Quote:Firstly, I'm only commenting on your patronizing tone because I initially thought it was towards me. Since you also assume to speak for people, this should probably be what you should change that first paragraph to say in my case: I do not presume to have any authority over God in any way. delete the bit about you finding it impossible to determine your own morals and yet they are subjective
To clarify what I was getting: What I meant to say is that morals are subjective. Therefore, trying to find objective morals is impossible. This, in my humble opinion, goes against YHWH, because he seems to think that morals are very black and white. There are either followers of the devil or followers of god. There is no inbetween. The baby rapers go to hell with the non-believers. A black and white basis for moral wisdom will NOT work for everyone, because everyone is different. Some people find joy in peculiar things and some people find aversion in relatively normal things.
Can someone determine their own personal, subjective morals? Of course they can. But, I won't tolerate people taking their subjective morals and claiming that YHWH is backing them up.
Quote:Yes I am human, and I seek happiness just as much as the next man. So let me get this straight, you don't believe a child molesting, rapist murderer is wrong or is it you don't consider his acts evil?
Would I personally allow someone to roam the streets freely and molest children? No. I would disallow such acts because
A. I cannot relate to the molester's pleasure. I have no desire to molest children and therefore I can't possibly understand what it's like to be him or know what it's like to enjoy the thought of raping children.
B. I know the damage it would do to the child. My empathy allows me to relate to the child and feel its suffering. If the child suffers then I too suffer so I do what I can to stop the molester from hurting the child to ultimately prevent my own personal suffering.
Do I condemn the molester, because he's evil? No. I condemn him because he is causing me pain and infringing on my pursuit of happiness. Myself and the child molester are not compatible to live amongst one another. The child molester's existence causes me too much pain. However, because I have empathy it pains me to think that a man can be born with such incompatable desires and locked away for all his life because of them. Therefore, people born with desires incomptable with the world around them causes me minor, yet genuine suffering. So, I hope that one day the child molester can be cured of his compulsions. I don't want him to burn in hell for all eternity. I want him to be cured so that he can live among us and find happiness that does not infringe on the happiness of others.
Quote:This is also an emphatically untrue statement, but since you're presuming to tell me which God I worship as well I guess I'll just switch my religous status to whatever John tells me.
My statement was directed at Watson, not you. I have no idea which god you worship.
Quote:The Bible is a tool where men have written down their ideas about what they percieve as God in their lives and their lives in general. The pre Christian believers probably saw God the way you do.
Men can write down what they percieve to be god all they want. I have no desire to abide by their completely undivine concepts of god.
Quote:Then, according to the Bible, Jesus came and showed us a better understanding of who God is. Since then Science has also helped to give us an idea of what old-school biblical signs weren't really God's hand. If anyone is cherry picking here it's you for completely ignoring the new testament teachings of Jesus and only seeing the OT God. The OT God and the NT God are the same God too, btw. If you and I both see a cube and from behind you see it as red, but in front I see it as blue, regardless of who's right we're both looing at the same cube.
Quite frankly, I'm going to need more than 4 men's testimonies to convince me that Jesus was the son of his father and his father.
The NT god isn't anything special as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't take a messiah to convince me that doing unto others as I would want done to myself is a good idea. That's simply how empathy works. If you have empathy and you hurt somebody then you'll feel bad about hurting them. So, an easy rule of thumb is don't do things to people that you don't want done to yourself and that way you can avoid causing yourself pain.
The NT has some good avice, but it also has some pretty wacky stuff in it. (Wacky in my opinion). Jesus sends a demon into a herd of pigs and lets them drown themselves. Not sure why he didn't just neutralize the demon. He kills a fig tree, because it wasn't bearing any fruit. (Plus, it wasn't the season to bear fruit). He tells his followers to eat him to in order to live forever. He turns water into wine...I mean...of all the great and wonderful things he could do he turns water into an alcoholic beverages.
I think Jesus was a generous, yet crazy man. I think his followers added miracles to their testimonies to make Jesus seem more divine.
Come my brethren and feast upon one another! (S)He who triumps and has eaten us all will be blessed with the knowledge of all those with whom (s)he has consumed!
