pop morality

[Whateverist]

And if you happen to be born into the wrong religion, will your belief in the wrong 'objective' values help you to transcend your predicament?

That the exact question I'm asking isn't it? What do you have that will help you see through whatever you've been taught?

Sadly you never seem to turn your questions inward.  You give the impression of someone entirely lacking in self reflection.  Is it a show you put on to help you land those souls for Jesus or are you really that shallow?

[Drich]

[The Grand Nudger]

That you have chosen to describe all morality as bad implies yet another moral value system fundamental to your conclusion.  I assume that one must be bad too, since they're all bad...so why should anyone care?

Hell, why do you.....do you...?

[Angrboda]

God's righteousness is nothing but the pop morality of several thousand years ago.  First we had the Jews and their version of pop morality.  Then along comes Jesus, and he teaches a different sort of morality, based on blood sacrifice and atonement.  Then we have Mohammed's version which builds on that.   And eventually we get to Baha'ullah's version further on down the road.  You aren't defending a specific morality because they all share the same traits of 'pop morality' regardless of from when and where they come.  You're simply arguing a preference for dogmatic truths, ones that don't change, over those that do.  But your God's righteousness is just another link in a chain of relativistic morals.  It's no different, and no better.  Matter of fact, by its inability to accommodate changes in our knowledge about the world makes it worse in that it is a slave to past errors.  (And yes, Virginia, God's righteousness isn't immune to mistakes.)

But again I am not pushing for one morality over another...

Then we can forget the prohibitions in the bible as arbitrary and meaningless? You're still basing your idea of atonement on a set of standards, elsewise what is there to atone for? Atonement is always atonement for something. All you've done is substitute what you consider to be a moral response to our violating those standards for a punishment based one. If you ask me what keeps me from becoming a Nazi monster then I would say nothing but the inertia of evolved tendencies and culture, which is to say that there is nothing sufficiently substantial to forbid my becoming a Nazi, just that it is improbable. What prevents you from becoming beholden to a specific morality, or are you saying that you have no morals? I think you do, and they include what you consider to be a moral response to your violating God's standards; that itself is a form of morals.

[robvalue]

We all have our own morality, it's just some people like to claim theirs is somehow "the best" without explaining what this means in terms of anything that actually matters a single fuck.

I couldn't care less what weird superpowered suspiciously human-like creatures crawling around the non-existent outside of the universe think about things.

[Mister Agenda]

The Bible is a snap shot in time of the pop morality of a particular culture in a particular place and time.

[Drich]

Yes I understand that you think no one can be moral by your god's standards, and so we must seek atonement.  That is the point of the whole Christian myth isn't it?  Well that settles heaven versus hell.  But it doesn't help with morality in the real world where we must still get along with one another. And it's no great consolation to me if your god forgives you for theft, rape, murder, or as is more likely, general unkindness. That's where relative current mores come in.  You dismiss man's morality as pop morality.  Call it what you want.  We need it.  It's what makes society run.

But again, is that a good thing? are all societies 'moral?' they all certainly think they are. Even though they stand in stark contrast with one another, so much so we have wars over our ideals of what is and is not 'moral.' And guess what decides what is and is not 'moral' in soceity without the God you are so quick to dismiss??

It might. Might makes right without God. Might says the germans were wrong for killing jews by the millions (Because we killed millions more germans) Might says it was right to take the land from the indians and not give it back as it all stands developed now, Might says deploying 2 nuclear bombs on the people of Japan was right.
Is this truly what you believe?

'We' need pop morality because it makes society run?

What if it is running in the wrong direction and their is no one mightier to challenge them? What then would effect change if the mightiest society peruses evil? How would anyone in that society even know that they were indeed evil?
Do you truly think the Nazi's thought themselves to be evil?

In other words, in practice, it is not an objective standard anymore than pop morality is an objective standard.

No all morality if flawed. even Christian morality. Because all forms of morality accept sin on one level or another because at it's core all morality judges acts/sin on varying levels, rather than assigning all sin the same consequence.

I think you greatly exaggerate the clarity of the law of Moses even as further explained by Jesus and Paul.  Parts of it may be clear, but much of it is not.  Some of it is just plain contradictory (in the OT men are required to marry their brother's widows and also prohibited from marrying their brother's widow). Other parts are so morally repugnant that it's hard to believe anyone could consider them in anyway associated with a righteous pig, let alone a god.

As per my Romans study Paul simplfies this whole thing in the span of 3 or 4 chapters, which I will try and further bake down to a few lines:
As Jesus said The whole law is still completely in effect.
Jesus also Expands the Law to include sinful thought, which now means we are all sin, all the time.
Jesus says ALL Sin=The same Death, That all sin is equal.
Paul says that accepting the atonement of Christ, the Law no longer is used to judged the saved's righteousness.
The laws purpose per Christ is to only Identify sin, which according to Paul push one to seek atonement.
Once we have atonement we now have the righteousness/"morality" of Christ himself before God.
Meaning to God the Father we are as sinless as Christ is sinless, which is the only way to Heaven.
Therefore the Law (still being in effect per Christ) now is only used to judge the unsaved.

This means ALL Morality (the act of grading sin and managing acceptable levels of it) is completely meaningless, because our actions are not being judged by God per-say.. It's our obedience.

That is a very dangerous idea.   Every society of men has always maintained a sense of proportion about varying degrees of turpitude for the simple reason that some crimes injure society more than others.  Treating all crimes alike is tantamount to asking for murder to be as common as white lies.

