Another apologist with his "clever" questions

[Cecelia]

According to your understanding that we determine for ourselves what is good and evil, a murderer or rapist is only evil to those who believe he is evil.  If he thinks it's okay to murder his mother it is only immoral to those who believe it is.  If a government with the power to kill its citizens, is made up of those who believe murder is okay, then it is moral to do so.  That would then clear Stalin of any moral responsibility for his murderous acts against the people of Russia.

I guess I could go along with you to a degree on this issue.  Things are what they are, but how we perceive them to be can be very different.  But, pertaining to God, he is who and what he is no matter who or what we think he is.  Our perception of him will influence eternity for us, so I believe that following his definition of morality is extremely important.

This is not an argument against embracing christianity or atheism, but rather an argument for following Christ's morality.  Hitler, although he claimed to be a christian, and I won't make a judgement as to whether or not he was, was not following Christ's morality.  Additionally, the man was a vicious killer and a liar in many ways.  Why should I believe him about being a christian?

Justice is an extremely important concept in human society.  We all want to see a rapist be apprehended and receive a just sentence.  It's not just a matter of keeping good order in a society, but people want to know that doing right gets rewarded and doing wrong leads to harm for the wrongdoer.  Along with that is the christian concept of redemption, in that a wrongdoer can change and turn from those ways.    



To you this is wrong, but not necessarily to the child molester, according to your own definition of how we determine morality.  According to your definition of cultural values, the ancient pagans were exercising good morality when they sacrificed their children to their gods, because it was regarded as good in their culture and in their own minds.  So maybe child molestation is only evil in our society and not in others.

No.  I don't believe that everyone hungers for the spiritual.  There are those who can recognize the need for the spiritual by how they perceive nature and this leads to a hunger for it.  Others, and I myself believe they are closed to it, don't see that same connection.

Color coded for convenience:

This basically comes down to the fact that there are no moral absolutes.  Yes, to a government that thinks it's moral to kill their own citizens, they would absolve themselves of all wrong-doing--but only to themselves.  Each person must decide for themselves what is moral and what is not.  I'll get into this more later in another section, but essentially it's a question of if morals are relative or not.  I'd say they certainly are.

That only matters if the Abrahamic god actually exists.  And that he actually inspired the Bible.  That's a lot to take on Faith alone.  Not only that he exists, without evidence, but that the holy book written about him is both accurate and inspired by him.  But the question was pertaining to there being no meaning if there is no god.

I personally don't find the morality of the biblical Jesus all that compelling.  But in any case--the point in bringing up Hitler as a Christian is that--regardless of what you personally feel--Hitler felt that his actions were moral under Christian standards.  You can say "Oh, he wasn't a True Christian" but that's by your standards.  Standards you have outside of the bible as well.

But doing good doesn't always get a reward.  If you do good in order to get a reward, are you truly good?  I'm sure it's nice for some people to imagine there's a reward at the end.  But that's nothing more than manufactured compassion.  I'm sure it serves it's purpose--but manufactured compassion can never reach the real thing.  It's why so many Christians have trouble showing true compassion.  And I'm not saying this is true of ALL Christians, just that it's true of SOME Christians--like those who wish to judge, rather than show love.

Yes, morals are relative.  One society may say that child molestation isn't bad.  They have to justify that to themselves.  Another society may say that being gay is bad, or that not believing in god is bad.  I mean to many Christians being gay or having sex outside of marriage is wrong.  Yet to me, I have no moral issue with either.  Even Christians have different morals from each other, despite getting them all from the same book. 

I don't see any need for the spiritual.  You'd say I'm closed to it.  I'd say that you're just conditioned to find a need for the spiritual, while I'm not.