Jon Paul by saying that humanity is at fault for willingly choosing the evil one over God and all his wonderful graces is precisely why I don't agree with christianity or any religion for that matter.In order to be in this gods graces you have to debase yourself and accept what a lowly no good sinner you have been.Not to mention the god of the O.T. is nothing more than a tyrant and yes he does get angry he has demonstrated that several times throughout the scriptures.He was in favor of the death penalty for the silliest infractions and a terror to humanity.Your arguments seem exactly like the type of thought I hate called christian apologetics.Trying to make an evil deity look and seem good and benevolent when if you were to take some of those stories literally just shows what I monster he really is.

(August 5, 2009 at 10:41 am)chatpilot Wrote: Jon Paul by saying that humanity is at fault for willingly choosing the evil one over God and all his wonderful graces is precisely why I don't agree with christianity or any religion for that matter.In order to be in this gods graces you have to debase yourself and accept what a lowly no good sinner you have been.

And you are a lowly sinner. That is not because you are no-good; that is because you are capable of good, you are given good, but even then, you reject goodness in your sins. And by that, you reject God.

If you can't accept that you are a sinner, then you are just another prideful egoist. Christian atheism is indeed the result of the addiction to the opiate we call egoism and pride.

If that is precisely why you reject Christianity, so be it.

But the balance exists, in that it's a matter of free will: we can choose to accept God and His graces and let him fill us with His Spirit and become spiritually restitute and sanctified. So we can strive to rise above mere egoism and pride and sin, to the point of sanctity and holiness by accepting Gods graces.

(August 5, 2009 at 10:41 am)chatpilot Wrote: Not to mention the god of the O.T. is nothing more than a tyrant and yes he does get angry he has demonstrated that several times throughout the scriptures.He was in favor of the death penalty for the silliest infractions and a terror to humanity.Your arguments seem exactly like the type of thought I hate called christian apologetics.Trying to make an evil deity look and seem good and benevolent when if you were to take some of those stories literally just shows what I monster he really is.

Again, this sort of moral objection is completely groundless when subjected to epistemological analysis. For the atheist who rejects the Christian God based on some moral objection, that the Christian God is "evil", has no mandate for the idea that there is any such thing as goodness or evil to begin with, whereas the Christian certainly does. In other words, play the moral card and you have refuted yourself because you have no objective mandate in your epistemic structure for such moral objections, and hence, you are merely building on abstractions of brain chemistry. The same applies to logical objections, indeed any objection in which the atheist has not the kind of outside, transcendent standard which is needed to evaluate and judge Christianity logically or morally as true or false or good or evil.

As much as this surely is also significant for your rejection of Christianity, it is not an intellectual argument you have put forth, but an emotional one.

I judge god by our terrestrial laws and moral codes not so called divine mandates.And I don't believe that without god there would be no morality or the ability to discern right from wrong.Morality in my opinion is a societal and cultural phenomenon just like religion.For example:In one culture it may be okay to eat your dead relatives whereas in our culture at least in mine cannibalism in any form is considered heinous and evil.Your society and your upbringing within it determine your idea of morality that is what I am trying to get at here.And yes you are correct when you state that I am also making an argument from an emotional standpoint as well.

I've been an atheist for about 14 years and I did leave the fold very angry and bitter towards god.Even to this day I still am angry not at god since I have denied his existence entirely but more at myself for feeling that I have been duped by my believing in the first place.I feel my time in the ministry was a total waste of and I made alot of extreme sacrifices for the god I once believed in.I was a fundamentalist Pentecostal preacher to the point of fanaticism and the more I read the bible the harder I came crashing down.

(August 5, 2009 at 11:48 am)Jon Paul Wrote: And you are a lowly sinner.

No he's not and nor am I ... we can't sin if there is no god, just like every other theist you have (I repeat) utterly failed to provide validatable evidence for your god or any other so we reject your god as non-existent, we cannot sin if there is no god! In order to claim (with validity) that we are sinners you have to first prove the existence of your god ... please do so!

Kyu

Quote:If you can't accept that you are a sinner, then you are just another prideful egoist. Christian atheism is indeed the result of the addiction to the opiate we call egoism and pride.

...and I thought religion was the opiate of the people..

