Do Athiests have morals?

[Elusive Truth]

No problem.

No need to create difference between us... "love" is the answer

PS; one of my last girlfriends is named Priya.

...her parents

 

[1robin]

It involves god as a literary device. But if we look at the document itself we could assume they meant a non-denominational god. Perhaps it was allah? Obviously the Christian majority knew that there would be Christian values in the country. That much should be obvious and I haven't argued against that. I do argue that they gave Christianity any sort of power over any other religions. And this has historically been true for the last 150 years. They have always been more or less tolerant of Jews and have been more than accepting of eastern religious beliefs. Not so much with Islam but in the past ten years it has become more accepting of Islam. Christianity has no more power than Islam in the USA in terms of our government.

You do not require a literary device for a moral precept. I bet you cannot find a single legal theory in the entire history of man founded on a literary device. What moral precepts are founded on are entities or perceived patterns or stated goals. Of those entities have been the majority, the other two are much later developments. For instance no prior to 1700 knew about the principles of evolution to ground anything in. I can write a law without any need whatever of a God but if that law is to reflect an objective and ultimate moral duty then a God must be it's source. Now you may claim that you think there was no God to which they refer, you may even believe they knew that to be the case. However you can't take a suspicion and use it to counteract their emphatic statement that the transcendent was the source of their morality.

Anyone who would look at a document written by 95% Christians that contains God and think they could have meant Allah is desperate.

I did not mention anything about how tolerant we have been.

It honestly doesn't matter if they believed it was god or Satan who gave them their rights. they believed they had them naturally. This is the point. They never pushed god into or onto anyone in this respect.

Of course if God granted us rights that would be the most natural result possible. They sure as heck did not mean that God granted us rights through the carbon atom or the benzene molecule. Besides mechanism is not what I am talking about, source is. If God is involved then secularism is out.

We are not at that point. You seemed to have attempted to say that our republic was created by Christian philosphy. It was not. It was actually Greek. And I showed you that Christianity also was claimed under Monarchies. This bullcrap of "everyone is equal" isn't actually a traditionally held Christian belief. That we are all equal to god? Maybe but on earth this is pretty new.

I have stated exactly what I believe and it is a very common saying among historians. Are political roots are based in Athens, our moral roots are based in Jerusalem, out legal and scholastic root on Rome.

BTW equality is a core Christian belief. That does not mean it is a core belief of every Christian. You keep confusing those who defied the religion with the religion. When the apostles (men who had every right to feel superior) haggled amongst themselves as to who would be greatest Jesus basically pimp slapped them back into coherence with a rebuke against the idea that anyone was better than anyone else. Christianity is virtually unique in that it claims God loves everyone the same.

I see it for what it is. Literary. The term "creator" for example doesn't denote god. They may have believed it denoted god but they intentionally did not say god. Creator in this instance is simply a term used to denote that it is inborn.

Oh come on, it says them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, ...

So we can blame god for taxes? Or we can blame god for questionable military action? Or abortion? No no no. The basis for law was pragmatic and intentionally separate from religion. In your argument it was to save religion from government but even if that was 100% true it doesn't matter because that separation is still there. The founders laid it on their own morality for some of the bill of rights but it is not a historically Christian thing to do to offer freedom of religion.

No morality does not produce taxes, necessity does. Morality does prohibit excessive taxes. God does not authorize questionable military action, human frailty does, but God does provide for laws that attempt to limit the effect of our frailty. Morals are very generalized principles which temper law, that does not even hint they have any one to one correspondence or that all laws are moral.

For example it grounds the idea that life is sacred, that men are equal, that humans have objective worth and value, that justice both exists and is a goal, etc......

Now those general principles were used to establish laws. Being that laws are produced by faulty humans they never reflect the divine principles correctly and can even betray them entirely especially when a nation turns it's back on faith, then the wheel really come off. So having a divine foundation does not mean man will build a perfect house on top of it.

