Another apologist with his "clever" questions

[Minimalist]

He just gave us personal opinions.

That's all any of them do.These self-appointed hucksters have no more idea of what happens after death than anyone else.  But they wrap themselves in the fucking bible and insist that it is all true..... no matter how silly it sounds.

[Cecelia]

1. And that's okay!  What's wrong with questions being unanswered?  Is it better to have the wrong answer, than no answer at all?  Is it better to say that people get cold's because of cold weather, and live in ignorance of the fact that it's actually germs?  Or is it better to learn that there are in fact germs and that it's those germs that cause us to get sick?  Substituting 'god' as the answer every time we don't understand something leads to further refusal to understand.

Sub Answer: How do we understand good and evil?  It's pretty simple.  Each individual makes that decision for themselves.  All Christians do not share the same beliefs and morals.  They have very different morals, that are based on things other than the Bible.  Evidence for this is clear: Not everyone agrees on the same interpretation of the bible.  Not even people within the same denomination.  Good and Evil are things we decide for ourselves.  They are abstract concepts that we've used to attach to human actions.  There's no natural good or natural evil.  (This is perhaps one of the strongest arguments against the existence of the Christian God.)  Good and Evil are concepts made by humans.  

2. People find their own meanings.  Why is God needed to give meaning to something.  Can't we find our own meaning?  If the world merely exists, then we are free to make our own meaning in life  Just because some people who lived during a time where the world was very different had their own answer to the meaning of life, doesn't mean that today we have to accept the same answer.  Christians and other religious groups don't seem to understand: The past doesn't have the answers.  Studying history is important, but it's not like our ancestors knew the world better than us.  On the contrary, they knew if far less well than we do today.

3. And when people have embraced Christianity, the historical results can be horrific.   The Christian Church executed people for being gay, or simply for believing in a different god.  You even have Christians today calling for the deaths of gay people.  Let's not forget that Hitler was a Christian.  This is a silly argument.  How about the Crusades? Remember those?  Christians love to conveniently forget them when bringing up Stalin and Mao Zedong.  This suggestion seems to say that the least horrific results is the one that leads to the right answer.  In which case Christianity would be very low on the totem pole--even lower than Atheism. 

4. Good and Evil are abstract concepts, and cannot be solved.  A wish for all those who wrong you and others to receive justice is nothing more than wishful thinking.  Just because you wish for Hell, doesn't mean it exists.  God doesn't solve these concepts at all.  It's a revenge fantasy, plain and simple.  I know Christians love their revenge porn, but it doesn't solve the problem of good and evil.  If there were a God--he would be just as responsible for the evil as he was the good.  Bad people get away with doing bad things sometimes.  It's the way of the world.  No amount of wishful thinking will change that.

5. Each individual has their own standards to judge religions and religious people.  Values do not come from religion, but from human interaction.  Child molestation is wrong because it hurts a child.  If this is a difficult concept to understand, you aren't truly 'good'.  You merely masquerade as good, doing only what god tells you.  If god says rape is good, then rape is good.  If god says bacon is bad, then bacon is bad.  There is no one 'truth'.  Each individual must use their own standards to form their own morality.  Actually, most people do this--religious or not.  Otherwise one couldn't say that "God would never do that!  That's not good!" because if God DID say that, then they'd only have themselves to rely on for their moral decisions.  It's why people also cherrypick the bible.  They find certain things about it distasteful.  Even Christians seem to understand this--but lie about it.  Because they say "That was the culture of the time!"  when defending the bible.  The thing is--that culture had values that either: A. Came from god (meaning that we find God abhorrent) or B. Came from the people without god (Which is true answer here.  You disagree with the values of that time, independent of what God tells you.  That you can do this shows that each individual judges religions on their personal experience)

6.  Not everyone hungers for the spiritual.  If they did, why would they be Atheists?  This is a logical fallacy--you're begging the question.  You have to assume the premise is true to answer the question, and the premise simply isn't true.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Standard boilerplate, nothing new at all.

I won't answer any of them, given that they're all mired in the fallacy of appealing to consequences ... when as a matter of fact, reality doesn't give a shit what we want.

