What IS good, and how do we determine it?

[The Grand Nudger]

The notion that sex is sacred makes sense to me because it is the act that brings new life into the world. That's not its only purpose (love and bonding are another purpose), but it still is one of its purposes. An act that can create new life is a sacred act because life is sacred. And sacred things should be handled with care and kept as their pure, authentic selves. 

I know you don't agree, and that is perfectly fine. But there you have it. Those are my reasons. 

Well I do agree with you that life is sacred....but that statement isn't going to get us to your conclusion.   You've imposed an unspoken definition of a "pure authentic self" and an unjustified requirement that sex must be treated according to this nebulous attribute. My fists were made for beating the shit out of other living creatures (among many other things)......that doesn't make it moral for me to beat the shit out of other living creatures. My eyes are sunk deeper in my skull and my brow ridge is more pronounced and my body more massive than yours, male to female, because I'm the "violence model". If I stay true to my "pure, authentic self"...that would include senseless violence and yes...sportfucking for the fun of it...as moral behavior....."good" things.

But our disagreement on the way the ball rolls down the hill is only of secondary importance to me, in this response.  Do you see how you just justified your position?  Notice you didn't refer to god once (even though I actually tried to get you to inject god into it)?  That's how -I- justify my moral statements as well.  I have been attempting, throughout this entire thread, to do better than just -tell you- how I do it, but to get you to do it yourself.   I make an initial value statement, and then -attempt- to follow from there reasonably.  Sometimes I, like you, like anyone, might not actually get the "reasonable" bit right....but that's okay, because it's not -actually-  a requirement. You and I make these determinations the same way.

*gods disgust for Onanism...btw (a catchall term that would come to include many forms of contraception), he killed Onan for it..struck him dead where he stooped....this is one of the things the catholic church points to in it's justification of their position on contraception. God is unambiguous, contraception is so disgusting to his sight that he is willing to kill you, on the spot, for attempting it....and all Onan did was pull out of his dead brothers wife, btw....lol. Let me repeat that one more time, in bold italics..so it sinks in:

Your god is willing to kill a person for pulling out of his dead brother's wife.

[Longhorn]

Abstinence doesn't work. It's a fact.

Well, I don't know how things are with your spouse, but every time I didn't have sex with my wife, she didn't get pregnant.

Abstinence worked perfectly every time!

lol

thanks to the catholic church I don't need to worry about that.

[Longhorn]

I've never gotten an honest answer so far and I've asked almost all theists

CL, how does anyone know anything about god?

[The Grand Nudger]

So.....the paper you found.......Catholic Girl, starts off with a few qeustions to set the tone...lets go ahead and answer them real quick.

is it immoral to have one’s safety assured by someone else?

It can be, yes.

 Is it immoral for most of us in a society to have our peace and tranquility assured by the sacrifice and even death of others?

It can be, yes.

 Is it immoral to have one’s debts paid by someone else?

It can be, yes.  

But we're not talking about any of that...lets not forget we're talking about torturing a human being and then stringing him up on a post to die because we did bad shit.  

The author continues for a couple of paragraphs, pitching straw but, amusingly, getting it right on accident, without seeming to realize it...and leaving that question unanswered for a few more paragraphs of shameless straw.....but....finally, some meat.....so here we go.  

So Hitchens must mean that there is something abhorrent and immoral in our benefiting from the suffering of others. Perhaps he knows the line from Francis Thompson’s poem “Daisy”: “For we are born in others’ pain, / And perish in our own.” Being human would seem to entail benefiting from what others do all the time, from first to last, and often what they do involves self-sacrifice and pain.

No, Hitchens meant exactly what he said....ignore that the author still has his fork in hand...the comment he weasels in here is fucking sick.  We're born in others pain, and perish in our own.  He's not commenting on the morality of the situation at all...just excusing it on the grounds that it happens all the time.  Well, you know what...that's a problem too, jackass, perhaps we should work to see it happen less often, and we can start by ceasing to hold it up as a shining example of love and virtue when it does?  Sure, there is pain and suffering in the world that can't be avoided....but I haven't scapegoated anyone today...so apparently -that's- the kind of pain and suffering that -can- be avoided.  

I am no theologian, nor is this idle boasting, but even I know that Hitchens’s second point exhibits a radical misunderstanding of the human situation. He seems to be suggesting that the moral thing for me to do would be to save myself. I am the one who sinned so I should redeem myself. Well, Pelagius was a Briton, so I suppose Hitchens comes by this mistake honestly. There is a lot more involved here than an apparent shifting of the burden onto someone else that I could have carried myself.