Marriages because of teen pregnancy that no longer happen is one example that is a direct counter to several of your points. The women more or less having to stay with their husbands due to either society or economics is another. The rule of "thumb" for how to best discipline your wife is a great example of why we needed divorce. The fact that marital rape wasn't even a law in any states till the 70s and wasn't a law in all 50 states until 1993.

You said forced, this is not being forced. This is the social pressure that exists in every single society and is of every single type and can never be overcome. The lack of any pressure to get married just because you will produce a child without two parents is evidence of moral decline it's opposite is not being forced.

I base my rights on philosophy if you are curious. But we have had that debate over and over before.

You base your rights in the only place left without God, your opinion. You can dress it up with academic terms if you want but it will never being but. Whatever you call it if it denies the right to life it no longer has the power to grant more subtle and less obvious rights. It's as absurd as saying you have no right to live but you do have to health insurance.

Weird how your own article disproves your point. Go back and read it. It actually explains why there was an increase and why crime rates were so "low" in the earlier parts of the century.

We were not discussing any modulating factors. That is impractical in a debate like this. We were providing statistics. If your talking about the change in larceny rates then that would account for the spike that it produced but there after the graph should have remained flat, yet it just kept growing. Unless you can show a decrease in what is considered crime for every spike you only have a modulating issue which does not reverse the general trend. IOW all you can say it did get worse just not as bad as it looks.

The murder rate in 1950 was 4.5 per 100,000, it spiked to almost twice that in the 60's, it was about 7 per 1000,000 in the last full year of data.
[URL]http://www.jrsa.org/projects/Historical.pdf[/URL]
The US Murder Rate Is on Track to Be Lowest in a Century | Mother Jones

You got the formatting mixed up here. Are you claiming Mother Jones defeats the Crime and Justice Atlas?

That is because rape for the longest time wasn't even considered a major crime. It was more or less damage of property.

I think it was because rape was very underreported. It does not matter why it only matters that no statistic trend can be established.

And what is your argument that it is the cause of the divorce rate?

A change in priority from family and traditional morality to self interest, convenience, and consumerism.

I stated that marriage isn't a moral thing. Its neither moral or immoral. I don't care that the family unit has been eroded because that isn't a good indicator of morality because the family unit has been historically oppressive and abusive.

I do not know of another issue even during these secular times more associated with moral excellence in general that the family unit. Even liberal talk shows which pretty much take the opposite view on every moral issue as has traditionally been held still considers the family unit a moral issue. You may be the brave pioneer that finally leads secularism off the cliff if your neglecting the last bastion of traditional moral agreement. Let me add to this the myriad of lopsided statistic that show that broken family units are the primary cause of crime. They even lead to massive increases in mental erosion. So what you do not consider important is leaving atrial of human wreckage in it's wake. If that is not a moral issue there is not one.

Then I guess we should stop here. Because that is what I am saying.

I have given up on having any rational avenue of resolving moral issues with you for a while now. I have to sit here while tests are running and so am just killing time. If I was asked to write a paper to prove that secularism has simply (as Nietzsche put it) found a sponge to wipe out the moral horizon, then airbrushed in a false one and called it progress I would copy and paste your exact words as my evidence. However I have to stare at this keyboard anyway and your not insulting or obnoxious so why not respond to you.

I didn't say that either. I stated that our knowledge of diseases increased. That is why we have more diseases than before. Not because of an actual increase in the number of diseases.

I did not say you said it. I implied that was the only context that I could think you comments came in.

Sounds like a propagated lie. So I wouldn't buy into it. If you can find me an offical source that states something like that I can give it some weight but until then I will chalk it up to conservative propaganda and lies

I don't even remember what the statistic under question was. The point was that even if you find some reason to modulate the exact figures (even by large amounts) the data is so skewed that it will remain lopsided regardless. IOW in almost all categories things are worse. If you want to say that they not quite as worse as I suggest I don't want to bother. Their worse, the end.

Learn I guess.

How can I learn from something I can make no sense out of?

I don't believe there is a perfectly "right" way. I think we will continue to evolve and change as a society with the constant attempt to be better with our laws and society. But I don't think there will ever be a point in time where we are "done". Some things can be settled such as the removal of bigotry in general but since there are conflicting views of what is "good" there will never be a perfect society.

