This one jumped off the deep end really quick.

I find it desperately hard to believe that you were ever an atheist. Methinks you conflate atheism with simply being a person who is not actively practicing a religion.

(May 19, 2015 at 1:05 pm)Freedom4me Wrote: In part, my reason for bringing up the first commandment is to make the point that we don't actually have to DO something to violate a moral absolute.  If I love money more than God then I condemn myself by my attitude toward money (relative to my attitude toward God) and not by doing something horrible toward others.  Some horrible and detestable crimes are committed every day by people who have taken the attitude that money is more important than anything else.  It always starts with a persons heart; our attitudes about things matter.

So interesting to me, when theists start filling in details of claims of theirs that they haven't bothered to justify in the slightest.

I'm skeptical of moral absolutes. But here's a political absolute that I, a U.S. citizen, feel perfectly justified in advancing: the First Amendment. And with it, the so-called 1st Commandment goes right out the fucking window -- as it should.

(May 18, 2015 at 10:23 pm)Simon Moon Wrote: Do you agree with the following?

Life is preferable to death.
Health is preferable to disease.
Freedom is preferable slavery. 
Comfort is preferable to pain.   

If you do, it doesn't even require empathy to be able to tell that slavery is wrong. All it takes is a bit of rational thinking.

Yes, I agree, as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough.  Jesus told us to love our brother as we love ourselves.  He said we should give to the poor.  He told us to love our enemies.  How do you understand "agape love"?  is it physical stuff, or is it something else?

The hell is "agape love"? Sounds like a porno.

But really, the common definition of "agape" love is the love of God and Christ for mankind.

What the hell do you think our position on the existence of "agape" love is?

(May 19, 2015 at 12:36 pm)robvalue Wrote: That does sound like something that would be from Christianity. Sadly, Christianity can focus very heavily on making you hate yourself. It sets standards that are so high you are almost certain to fail, and fail constantly.

It's a dirty, disgusting trick. Morality, any morality that matters, is about the wellbeing of life on this planet. It's not about the feelings of undemonstrated magical beings. I'd rather curse god's name all day long than hurt someone. This is another trick: the conflation of sins with actual immoral, harmful acts. If you stop and examine them in this way, you'll see the two are not related except by coincidence.

If God values his ego higher than the wellbeing of humans and animals, then he is not worthy of praise.

Tell me, robvalue, do you think justice is something worthy of praise? Is love worthy of praise?  How about truth?  As I see it, God is the personification of these and other intrinsically good things.

(May 19, 2015 at 3:59 pm)Freedom4me Wrote:

(May 19, 2015 at 12:36 pm)robvalue Wrote: That does sound like something that would be from Christianity. Sadly, Christianity can focus very heavily on making you hate yourself. It sets standards that are so high you are almost certain to fail, and fail constantly.

It's a dirty, disgusting trick. Morality, any morality that matters, is about the wellbeing of life on this planet. It's not about the feelings of undemonstrated magical beings. I'd rather curse god's name all day long than hurt someone. This is another trick: the conflation of sins with actual immoral, harmful acts. If you stop and examine them in this way, you'll see the two are not related except by coincidence.

If God values his ego higher than the wellbeing of humans and animals, then he is not worthy of praise.

Tell me, robvalue, do you think justice is something worthy of praise? Is love worthy of praise?  How about truth?  As I see it, God is the personification of these and other intrinsically good things.

Tell it to the Amalekites, especially the children.

Oh wait . . . you can't.

(May 19, 2015 at 3:59 pm)Freedom4me Wrote: Tell me, robvalue, do you think justice is something worthy of praise?

Yup. Though obviously one's idea of justice can be different from another's.

Quote:Is love worthy of praise?

Yup.
 

Quote: How about truth?

 
Yup.

Quote:As I see it, God is the personification of these and other intrinsically good things.

We don't care about 'how you see it', we care about what's true and can be proven to be true.

There are plenty of other Christians who have entirely contradictory views of your God "as they see it", and you have no method of investigating whose ideas of God are correct besides pointing to the same book that they use.

(May 19, 2015 at 3:59 pm)Freedom4me Wrote:

(May 19, 2015 at 12:36 pm)robvalue Wrote: That does sound like something that would be from Christianity. Sadly, Christianity can focus very heavily on making you hate yourself. It sets standards that are so high you are almost certain to fail, and fail constantly.

It's a dirty, disgusting trick. Morality, any morality that matters, is about the wellbeing of life on this planet. It's not about the feelings of undemonstrated magical beings. I'd rather curse god's name all day long than hurt someone. This is another trick: the conflation of sins with actual immoral, harmful acts. If you stop and examine them in this way, you'll see the two are not related except by coincidence.

If God values his ego higher than the wellbeing of humans and animals, then he is not worthy of praise.

Tell me, robvalue, do you think justice is something worthy of praise? Is love worthy of praise?  How about truth?  As I see it, God is the personification of these and other intrinsically good things.

Justice? That's a slippery term. I think I'd prefer fairness. Justice seems a heavy handed word, concerned more with dealing out revenge. I don't want people who have wronged others to suffer because of it as such, I just want what is necessary to keep them from causing more harm. A silent arbiter handing out judgement based on random rules which no one else gets a say in doesn't seem like any kind of fair system. That's a tyrant.

Love is good, yes. Certainly very little of that from the biblical God. Guess what his most frequent interaction is with humans in the bible? It's killing them. Conservative estimates put his kill count, including those he commanded, at 2.5 million making him the most prolific and sadistic genocidal murderer ever. He holds people's eternal souls hostage (I'm pretending this is all real for the sake of argument) to blackmail you into submission. No, that's not love. That's an abusive authority figure, a fascist dictator.

Truth is important, yes. I don't know what God has to do with truth, he can't even demonstrate himself to exist.

So really, God is a psychopathic murderous evil sadistic tyrant, lording it over a helpless creation for his own amusement. At the same time, he provides absolutely no compelling evidence for his followers to present to anyone else to even convince them he's at all real. Not even anything to win over people worshipping those false gods.

I'm not going to worship anyone or anything, ever. It's a twisted concept. A being like a god should not require anything from me, and one who demands it certainly does not deserve it.

If God does want to come discuss things with me rather than hiding outside of science and doing an impression of a non-existent entity, he is very welcome! Something tells me he won't though, because I'm not already convinced he is talking to me. It's kind of a prerequisite.

To me, equating "God" with praise is a bait and switch tactic.