(May 20, 2014 at 10:21 pm)Kitanetos Wrote: Can a theist truly be so far gone that he genuinely believes his acts are moral, when in truth the acts are highly immoral?That's something of a loaded question, even if we avoid the question of absolute morals. If we accept that moral behavior can be conditional, then it gets even trickier, and atheists seem more inclined to accept that proposition in a general sense.
I do think that the more important point is that for the theist, the moral code can be reduced to "what god commands." There may not be an act that is inherently moral or immoral (or good/bad, or right/wrong). It is entirely dependent on whether god commands you to do it, or commands you not to. In that sense, any action can be moral or immoral. But aside from mental problems, they can't really just pick a particular action and say "yeah, this is what god wants me to do."
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
