(July 5, 2016 at 3:13 am)robvalue Wrote: Loving god is nothing to do with morality. It's more to do with god's ego and neediness. In fact, the idea of loving god ahead of actual people is a very dangerous and immoral thing to do in my opinion. It's dangerous because you're compromising how you treat others for the benefit of a being which should require absolutely nothing from you, if it even existed.
How did you come to that conclusion (that it is about God's ego and neediness)? You seem to be of the understanding, that loving God, and loving others, is in conflict, where do you see this as being so? Quite some time ago, I was reflecting on this, and I think that this kind of attitude, is somewhat responsible for the some of the social problems, that we are seeing today, especially younger generations. For parents, teaching children to respect them, to respect their authority, and to respect others is a good thing. Even something simple as a social nicety of saying "thank you" is not about your "ego or neediness". It is about making them a better person.
Quote:It comes down to whether something is good because so and so said it is good, or because it's actually moral. In the first case it's circular and meaningless; in the second case, the authority is irrelevant. I figured out morality just fine on my own without having to read it in an ancient book. And it's no surprise that (nice) Christians ignore huge swathes of the supposed morality taught by their own book. You don't need god for morality. You generally just need reason and empathy, as building blocks.
I see that you are finally starting to acknowledge, that morality is not subjective in these statements. This is good! However, I would disagree, that authority is irrelevant. Could you clarify? I would also agree, that one doesn't need the Bible to know good and evil. That one can do good, apart from the Judeo/Christian traditions. That is not what the argument of morality is about. It is also known as the "problem of good" That one's worldview, accounts for a basis for objective morality. This is near impossible for the materialist, and exceedingly difficult from a non-deist worldview.
To your charge that "Christians ignore huge swathes", I don't disagree, that some do ignore parts (and some may call themselves Christians, although they are not deserving of the description). However, I don't think it is necessary to ignore anything. While Scripture does contain moral guidance, it is not a moral handbook, that contains everything needed to be good; nor that every command is directly a moral edict. I think this is a misunderstanding of it's purpose.
