What is "FAITH"

[Esquilax]

How often do you read and study the Bible, from what I can tell little because you made a real good demonstration in our last argument of only a few verses. You could not connect what was said with what was done. I have not meet anyone here that can do much better, the Bible connects from the beginning to the end and no one but the Christians here have shown they know the connection.

Here's the thing about arguing with you that drives me- and I suspect everyone else here- goddamn insane; you're so completely sure that your version of what the bible says is true, despite providing us no reason to think that. You're just utterly, brashly absorbed in your belief that whatever you think about the bible is a self evident truth, but outside of your own head, outside of godschild-world, it's not.

When you say "read and study," what you really mean is "agree with me without question." Because let me assure you, others here that have read and studied the bible have come to conclusions counter to yours. There are thousands of christian denominations that you're simply not a part of, what makes your interpretation the prime one over theirs? You never tell us; you're quite happy to tell us all what you believe, but like most christians you fall down when it comes to the why, beyond the traditional "god has revealed it to me!" non-answer.

But you don't want to have that discussion. I can see why: you're a christian, so you're used to having things dictated to you, but that's not good enough here. So you just bullheadedly throw down whatever dictates you like, and if someone dares to disagree, you pull out your standard answer, "I know better than you!" without any apparent need to say why or even how that is.

I feel I can make this statement because no unbeliever has proven different.

You've always felt that you can make unqualified statements by fiat. This isn't a surprise. I kind of add in a little "unevidenced assertion!" tag to most of your posts in my mind, nowadays.

[Consilius]

How can morality be evolutionary if we need to be taught it? Is there a guy who came up with it and then taught it to everyone else? Is there a group of people who determine what we believe to be right and wrong?
I thought man was inherently evil. But we can all find out for ourselves, naturally, what "good" is. It's the moral landscape.
Actually, "good" exists because God does. It is an immutable product of an immutable being. Or can you tell us that, if circumstances change, murder can one day be accepted as moral?

This is very simple. Morality is the evolutionary the same way that humans know how to build spaceships. Both concepts are started as nice ideas, but over time they are refined as we grow and learn more and more about ourselves and the universe.

Certain people STILL accept murder as moral. The bible teaches that we should stone naughty children, and this law was upheld for the longest time. Capital punishment is still practiced in most areas of the world as a way to keep certain lawbreakers out of society. (Are you for or against Capital Punishment? If you are, then by definition you are a law-abiding murderer.) In the Muslim world there are "Honor-killings", and for the longest time the anglo-saxon way of solving a dispute was to challenge someone to a duel, where one person murdered the other.

So...looking at the overwhelming evidence of moral murders...yes, there's a chance that we could one day accept certain forms of murder as acceptable, depending on how our society grows and evolves.

So we owe our morality to a prehistoric group of people? Where did they get their ideas from?
Stoning naughty children? That Bible passage isn't as familiar to me as you think it is.
Capital punishment is not the same with the crime that is murder. Killing the innocent is something we agree is morally wrong.
Anglo-Saxon duels are mutual, aren't they?
We agree that honor-killings are wrong. Why?
If morality is not fixed, than that means the morals preached by the Bible were dreamed up over a 2000-year period, endured for another 2000 years, but one day loving your neighbor will be the most despicable thing you can imagine.

[Silver]

So we owe our morality to a prehistoric group of people?

From one thread to another, you are simply a broken record.

Anthropology shows that morality arose in primitive man, at first as a means of clan survival. Morality, as does life, evolved. Without an evolution in morality, we would still be ascribing to dark age biblical nonsense. Even with an evolution of morality, ethics applying to the progression of society, there still remain constants that will never change. For instance, to murder someone is morally wrong, and that is not going to change.

[Consilius]

Actually, BadWriterSparty and I were on this, but join in if you like.
My response to you:
You are saying that the Bible advocates for the horrors of the Dark Age. Did it do so before? Does it do so now? Is it more likely that the Bible changed or the people did?
The murder of another human being is always wrong and will forever be. It doesn't matter if it will help us in a million years. We don't need it to be written down. Everyone around the world knows this. It appears this particular ethic is not only eternal, but invisible and universal.
Is it more likely that we invented a world where homicide isn't a good thing, or that we discovered that living in peace was the best way to live?

[Silver]

You are saying that the Bible advocates for the horrors of the Dark Age.

No worse accumulation of horrors have befallen men than those supported by religion.

[Consilius]

Don't you think its rather immature for atheists and theists to point fingers at one another for what has happened in the past? As long as it has no bearing on the present, the hatchet should be buried.
And wasn't atheism the state religion of Communist Russia during World War II?
No worse accumulation of horrors have befallen men than those supported by men with facial hair (Hitler, Stalin, Bin Laden).

[Esquilax]

No worse accumulation of horrors have befallen men than those supported by men with facial hair (Hitler, Stalin, Bin Laden).

The difference being, of course, that neither facial hair- nor atheism, for that matter- were the causes of the violence surrounding them.

[Consilius]

It seems that the Bible didn't start causing violence until the fall of Rome, and then stopped around the 20th century.
Is it more likely that the Bible changed or that the people did?

[Esquilax]

It seems that the Bible didn't start causing violence until the fall of Rome, and then stopped around the 20th century.
Is it more likely that the Bible changed or that the people did?

Oh, the people did: they stopped taking the bible literally.

[Consilius]

Is literalism the same as correctly interpreting a message?

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Given that Christians have met head-on with political authorities many times, you can't say that the Christian message changes with the legislation of the time either.