So we then enter varying stages of pop morality. then the question becomes how far off center will we allow ourselves to be before we look up and see that white lies and murder become the unpunished norm?

Which again is what happened to the 'good people' of Nazi Germany. To the Indians of our west, to all of the societies who's might was not equal or greater than our own.

The problem you are not seeing is murder has indeed become just as easy as telling a white lie, in this society and no one says boo about it, because it has been packaged and sold in such away as to be found not only acceptable but a guarded right that one dare not stand against. E.g. Abortion.
This is in stark contrast to you shall not murder, and yet because we repackaged the deed and change a few words and made it a clinical process we somehow over look the brutal dismemberment of a baby as if it were no different or even less immoral than telling a white lie.

How can you not see the point I am making here? How are you any different than those who lived in Nazi Germany who all bought into the labels the Nazi's gave the jews, that turned their extermination into a state sponsored procedure no different than what the role of planned parenthood does here and now?

This is a PERFECT Example of how modern/pop 'morality' can be corrupted and society can/has made a hard turn and embraced an evil act, and made it moral. So then I ask what's to stop the slaughter of old people? or some other undesirable part of the culture or population? Look at how abortion was marketed and made acceptible.. Now be honest with yourself even if you are not honest with me.. They bottom line are killing babies, what Deity is allowed to kill a child with out some self-righteous moral judgement levied on him and his followers? and yet because of proper marketing/propaganda we in this country have killed 100's of millions of babies and not given it a second thought.

So then how will your morals keep you from lining up your parents when 'hospice' or some other organization starts asking us to line up our old people?

Oh, I see, you want to solve our real world moral problems by saying we must own our sin.  I agree, we must own our own immorality.  Why else would we even try to be moral?  But, I don't see that looking at all sin as equal is going to get us there. Nor is thinking that it will all be forgiven later.  

We can use morality to justify things we should not.  But more often it is people's view of god's morality that is used to justify evil.  Many people terrorizing Jews, killing Aztecs, burning heretics, executing Muslims, or whipping servant women for wearing ribbons, felt they were doing god's will.  Man's attempt to see god's will is as slippery as the modern notion of relative morality.  

'Morality' is an extremely sharp double edge sword that we can use to cut injustice as well as Justice out of society. we need unchanging standards to center us and guide a fair distribution of realistic sin management even for those with out God. which I consider to be laws. If one want's to live by the law and not God then what need do any of you have for 'morality?' Because without any standard or absolute, morality becomes a self sustaining system of self righteous justification for increasing wickedness.

Those who live under God seek to do their best to naturally follow his laws in so far as we are able. Not as a way to earn righteousness but as a natural occurring result of it.

Once again, if we cannot define the absolute law to the letter, it is not useful as an absolute for determining our behavior now. Christians are incapable of agreeing on what god's law is, so it is not a useful absolute standard.  

That aside, from what I see in the Bible, god's law is a crude, barbaric standard that shows at every crack and seam that it was created in a harsher time, where there was more casual cruelty, and less equality.  It's a damned good thing, your god seems incapable of enforcing it because it is by today's standards gross and evil.  And I do mean evil.

Based on what? Your current morality? Let's just say for the sake of arguement, you had adopted Nazi German morality. would you identify your current system of right and wrong as also being evil? So then without any guidline besides your own feelings how then can you identify evil, if you can't vet yourself as not being evil?

I am suggesting that a god unable to either make his will clear to all men or enforce it here on earth, and a nonexistent god look the same.  That suggests to me that there is no such law making god.

and turtles withdraw into their shells when they feel danger is looming.. now just because from where they look (with in their shells) they can not see any danger does it mean the danger does not exist?
Or does it simply mean you are not willing to acknoweledge it and hope that it will simply go away?

Again, a very dangerous idea for the real world.  Real world consequences affect real world behavior and it's real world behavior that matters.

Your god and the afterlife he promises, are no concern of mine until there is some credible evidence he exists.  And he is a dangerous fantasy because it is dangerous to suppose you will be forgiven equally for all moral infractions or that anyone other than the person you injure can forgive you. It is also dangerous to suppose that lying and murder are equally bad.

It seems to me that you are the one who has diluted herself on 'real world behavior.' (abortion)

As is your attempt to follow god's law.  I am interested in doing the best we can with what we have. You appear interested in being forgiven.

This would be true if i were trying to earn righteousness..

But again we are no longer judged by the law as a means to righteousness. God only judges the unsaved by the law. My alignement with the law as far as I am able to be aligned with it is a testament/effect or result of my atonement, not the cause of it.

[Drich]

[loganonekenobi]

From this thread it seems that you are trying to point out the flaws in morality thinking and replacing it with "attonment". Right?

A couple of things came to mind. First it's always good to question ones ways of thinking to check against reality. That's okay. Of course that's what "free thinkers" do. So in answer to your question on what makes a person believe they can see through cultural teachings the answer is "free thinking".

I know you will not agree but think about it. Most religions tell you to follow unquestioningly a policy in a holly book or face some horrible punishment. A non religious is under no such obligation. To me this seems like one would have a much better chance at seeing through cultural bias. Is it perfect? No. It is human.

Second "atonement" is trying to make up for something you did wrong. Right?

In the monotheistic case it about being born to Eve. Nothing else. Even if you do everything possible to be the best person you can it wont matter.

This is rediculous of course and I will quote Mr. Hitchens on this one

"we are made sic and commanded to be well."

you understand all that implies so i wont go into a long explanation of it.

I will say this, I see no steady morality coming from a sence of guilt.

[Esquilax]