But we are not even heading in the right direction. We cure polio and then invent weapons to exterminate us all and have the moral insanity to have almost used them twice in the last 60 years. The twentieth century was bloodier than all previous centuries combined. We claim to know what happen 10 billion years ago and yet exterminate millions of our own species in the womb based on convenience based on a non-existent right claimed for one who committed the act and denied to the other who has no say in the matter.
We march in the street for the sacred right of 4% of us to gratify their lust at the expense of creating 60% on new aids cases. If secularism wants to untether morality from any ultimate truth fine but at least aim it in the right direction.



We believe in the rejection of creeds, And the flowering of individual thought. If chance be the Father of all flesh, disaster is his rainbow in the sky and when you hear State of Emergency! It is but the sound of man
worshipping his maker.

Steve Turner, (English journalist), “Creed,” his satirical poem on the modern mind. Taken from Ravi Zacharias’ book Can Man live Without God? Pages 42-44

but don't call that progress.

 

[Pudding]

Nope and I did not suggest it did.

However if 95% of a countries founders are of a religion, and those same men say point blank that faith is the grounding behind their ideals then yes. That does not translate to any dictatorial laws about having to abbey any doctrine. It simply grounds moral precepts on a world view.

That does not translate to any dictatorial laws about having to obey any doctrine. It simply grounds moral precepts on a world view, that everyone must follow this moral? Dictatorial laws about having to obey any moral is different than dictatorial laws about having to obbey any doctrine?

God demands faith which precludes proof but God existence is not the issue, whether the founders relied upon Christianity in a foundational manner is. They claimed they did. I need no further evidence.

So you'll follow everything what the founders claimed without any personal opinion or any self attempt to review the evidence from yourself?

It was a founders opinion on how to govern. How the founders governed is the issue. Whether their opinions reflect fact is not the issue.

The issue is whether they used faith or secularism as a foundation model for this nation. They did. It is not a debate on what can be extrapolated and forced on people by the nature of that foundation. I am not debating what can be built on that foundation but what that foundation is. Your not having the same debate my comments came in.

That is not the issue under discussion. I do not care what you think you can extrapolate from what they said about their founding principles, the debate is about what their founding principles were. I am not going to speak for Adams, I can only quote him.

Repeating an issue not under discussion is not of any use. What our laws are is not the subject, what the founding principles are. This debate is too long and has been heading in one direction far to long to take an of ramp at this point.

They question was what founding principles did our founders apply. I have given them in their words.

So after that foundation is built, it can never be change or modify?

I do not care to split hairs on what our rights actually are, the point was that even a non-Christian admitted the foundation of all rights is in our creator.

No, non-Christian don't admit the foundation of non-Christian rights is in Christian God, only Christian admitted the foundation of Christian rights is in Christian God.

That's why non-Christian voicing their voice that they don't agree with that "christian foundation law".

Are you arguing that giving what Adams, Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson said about founding principles is not a fair illustration of what our foundation was.

So after that foundation is built, it can never be change or modify?

You have a terrible habit or adding to what others say. In this case I do not see how what you said is in any way related to what I did. The issue was did religion have a role in prohibition, I don't know what your talking about.

So if religion have a role in prohibition that every non-believer cannot not follow the religion's law/rule/morality, then it justified that non-believer must be force to follow the religion's law/rule/morality?

1. A movement is born in bondage.

No, it was the bondage of a government forcing everyone to practice a specific religion a certain way.

A government which forcing everyone must to practice a specific religion a certain way?

Does American government forcing all its citizen must to practice christianity?

What is the meaning of Freedom of/from religion declare from universal human rights?

You have yet to show anyone forced any religion on any one in this case. You merely took comments about founding principles and made up the rest. I in fact claim the founders concluded the opposite. They had to found principles on something and chose Christianity, and our laws reflect that foundation but our laws contain no religious compulsion. The contain the exact opposite.

So citizen are not force to follow religion's morality? That's great.