Again, he does not comment on the morality of the situation...he just asserts his faith position that this is the only way to salvation, that a human being can't get it, without vicarious redemption.  Well guess what....if you can't manage to get salvation for what you've done..maybe you shouldn't have done such horrible shit?  At what point does whining "but how else am I supposed to get the lollipop" make it okay to torture and murder a person, or to accept as payment the torture and murder of a person, or to accept a persons torture and murder as payment by another -on your behalf-?

His closing remarks, here

So of Hitchens’s two objections, the first involves a rejection of an ineradicable feature of human existence, and the second is a Pelagian misunderstanding of how redemption can come about.

suggest that he sees these two points that I've addressed as his strongest.  You?

[Catholic_Lady]

I've never gotten an honest answer so far and I've asked almost all theists

CL, how does anyone know anything about god?

We know best about God through Jesus, who is God. Of course, it means nothing if you don't believe that lol.

[The Grand Nudger]

I don;t think you can maintan that as a true statement.  I seem to recall a conversation you just had wherein it was made plainly obvious that the things your church -says- about jesus..even about -the things he is supposed to have said- takes precedence to anything you have that could even remotely be argued as access to jesus.  Wouldn't it be more truthful to say that you know god through the Church?

[Longhorn]

Double post

[Longhorn]

I've never gotten an honest answer so far and I've asked almost all theists

CL, how does anyone know anything about god?

We know best about God through Jesus, who is God. Of course, it means nothing if you don't believe that lol.

How do you know Jesus is god?

[Fidel_Castronaut]

However,  though I generally like people and most people I know are Christian, I find I don't much like many Christians on this forum.  

Mostly becuase they are the crazy, more twisted end of the scales that feel a sense of mission and a misguided deluded sense of duty to spread their insanity.

Not all, naturally. Quite a few ive liked.

[Catholic_Lady]

The notion that sex is sacred makes sense to me because it is the act that brings new life into the world. That's not its only purpose (love and bonding are another purpose), but it still is one of its purposes. An act that can create new life is a sacred act because life is sacred. And sacred things should be handled with care and kept as their pure, authentic selves. 

I know you don't agree, and that is perfectly fine. But there you have it. Those are my reasons. 

Well I do agree with you that life is sacred....but that statement isn't going to get us to your conclusion.   You've imposed an unspoken definition of a "pure authentic self" and an unjustified requirement that sex must be treated according to this nebulous attribute.  My fists were made for beating the shit out of other living creatures (among many other things)......that doesn't make it moral for me to beat the shit out of other living creatures.  My eyes are sunk deeper in my skull and my brow ridge is more pronounced and my body more massive than yours, male to female, because I'm the "violence model".  If I stay true to my "pure, authentic self"...that would include senseless violence and yes...sportfucking for the fun of it...as moral behavior....."good" things.  

But our disagreement on the way the ball rolls down the hill is only of secondary importance to me, in this response.  Do you see how you just justified your position?  Notice you didn't refer to god once (even though I actually tried to get you to inject god into it)?  That's how -I- justify my moral statements as well.  I have been attempting, throughout this entire thread, to do better than just -tell you- how I do it, but to get you to do it yourself.   I make an initial value statement, and then -attempt- to follow from there reasonably.  Sometimes I, like you, like anyone, might not actually get the "reasonable" bit right....but that's okay, because it's not -actually-  a requirement.  You and I make these determinations the same way.

I appreciate your assessment and questions.

By "pure and authentic self" I just mean that the act itself remains in it's original form without being changed in order to render it infertile. I understand your comparison about the function of your fists. But since sex is sacred (because it creates something sacred), it must be handled with much more honor and care than a fist. Also, in your examples you speak about things that are immoral... beating creatures and acting violently. Those awful things are not good comparisons to the creation of new human life.

*gods disgust for Onanism...btw (a catchall term that would come to include many forms of contraception), he killed Onan for it..struck him dead where he stooped....this is one of the things the catholic church points to in it's justification of their position on contraception.  God is unambiguous, contraception is so disgusting to his sight that he is willing to kill you, on the spot, for attempting it....and all Onan did was pull out of his dead brothers wife, btw....lol.  Let me repeat that one more time, in bold italics..so it sinks in:

Your god is willing to kill a person for pulling out of his dead brother's wife.

If you believe the story about Onan in the OT was written word for word, literally as it happened, then yes, you are correct about the last sentence there. As I said, I believe the OT was written allegorically. I believe the point of this story was to teach that contraception is immoral, and that's an important point. But I do not believe God literally "killed" Onan, or that a man named Onan even existed. I cannot speak for those who think otherwise, though.