What IS good, and how do we determine it?

[pocaracas]

Things to take away from this thread:

- Good either comes from a god who keeps changing his mind; or from a society that keeps evolving to better fit everyone in and keep most of them happy.

- Catholic marriage only pertains to man+woman. Catholic marriage is NOT a civil marriage. Civil marriage allows (in some countries) same sex unions and confers them the same rights as man/woman couples. As a corollary in this part of the discussion, it seems obvious that our Catholic_girl was married a virgin to a military guy and, after some time of marriage, is still without children. She also likes cats.

- Priests are human beings. So are school teachers. Some of them like young kids... a lot... a few act on that. Both higher powers in their respective hierarchies have, in the past and present, shoved around the problematic individuals around in an effort to keep the priest/teacher in functions, while keeping the person away from the authorities. These two classes of people, who, in our society, hold a lot of power over our children, have misbehaved, and yet... we need them around... well, believers need priests, everyone needs teachers. How to keep the bad ones at bay in both cases? psych-tests?

- Catholics may choose to look at he OT as metaphorical and a lot of the NT as obvious allegory. What matters for real is the catechism... which takes a few lesson from the bible, but extrapolates a ton of other stuff.

- Atheists can be kind people. Who'd have thought?

I probably missed something... it's not easy to sum up 52 pages of you people hounding the poor girl. And that avatar of hers only made you hound her even more!

[ignoramus]

How do you know anything about what "God" wants, Lady?

She read it in a book.

[Iroscato]

It occurs to me that I didn't welcome you to the forum C_L, which I do so now.
HOWEVER.
Though you seem like a decent person, you appear to have fallen into the trap of committing doublethink to accomodate your religious beliefs. In my view, this is one of the great fundamental evils of organised religion - it makes good people do bad things, or adopt unhealthy viewpoints. Also, you say you were 'born a catholic', which is nonsense. Nobody is 'born' a catholic, or born a muslim, or born a jew or hindu or sikh or buddhist. You were born a human being as we all were, the filling of your head with fluff came after
Still, welcome to the forum, I hope you enjoy your time here

[ignoramus]

oops!

[ignoramus]

CL wrote:

"Regardless of my views on the morality of this though, I would never say that any 2 consenting adults should not be allowed to be together. It is their right to make that decision, and I respect their right to do so!"

Can anyone see the Freudian here?

[Alex K]

No, I don't....

[Cyberman]

How do you know anything about what "God" wants, Lady?

She read it in a book.

Well, we'll see. I might have somewhere to take this.

[Mister Agenda]

Sure

The god of the OT is a monster, but the concept of hell does not appear until the NT and the preachings of Jesus; it's him that introduces the idea of tormenting the sinner for eternity without the possibility of appeal after the sinner in question is dead

Jesus also endorses the idea of thought crime, equating intention with action. This idea is totalitarian in essence: a law that is impossible to follow yet must be obeyed-on pain of postmortem torment

Having this in mind, how can you view the teachings of Jesus as moral?

Well first you have to understand that Hell is not a place you go to, kicking and screaming, where you will be burned and tortured by little men with horns. Hell is simply the only place where God is not present. And since God is goodness and love, Hell is a place where goodness and love are not present. That's why it is so bad.

The people who go to Hell are the people who reject goodness and love. For someone to avoid Hell, they don't necessarily have to believe in God. Maybe they were never taught about God. Maybe they just honestly could not bring themselves to believe He is real. This does not automatically mean they will go to Hell. What *does* automatically mean someone is going to Hell is that person's rejection of love and goodness, since God is love and goodness.

So the person who goes to Hell, a place where love and goodness are not present, is a person who *put themselves there* by choosing to reject love and goodness.

There is nothing immoral about Jesus being the messenger of this news.

As for your thing about thoughts... thoughts certainly can be immoral if they are intentionally indulged upon. For example, I am married. If I *choose* to sit around and day dream all day about having sex with another man, I am doing something immoral. I am not talking about involuntarily having a thought pop in my head and then brushing it away. I am talking about actively day dreaming and fantasizing about other men. A more obvious example would be a man who is attracted to children. If an inappropriate thought about children involuntarily pops into his head, and he pushes it away, he did not do anything wrong. But if he makes the conciese decision to sit there and start fantasisincg about rapping children, he is doing something immoral.

Jesus was simply reminding us that yes, thoughts *can* be immoral.

First, I like your sig, but the only religions I can think of that seem to be based on it are Jainism, Quakerism, and Universalism.

Second your description of hell sounds very made-up. You've dumped omnipresence from your version of God's list of omniattributes to come up with a version of hell that makes God seem less culpable for eternal torture (as though the creator of a system that results in eternal torture for anyone can escape culpability by semantic tricks). If you're going to be that unbiblical, why not chuck hell altogether, or make it brief? Your main guide to belief seems to be avoiding anything that might make you uncomfortable, why hold on to hell at all? It can easily go away or be transformed into a temporary, education experience through the magic of cherry-picking and scriptural interpretation.

[abaris]

I don't think any sex outside of husband and wife is moral, whether it is between 2 people of the opposite sex or 2 people of the same sex. And I know it is hard for you to understand why I believe this. I don't blame you! It is one of those things that doesn't mean anything unless you believe in God, since I use God in my explanation of it.

The more important question would be if you feel it, not if you believe it.

I grew up as a catholic, so I remember much of the dogmas. But even as a child I was anything but a strong believer. My parents didn't pressure me. As far as I can tell, they weren't dogmatic believers either. As I often repeat on this board, having religious conversations isn't as common in Europe as it seems to be in the USA. Gallup polled Austria as having 51 percent of irreligious people in 2011. And that's nothing compared to Scandinavia.

You know, what little I believed as a child started to fall apart rapidly when some priest told us kids that god would take what's dearest to us if we sin. That must have been before first communion, so I may have been sevenish at the time. My feelings ranged from instant fear for my parents and other relatives to outright disgust. But it got me thinking. I didn't like that god guy for making such a threat, but as a child I made a distinction between god and Jesus and so I was able to go through the motions for another decade. But I never felt anything other than fundamental boredom when sitting through a mass. Communion was a relieve, since it meant, one more song to go and it's over.

In Austria, religion is part of the curriculum at school, if your parents don't opt you out. So we had religious classes and what I heard there, finally did it for me. I still remember a priest going berserk because one of my classmates brought a Playboy magazine. We were 14 at that time and as it is when you hit puberty, your hormones tell a more convincing story than some morality going against natural needs.

But even without religion, I have been a homophobe up until my mid 20ies. I considered them a laughing stock until I discovered my best friend to be gay. Through him I met more and more gay people and once you know them as real people with real feelings and real lives, there's no way you can stay homophobic unless you don't care about other people at all. That's my road to Damascus experience without any religion involved. And given my own past, I take every opportunity to argue the case of the LGBT community.

Wow, well this thread has turned into a regular kumbaya around the campfire.

A little understanding goes a long way to having a decent conversation. Usually we only get the missionary types kicking down the doors with all bibles blazing, so we're not used to actually have a talk.

[Mister Agenda]

Im sorry, Mystic, but I'm just not pretending.  You can either accept that or continue to pitch straw?

Yes you are right, that was a slip. I just think however it is manifest enough to Atheists that we have a soul, but, they've gone on this notion of intellectual superior high ground  to just doubt anything spiritual or metaphysical. I do believe however they do pretend to not understand what spiritual or soul is, yes, they don't believe in it, but they very well understand what it is.

There's no law that says you have to be this much of an ass. And anyone who doesn't grasp how vague a term 'spiritual' is has no business attempting a topic so over their head.