[comet]

generally. there are two types of answers, logical and emotional and we are a mixture of them. We really have to be honest with ourselves when we are settling on a solution that fits our needs. Also, personalities determine how a belief is expressed. Just pick a personality, assign a belief, and predict the expression.

and you are correct. reality doesn't give a shit. "how the universe works" doesn't care if we deny every observation that counters our world view or not.

[Lek]

Sub Answer: How do we understand good and evil?  It's pretty simple.  Each individual makes that decision for themselves.  All Christians do not share the same beliefs and morals.  They have very different morals, that are based on things other than the Bible.  Evidence for this is clear: Not everyone agrees on the same interpretation of the bible.  Not even people within the same denomination.  Good and Evil are things we decide for ourselves.  They are abstract concepts that we've used to attach to human actions.  There's no natural good or natural evil.  (This is perhaps one of the strongest arguments against the existence of the Christian God.)  Good and Evil are concepts made by humans.  [/font][/size][/color

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.

2. People find their own meanings.  Why is God needed to give meaning to something.  Can't we find our own meaning?  If the world merely exists, then we are free to make our own meaning in life  Just because some people who lived during a time where the world was very different had their own answer to the meaning of life, doesn't mean that today we have to accept the same answer.  Christians and other religious groups don't seem to understand: The past doesn't have the answers.  Studying history is important, but it's not like our ancestors knew the world better than us.  On the contrary, they knew if far less well than we do today.

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.

3. And when people have embraced Christianity, the historical results can be horrific.   The Christian Church executed people for being gay, or simply for believing in a different god.  You even have Christians today calling for the deaths of gay people.  Let's not forget that Hitler was a Christian.  This is a silly argument.  How about the Crusades? Remember those?  Christians love to conveniently forget them when bringing up Stalin and Mao Zedong.  This suggestion seems to say that the least horrific results is the one that leads to the right answer.  In which case Christianity would be very low on the totem pole--even lower than Atheism. 

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?

4. Good and Evil are abstract concepts, and cannot be solved.  A wish for all those who wrong you and others to receive justice is nothing more than wishful thinking.  Just because you wish for Hell, doesn't mean it exists.  God doesn't solve these concepts at all.  It's a revenge fantasy, plain and simple.  I know Christians love their revenge porn, but it doesn't solve the problem of good and evil.  If there were a God--he would be just as responsible for the evil as he was the good.  Bad people get away with doing bad things sometimes.  It's the way of the world.  No amount of wishful thinking will change that.

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.    

5. Each individual has their own standards to judge religions and religious people.  Values do not come from religion, but from human interaction.  Child molestation is wrong because it hurts a child.  If this is a difficult concept to understand, you aren't truly 'good'.  You merely masquerade as good, doing only what god tells you.  If god says rape is good, then rape is good.  If god says bacon is bad, then bacon is bad.  There is no one 'truth'.  Each individual must use their own standards to form their own morality.  Actually, most people do this--religious or not.  Otherwise one couldn't say that "God would never do that!  That's not good!" because if God DID say that, then they'd only have themselves to rely on for their moral decisions.  It's why people also cherrypick the bible.  They find certain things about it distasteful.  Even Christians seem to understand this--but lie about it.  Because they say "That was the culture of the time!"  when defending the bible.  The thing is--that culture had values that either: A. Came from god (meaning that we find God abhorrent) or B. Came from the people without god (Which is true answer here.  You disagree with the values of that time, independent of what God tells you.  That you can do this shows that each individual judges religions on their personal experience)

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.

6.  Not everyone hungers for the spiritual.  If they did, why would they be Atheists?  This is a logical fallacy--you're begging the question.  You have to assume the premise is true to answer the question, and the premise simply isn't true.

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.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I settle on reality, myself ... given that wishing doesn't seem to work so well.

[Lek]

I settle on reality, myself ... given that wishing doesn't seem to work so well.

Me too.

[Thumpalumpacus]

<lolz>

[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.  

[Angrboda]

Whoah. That's fugly.