I am not defending religion in general but yes for better or worse the shackles (right or wrong) of religion can be temporarily thrown off. What is the point. I was specifically referring to democracies and especially to the cycle of ours. If you want to apply it to Iran it won't.

Democracies? Force the idea of "Faith produces great courage and moral excellence which throws off the shackles of bondage" must be a truth to all non-believer who don't agree with it is democracies?

Your entire post so far has been founded on something that is not true, is not under discussion and was merely declared into existence. There is no religious compulsion found in our founding, Christ did not enforce his ideals, neither do those that truly follow him. I am not going to follow you down a rabbit hole you invented.

So citizen are not force to follow religion's morality? That's great.

5. This produces a nation with great abundance. This is where faith starts to be discarded.

Because the principles of Christianity are freedom. Christ said he came to set captives free, so principles based on his life would also allow freedom, the greatest freedom possible under the rule of law. It is no coincidence the country more free than any other is also more Christian than any other. In fact Christians more than any other have died to set others free. If we had 1 out 50 verses commanding us to subjugate the world by force like the Quran then you would have an argument. There is not one verse in the NT that allows force for any reason.

So you're blaming non-believer for not wanting to practice religion's faith, because the principles of Christianity are freedom that it doesn't force non-believer must practice its faith?

6. Abundance produces a lack of faith and the vacuum is filled by selfishness. This is where secularism begins it's march and where consumerism rears it's head.

I am going to respond to any comment that is founded upon your false notion of religious compulsion by simply saying false foundation and moving on from here on in.

Because the principles of Christianity are freedom that it doesn't force non-believer must practice its faith, then it made the non-believer who given the freedom to not pratice this faith selfish?

7. Selfishness produces complacency.

False foundation.

Because the principles of Christianity are freedom that it doesn't force non-believer must practice its faith, then it made the non-believer who given the freedom to not pratice this faith selfish?

And this selfishness produces complacency?

8. Complacency produces apathy (this is the stage we are at now).

I thought I caught a break but you ended up with a false foundation.

Because the principles of Christianity are freedom that it doesn't force non-believer must practice its faith, then it made the non-believer who given the freedom to not pratice this faith selfish?

And this selfishness produces complacency?

And this complacency produces apathy of what? Apathy of non-believer for not wanting to practice religions faith?

9. Apathy produces dependence, this is the stage we are moving into where more people receive from the government than contribute. At this point we are simply bleeding out, drawing on credit we earned in our former faith based years of abundance. Eventually we run out and everything implodes.

If your highest moral authority is a government then the former USSR is your secular utopia and your welcome to it.

Because the principles of Christianity are freedom that it doesn't force non-believer must practice its faith, then it made the non-believer who given the freedom to not pratice this faith selfish?

And this selfishness produces complacency?

And this complacency produces apathy of what? Apathy of non-believer for not wanting to practice religions faith?

And this apathy produces dependence of non-believer to follow government laws which the founder is christian and doesn't force non-believer must practice christianity's faith, it made non-believer has the choice to not choosing practice the faith, so what is your meaning of point 9?

What is the "contribute" , "bleeding out" , "drawing on credit we earned in our former faith based years of abundance" , "Eventually we run out and everything implodes" refer to?

10. Then what faith rescued from bondage, the lack of faith has placed right back in it.

10. I really don't know what you're talking about.

Then why did you respond to 1-9 as if you did. BTW it was not what I said. I gave the source and his qualifications and so far we have met every step in his process but the last.

I respond to 1-9 because i can partially understand what it said but that doesn't mean it made sense to me.

No, i don't agree that step 1-9 make sense to me.

Faith rescue what thing from bondage? The thing rescue by faith from bondage is replace by "lack of faith"?

I can't understand what you say in point 10, please explain.

Those who deny the true God leave a vacuum we are designed to have filled. It is filled with something which does not belong there, but those who have invented a false God are seldom able to recognize it for a God. I will spare you all the theology about what makes a thing an idol or a God as you would not accept it anyway.

I really don't know what you're talking about.

I know.

I don't believe in any true God nor any other false idol god, so your theology doesn't apply to me.

