank is pedophilia).

As Jenny has already pointed out, the simple answer is that we know that children are unable, psychologically and in terms of emotional development, of consenting to sex with people who are adults, and since we as a society have (sometime since the Bible was written, apparently) decided that sex without consent is called rape, then pedophilia is banned on that basis. I cannot see a circumstance in which sex with prepubescent, that is to say non-sexual, children would ever be considered moral or acceptable, regardless of the desires or justifications of the people who wish to engage in such acts. 

On the other hand, Hebephilia, which is adult sexual attraction to teenagers, is a slightly different proposition. If science discovers that we are wrong about this factor, then I can see the laws changing to suit a different figure than the ones we have artificially drawn (somewhere between 14 and 18, depending on the nation and/or the state in question), but as things currently stand, I cannot see a basis for the "but if people want to, then isn't anything permissible" argument I see being made here. It's apples and oranges, when you're talking about the behavior between two consenting adults and behavior of one major and one minor person, the latter of whom cannot meet the standards I set out above.

This is a question of harm. There is no harm in "perversion", as people choose to call a great many acts. You will recall, no doubt, that all/any anal or oral sex (even between a husband and wife) was technically called sodomy, regardless of which gender(s) performed the acts, under the statutes which until 2004 prohibited it. The idea was that sex was for reproduction only, and anything else was perversion. Thankfully, we are moving away from that "every sperm is sacred" (Python joke) approach to sexual behavior, and we're not letting those who want to label things perverse determine what two consenting adults may do to one another. Conflating that question with acts against children is, I believe, willfully dishonest.

So, while I keep hearing Christians on these types of forums saying things like, "It is conceivable that at some point pederasty could be the new civil right", I simply see no realistic basis for such an argument. It's simply an assertion that's thrown out there, without bothering to address the question of harm and/or the data about why  there's such a thing as the Age of Consent.

In the words of Dr. Drew Pinsky, "There’s a reason we have laws in place protecting young people. Their brain development isn’t such that they can render consent for something like sex. And for a judge to say that a 14-year-old to consent to this  … It is outlandish in a way that I cannot describe. There’s no such thing as someone being older than her chronological age who can magically have a brain of a 21-year-old. She may have behaved in a way that was inappropriate, but guess what? That’s a sign of mental illness. Those are the people we need to protect the most."

Your introducing a red herring while moving the goal posts!

In my senerio I go to great lengths to explain science has given it's blessing stating their is no physical or mental harm that comes to certain children. Likewise their is a genetic predisposition for pedophilia. Just like science gave it's blessing on homosexuality clearing the way from physical and mental concerns and is hasn
t yet but is still striving to find that gay gene. It took it a step further even and verified a pedo gene, so technically their is a more legitmate reason for pedophilia in this senerio than homosexuality. Now using the very same metric that got homosexuality in every single show now on tv (pop culture/morality) explain why you have a reservation on pedophilia? Obviously science and reason are not working for you, because they contradict your morality. so what then tells you that 'science' got it wrong with pedophilia and right with homosexuality?

If you can/won't put a lable on it I can and will if you like.

(January 30, 2016 at 3:12 am)Exian Wrote: Which is it, Drich? Are we just following the current "pop morality" by accepting homosexuality, or are we challenging the morality of past generations by accepting it?

Pop morality is what a given region or generation thinks is moral... So the morality in 1940 germany is one form like the morality in 1940 america is another verse 2016 america.

My question asks which one is right, and how do we know we haven't slipped past the evil of 1940's germany

(January 30, 2016 at 12:13 pm)Irrational Wrote:

(January 30, 2016 at 11:17 am)Drich Wrote: If I had absolutely no empathy, how is it then I know just what to say to get under the skin of the self righteous so easily?

I have empathy, but it is a tool I control and use to meet whatever logical end I am trying to achieve. it is not a free range emotion that can be used to keep me in check with pop culture. (like how you questioning my ability to empathize and holding the term sociopath over my head is supposed to get me to back off.)

If not being control by my 'empathy' (which you think you can obviously manipulate/big picture Goverment can also manipulate) makes me a sociopath in this group then so be it. I'm not some emotionally lead monkey who will be force to change his mode because someone changes the tempo of the music.

So cognitive empathy you have. More importantly, how good is your affective empathy?

under cognitive control. (most of the time.)

(January 30, 2016 at 12:40 pm)Brakeman Wrote:

(January 30, 2016 at 11:17 am)Drich Wrote: If I had absolutely no empathy, how is it then I know just what to say to get under the skin of ..

I have empathy, but it is a tool I control and use to ..

If not being control by my 'empathy' ..

I don't think Drich really understands what Empathy is..  or has a clue..

Maybe the better question is "does Drich care what brakeman and his followers thinks about his lack of empathy?" Does drich care if he is labeled a sociopath because he can truly look at himself and the society he lives in objectively in such a real way his empathy is questioned?

If you answered yes to either of these questions then know you will have to try and find another way to manipulate me. I'd much rather be labeled a sociopath than be control by what douche bags think of me.