Quote:Again, this sort of moral objection is completely groundless when subjected to epistemological analysis. For the atheist who rejects the Christian God based on some moral objection, that the Christian God is "evil", has no mandate for the idea that there is any such thing as goodness or evil to begin with, whereas the Christian certainly does. In other words, play the moral card and you have refuted yourself because you have no objective mandate in your epistemic structure for such moral objections, and hence, you are merely building on abstractions of brain chemistry. The same applies to logical objections, indeed any objection in which the atheist has not the kind of outside, transcendent standard which is needed to evaluate and judge Christianity logically or morally as true or false or good or evil.

But the problem with this is that you say, "objective morality can only come from god, so atheists can't have any say in matters moral, as that would be subjective" But I say, morality comes from people, and as such, I'm very well qualified to make moral judgements. Your argument is based on an assumption that morality has to be objective, and hence can only come from god. I don't believe that you need an "outside, transcendent standard" to talk about morality, since morality is a human invention - hence the fact that our dicsussions about morality, have become more sophisticated and nuanced, as people have developed. So unless you have evidence that a) morality is objective, and b) is god-given, you're simply asserting.

(August 5, 2009 at 4:49 pm)amw79 Wrote: But the problem with this is that you say, "objective morality can only come from god, so atheists can't have any say in matters moral, as that would be subjective" But I say, morality comes from people, and as such, I'm very well qualified to make moral judgements.

And that's exactly what my argument says that you say.

(August 5, 2009 at 4:49 pm)amw79 Wrote: Your argument is based on an assumption that morality has to be objective,

.. to transcend subjective minds and thus have any bearing which is more than subjective. For any subjective individuals viewpoint is as good as any others, if it is merely subjective and there is no objective standard (God) which transcends ALL of them, as in Christianity.

(August 5, 2009 at 4:49 pm)amw79 Wrote: I don't believe that you need an "outside, transcendent standard" to talk about morality, since morality is a human invention

Again you repeat what I already know, that morality is in your view merely the invention and convention of subjective minds.

(August 5, 2009 at 4:49 pm)amw79 Wrote: So unless you have evidence that a) morality is objective, and b) is god-given, you're simply asserting.

I am indeed simply asserting and analysing what morality is in one worldview, and what it is in another. In the atheist worldview, morality is merely a matter of subjective convention, and has no objective authority beyond the authority of any other subjective idea, and since you can come up with your own subjective view of it, there is no way any convention of morality is an authority over subjective individuals. All that remains is subjective minds and arbitrary ideas which can be ignored with no transcendental consequence. Indeed there is no "wrong" or "right", no "good" or "evil", these are just arbitrary human subjective abstractions; nothing is less permitted than anything else: everything is permitted, as long as it's possible within the realm of reality. Killing 20 babies and raping their dead bodies? Fine. No problem.

---

(August 5, 2009 at 12:23 pm)chatpilot Wrote: I judge god by our terrestrial laws and moral codes not so called divine mandates.And I don't believe that without god there would be no morality or the ability to discern right from wrong.

But those "terrestrial laws and moral codes" have no objective or transcendental authority over a non-existing God or anyone else. They are merely subjective arbitrary conventions, a product of human minds.

(August 5, 2009 at 12:23 pm)chatpilot Wrote: Morality in my opinion is a societal and cultural phenomenon just like religion.

Surprise! Well, that's weird, because that's exactly what I've been saying from the beginning that atheism reduces morality to: subjective arbitrary convention with no transcendent bearing or objective authority. "Good" and "evil" become meaningless terms.. subjective and arbitrary abstractions, that's all.

(August 5, 2009 at 5:18 pm)Jon Paul Wrote:

(August 5, 2009 at 4:49 pm)amw79 Wrote: But the problem with this is that you say, "objective morality can only come from god, so atheists can't have any say in matters moral, as that would be subjective" But I say, morality comes from people, and as such, I'm very well qualified to make moral judgements.

And that's exactly what my argument says that you say.

(August 5, 2009 at 4:49 pm)amw79 Wrote: Your argument is based on an assumption that morality has to be objective,

.. to transcend subjective minds and thus have any bearing which is more than subjective. For any subjective individuals viewpoint is as good as any others, if it is merely subjective and there is no objective standard (God) which transcends ALL of them, as in Christianity.

(August 5, 2009 at 4:49 pm)amw79 Wrote: I don't believe that you need an "outside, transcendent standard" to talk about morality, since morality is a human invention

Again you repeat what I already know, that morality is in your view merely the invention and convention of subjective minds.

(August 5, 2009 at 4:49 pm)amw79 Wrote: So unless you have evidence that a) morality is objective, and b) is god-given, you're simply asserting.