It also doesn't apply to other people who don't believe in any true God nor any other false idol god.

Religious morality is not derived from secular morality. Morality has been associated with God's from the beginning.

Are you actually denying that most of the legal codes of history are theologically based? Not even the person I said that to denied that. he simply said they were wrong.

What? I said what I was going to say. That the majority of moral principles have been founded on theology.

"Most of the legal codes of history are theologically based" doesn't equal to "morality has been associated with God's from the beginning".

Do you eyewitness the moment when the first morality of all human kind is associated with God?

The "most of the legal codes of history are theologically based", to me, only means historian who record some history they themself think some specific morality is theologically based, in a specific place, in a specific time.

It doesn't mean the first morality is associated with God.

Even when they were false God's it was they who grounded morality, not secularism.

What are you wanting proof of? I can hardly believe your challenging the theological roots of traditional moral principles. Secular folks usually complain of what your denying existed.

"False God's it was they who grounded morality" doesn't equal to "morality has been associated with God's from the beginning".

"Theological roots of traditional moral principles" doesn't equal to "morality has been associated with God's from the beginning".

You do not eyewitness whether the first morality of all human kind is really associated with God or not.

Are you somehow copying your own previous statements?

Yes, because my statements fit to your different statements.

It was not whether the gods exist or not it was whether they were used as the foundations or not. So far not one comment you made had anything to do with the context of what the debate was. You want to have a debate about whether and which God exists fine but this isn't it.

I do not agree with you that all of my comment has nothing to do with the context of what the dabate was.

How many times are you going to respond to what someone actually said with a false parody of it? I said what I meant to.

I do not agree with you that all of my comment has nothing to do with the context of what the dabate was.

Secularism is not a thing by which a moral can be wrung from. Secularism is merely the denial of any ultimate moral foundation. It is by definition the worst possible moral foundation even in theory.

Where is your prove that your religion's accepted standard of ultimate moral foundation is really the ultimate morality?

I did not argue that our founders got it right, I merely showed where they claimed to have gotten it. You want to debate whether Crhistianity is true or not I am your guy but this debate was whether it was used or not.

I should rephrase my question to: Where is your prove that secularism is not a thing by which a moral can be wrung from?

Where is your prove that secularism's accepted standard of morality is the worst possible moral foundation even in theory?

Because no natural entity contains a moral property. No atom in the universe has a moral component. Objective morality can only come from something that transcends the natural but that is the very thing secularism denies. It denies the one possible source for ultimate moral values and duties and therefore cannot get any worse.

I never say "an atom" in the universe has a moral component, i say an "individual human" has a moral component.

Where is your prove that no natural entity contains a moral property?
Where is your prove that objective morality can only come from something that transcends the natural?

"Secularism denies the one possible source for ultimate moral values and duties and therefore cannot get any worse."

Secularism's morality cannot get any worse? So it's a good thing that secularism's morality cannot get any worse and can get better. I don't see how your response point to your statements that "secularism is by definition the worst possible moral foundation even in theory.".

Plus, i don't have the opinion that "any God must be the only one possible source for ultimate moral values and duties", this opinion doesn't apply on me nor people who doesn't support this opinion.

I said what I meant.

Okay.

Yes it's very irrational of non-believer for not wanting to force to follow religion's morality because they don't agree with it.

False foundation.

I should rephrase my statement to:
Yes it's very irrational of non-believer for not wanting to force to follow founder's religion's morality because they don't agree with it.

But you've already said that christian founder of the nation doesn't force every non-believer must to practice faith, so i guess it also means not being force to follow religion's morality.

Even children know this, when told to follow a moral the first thing they say is "Oh yeah, i don't understand the meaning of this moral, is this moral a good moral? why?", not "Oh yeah, i don't understand the meaning of this moral, but i'll not ask why and simply follow it. Who says this moral is a good moral, then it must be the good moral, i've no doubt about it."

Yes Children and men of faith know morality must have an ultimate transcendent source. Good and evil require a moral law by which to distinguish them, a moral law requires a moral law giver, yet this is what secularism denies not what they affirm.

