Why be good?

[Silver]

Who's Bruce?

[robvalue]

It's from the film Bruce Almighty:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0315327/

Here's a clip, not from that movie:

http://youtu.be/_f_p0CgPeyA

[Silver]

Oh, that movie.

[robvalue]

Yeah. I thought the "message" was pretty weak. A strawman not very impressive God we are supposed to feel sorry for.

[Goosebump]

If there is no God, then there is no hell; and if there is no hell, then there are no ultimate, eternal repercussions, good or bad, for how we live out our mortal lives. Of course, atheists insist that people should be "good without God."

But why? If God does not exist, why be good?

Because it's the right thing to do as a social dependent species? And we aren't psychopaths?

[dyresand]

If there is no God, then there is no hell; and if there is no hell, then there are no ultimate, eternal repercussions, good or bad, for how we live out our mortal lives. Of course, atheists insist that people should be "good without God."

But why? If God does not exist, why be good?

Because it's the right thing to do as a social dependent species? And we aren't psychopaths?

Don't waste your time he randy is just going to try and strawman and stonewall also go off topic. 

[Wyrd of Gawd]

It is not just that the gospel authors did not see these events first hand, it is also the ridiculous, mythic, bronze age stories they contain within that makes them unreliable as a historic document.

My time is limited today, but I did want to add something for you to consider regarding the authorship of the gospels.

Imagine that the gospels were written and distributed to all the churches with no names attached to them. The names of the authors were quickly forgotten because no one cared about that. The idea of apostolic authority meant nothing to the early church. When someone got up to read from a gospel, no one in the congregation really knew which gospel he was reading from because they had no names to distinguish them.

But more importantly, fifty years goes by...one hundred years goes by...two hundred years. And then an amazing thing happens: we find that the churches which are scattered all over the Roman empire and the Mediterranean DO have names for the gospels - AND THE NAMES ARE THE SAME WHEREVER YOU GO. 

It's not as if the Church in Thessalonica called the first gospel, the "Gospel According to Matthew" while a Church in Alexandria referred to it as the "Gospel of Andrew". The Church in Rome did not refer to the last gospel as the "Gospel of Phillip" while that same book was known as the "Beloved Disciple's Gospel" in Antioch.

This was before the Internet, before telephones, before electricity. How did the Churches decide - loooooooong after the fact - what the names of each of the Gospels was going to be? And how did they communicate that information to hundreds, maybe thousands of local churches, in order to get them all to agree to the new names?

And since the Early Church Fathers were also writing during all those years, why is it that we don't have any record of them calling a single gospel by any name other than the traditional name by which it is known today?

Who organized all this coordination so many years after the fact? And how on earth did they manage to pull of such a logistical feat?

+++

The plain answer is that when the Gospels were written, they were distributed from Church to Church, and the recipients would have wanted to know all the details of where the Gospel had come from, who was the authority behind it, etc.

The Church - all of the individual congregations included - has ALWAYS known who the authors of the gospels were: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Sorry buddy, the names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John didn't exist in the First Century Middle East.  Those names were given to the Gospels in the Middle Ages.

[robvalue]

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; bless the bed that I lay on.

I think that was my entire religious education from my parents. It helped me remember those names, for no particular reason.

[Esquilax]

If there is no God, then there is no hell; and if there is no hell, then there are no ultimate, eternal repercussions, good or bad, for how we live out our mortal lives. Of course, atheists insist that people should be "good without God."

But why? If God does not exist, why be good?

Because it's the right thing to do as a social dependent species? And we aren't psychopaths?

Come to think of it, Randy never did deal with that answer properly. His response to me, when I brought it up, was little more than "that doesn't make sense, from an atheist perspective," and that was it. No reason why, no justification, just fiat dismissal.

[FatAndFaithless]

The fact that he thinks there is "an atheist perspective" on morality is a bit odd.