I am indeed simply asserting and analysing what morality is in one worldview, and what it is in another. In the atheist worldview, morality is merely a matter of subjective convention, and has no objective authority beyond the authority of any other subjective idea, and since you can come up with your own subjective view of it, there is no way any convention of morality is an authority over subjective individuals. All that remains is subjective minds and arbitrary ideas which can be ignored with no transcendental consequence. Indeed there is no "wrong" or "right", no "good" or "evil", these are just arbitrary human subjective abstractions; nothing is less permitted than anything else: everything is permitted, as long as it's possible within the realm of reality. Killing 20 babies and raping their dead bodies? Fine. No problem.

---

(August 5, 2009 at 12:23 pm)chatpilot Wrote: I judge god by our terrestrial laws and moral codes not so called divine mandates.And I don't believe that without god there would be no morality or the ability to discern right from wrong.

But those "terrestrial laws and moral codes" have no objective or transcendental authority over a non-existing God or anyone else. They are merely subjective arbitrary conventions, a product of human minds.

(August 5, 2009 at 12:23 pm)chatpilot Wrote: Morality in my opinion is a societal and cultural phenomenon just like religion.

Surprise! Well, that's weird, because that's exactly what I've been saying from the beginning that atheism reduces morality to: subjective arbitrary convention with no transcendent bearing or objective authority. "Good" and "evil" become meaningless terms.. subjective and arbitrary abstractions, that's all.

Again, your argument is based on your being convinced that as morality comes from god, anything else is 'merely subjective', and thus carries no weight. This is your error.

First of all you've still provided no evidence that morality is a) objective, or b) comes from god, so without backing up your premise, your assumed consequences carry no authority.

Morality is consensus based, on the basis that humans are born so alike and share such simliar experiences, that we have evolved sets of codes for living. These codes become 'good ideas', so much so, that we base laws on them. Consensus is the key. If you survey 10,000,000 people and 10,000,000 say that stealing is wrong, than thats a good scientific basis for saying thats its as close to objectively true as we can get.

For you to say stealing is objectively wrong, because it says "Thou shalt not steal" in a book written thousands of years ago is ludricrous. Not to mention that most cultures had come to the conclusions that killing and stealing are wrong, long before religions highjacked the ideas.

You're killing and raping of babies comment, is such a strawman fallacy, I won't dignify it with a direct response.

Quick Edit.

"atheism reduces morality to[/b]: subjective arbitrary convention with no transcendent bearing or objective authority"

Nonsense, atheism elevates morality to set of practical ideals which we can aspire to acheive and live; above the notion that its a divine dictat, which must be followed to the letter for the rest of time, on pain of eternal damnation.

What about the "Honour thy Father and Mother" "commandment", surely you realise this is morally reprehensible for a child who's been systematically abused by their parent(s) all their life, to honour their abuser....

(August 5, 2009 at 5:38 pm)amw79 Wrote: Again, your argument is based on your being convinced that as morality comes from god, anything else is 'merely subjective', and thus carries no weight. This is your error.

It certainly does not. My argument is agnostic. It doesn't claim that God exists, or that he doesn't, or even address the question.

(August 5, 2009 at 5:18 pm)Jon Paul Wrote: I am indeed simply asserting and analysing what morality is in one worldview, and what it is in another.

This whole question has already been debated to the point of nausea, much earlier in this thread. I can only suggest you read from page two of the thread.

(August 5, 2009 at 5:38 pm)amw79 Wrote: First of all you've still provided no evidence that morality is a) objective, or b) comes from god, so without backing up your premise, your assumed consequences carry no authority.

This is a complete misunderstanding of the argument. I am making an analytical, epistemological argument, which doesn't attempt to engage the question of whether God exists or not, but simply engages the epistemological consequences of a worldviews own epistemic structure, regardless of the evidential question. Whereas, you are trying to make an evidential debate. That's fine, but it's another discussion.

It's clear we can't have a very harmonious discussion when you are addressing a question and discussion wholly other and irrelevant to the one I am addressing.

(August 5, 2009 at 5:38 pm)amw79 Wrote: Morality is consensus based, on the basis that humans are born so alike and share such simliar experiences, that we have evolved sets of codes for living. These codes become 'good ideas', so much so, that we base laws on them. Consensus is the key. If you survey 10,000,000 people and 10,000,000 say that stealing is wrong, than thats a good scientific basis for saying thats its as close to objectively true as we can get.

That is simply argumentum ad populum. The popularity of a sentiment makes it no more objectively true. And the popularity of a sentiment makes it no less subjective either, and it no more transcends subjective minds for that reason.

(August 5, 2009 at 5:38 pm)amw79 Wrote: For you to say stealing is objectively wrong, because it says "Thou shalt not steal" in a book written thousands of years ago is ludricrous.

I haven't said this, I wouldn't myself say this apart from my argument, and my argument certainly doesn't say it. It doesn't make any such affirmative statements.

(August 5, 2009 at 5:38 pm)amw79 Wrote: Nonsense, atheism elevates morality to set of practical ideals which we can aspire to acheive and live; above the notion that its a divine dictat, which must be followed to the letter for the rest of time, on pain of eternal damnation

.. and this, in your own worldview, is simply another abstraction of a subjective mind which I will dismiss as such.

(August 5, 2009 at 6:11 pm)Jon Paul Wrote:

(August 5, 2009 at 5:38 pm)amw79 Wrote: Again, your argument is based on your being convinced that as morality comes from god, anything else is 'merely subjective', and thus carries no weight. This is your error.

It certainly does not. My argument is agnostic. It doesn't claim that God exists, or that he doesn't, or even address the question.

(August 5, 2009 at 5:18 pm)Jon Paul Wrote: I am indeed simply asserting and analysing what morality is in one worldview, and what it is in another.

This whole question has already been debated to the point of nausea, much earlier in this thread. I can only suggest you read from page two of the thread.

(August 5, 2009 at 5:38 pm)amw79 Wrote: First of all you've still provided no evidence that morality is a) objective, or b) comes from god, so without backing up your premise, your assumed consequences carry no authority.

This is a complete misunderstanding of the argument. I am making an analytical, epistemological argument, which doesn't attempt to engage the question of whether God exists or not, but simply engages the epistemological consequences of a worldviews own epistemic structure, regardless of the evidential question. Whereas, you are trying to make an evidential debate. That's fine, but it's another discussion.

It's clear we can't have a very harmonious discussion when you are addressing a question and discussion wholly other and irrelevant to the one I am addressing.

(August 5, 2009 at 5:38 pm)amw79 Wrote: Morality is consensus based, on the basis that humans are born so alike and share such simliar experiences, that we have evolved sets of codes for living. These codes become 'good ideas', so much so, that we base laws on them. Consensus is the key. If you survey 10,000,000 people and 10,000,000 say that stealing is wrong, than thats a good scientific basis for saying thats its as close to objectively true as we can get.

You are just repeating what I already know: the atheist view of morality. And that's all I have stated.

(August 5, 2009 at 5:38 pm)amw79 Wrote: For you to say stealing is objectively wrong, because it says "Thou shalt not steal" in a book written thousands of years ago is ludricrous.

I haven't said this, I wouldn't myself say this apart from my argument, and my argument certainly doesn't say it. It doesn't make any such affirmative statements.

(August 5, 2009 at 5:38 pm)amw79 Wrote: Nonsense, atheism elevates morality to set of practical ideals which we can aspire to acheive and live; above the notion that its a divine dictat, which must be followed to the letter for the rest of time, on pain of eternal damnation

.. and this, in your own worldview, is simply another abstraction of a subjective mind which I will dismiss as such.

Utter nonsense. I fully understand your argument, and have tried to point out to you that's its based on a woeful premise. You're continually repeating youself, and to quote you "telling me what I already know"

As ever the religious eyes and ears are so closed, that logic, reason and understanding have no chance of penetrating the indoctrination.

13 pages now, and not a question answered, not a shred of evidence offered, and the same old relgious closed mindedness dressed up in theoligical language.

I suggest you depart an atheist forum, and make for the http://www.circulartheology.moron forum

(August 5, 2009 at 6:21 pm)amw79 Wrote: Utter nonsense. I fully understand your argument, and have tried to point out to you that's its based on a woeful premise.

What you have pointed to doesn't address my argument, so I can only conclude then that you don't understand my argument. I could also conclude that you are intentionally diverting attention from what I am saying and setting up a false strawman or a non sequitur. But it makes no sense to speculate to such lengths.

(August 5, 2009 at 6:21 pm)amw79 Wrote: You're continually repeating youself, and to quote you "telling me what I already know"

You don't understand the transcendental argument, so I'm not telling you what you already know.

Luckily, there are other atheists who do understand it, and have tried to refute it by actually addressing it. The attempts I have seen have failed. But you have not even attempted, because you have not understood it.