Children and men of non-believer doesn't agree with this opinion.

I should rephrase my statement to:
Even children and men of non-believer know this, when told to follow a religion/secular moral the first thing they say is "Oh yeah, i don't understand the meaning of this moral, is this moral a good moral? why?", not "Oh yeah, i don't understand the meaning of this moral, but i'll not ask why and simply follow it. Who says this moral is a good moral, then it must be the good moral, i've no doubt about it."

Even a rational adult know this, when told about a moral is good moral the first thing they say is "Oh yeah, i don't understand the meaning of this moral, is this moral a good moral? why?", not "Oh yeah, i don't understand the meaning of this moral, but i'll not ask why and simply follow it. Who says this moral is a good moral, then it must be the good moral, i've no doubt about it."

No, a secular adult says there is no transcendent moral source so lets look at what has no moral properties what so ever and is at best an immoral blind process and guess at what morality is and bind everyone by it. That is if your lucky, many of the "brightest atheists and secularists" rightly admit that without God there is no moral duties and values but merely societal conventions that are a illusory byproduct of biology.

A secular adult(non-believer) doesn't necessary have to say that "there is no transcendent moral source", they can say that they don't know whether there is any trascendent moral source or not.

While they don't know whether there is any trascendent moral source or not, they try to observe and learn moral from secular accepted standard of morality and together from self experience. They're not simply to blindly follow any religion/secular morality they don't agree with, they first observe the moral they're contact to, think the action of that moral and what consequences that moral may result, e.g. if that moral is harming other people in mental or physical way then they don't follow that moral.

Let's everyone keep their own version of superior objective morality to only they themself, and stop using their own version of superior objective morality as an excuse to harm other people in mental or physical way.

In your world view no ultimate authority says because no ultimate judge exists to have any moral duty towards.

Where is your prove that your religion's God is really the ultimate authority and judge for objective morality for all human?

Your repeating your self again.

I should rephrase my question to:
Where is your prove that religion's God is really must be the only one ultimate authority and judge for objective morality for all human?

Or are you going to say "I will spare you all the theology evidence that why my religion's God is really the ultimate authority and judge for objective morality for all human as you would not accept it anyway" ?

and again.

...

Rephrase:
Or are you going to say "I will spare you all the theology evidence that why religion's God is really the only one ultimate authority and judge for objective morality for all human as you would not accept it anyway" ?

You may argue that I should treat you well so some arbitrary goal may be furthered but you cannot show I have any actually duty to agree.

Non-believer can say why you shouldn't force them to follow your religion's accepted standard of morality, but they cannot show you've any actually duty to not forcing them to follow your religion's accepted standard of morality? I don't understand you.

Your asking the wrong question. If God exists our moral duties necessarily follow. So the only issue is whether he exists or whether he does not what his existence would entail. Almost no one argues against that.

Almost no one argues against what?

Almost no one argues against the opinion that "there must be a transcendent moral source"?

I argues againts that because i don't agree with that opinion, people who don't support that opinion may also be argues against that.

And i don't think you've correctly answer my question. Unless i've misunderstand your previous statement.

Then please explain what you mean:
"You may argue that I should treat you well so some arbitrary goal may be furthered but you cannot show I have any actually duty to agree."

What is "i should treat you well" and "some arbitrary goal" and "any actually duty" you're refer to?

Since you do not seem to have any argument at all against our foundation being one grounded in Christianity and instead simply think it a bad foundation why don't you instead pick out a theological veracity topic and leave our foundation of it.

Okay, our foundation is grounded in Christianity, and you have already said that the principles of Christianity are freedom that it doesn't force non-believer must practice its faith, so i guess it also means not being force to follow religion's morality.

So please stop using this foundation(which doesn't force non-believer must practice religion's faith/morality), to justified that every non believer must practice religion's faith/morality, thank you.

 

[ArtieE]

Anyone who would look at a document written by 95% Christians that contains God and think they could have meant Allah is desperate.

Your god and Allah is the same god, the god of Abraham. If you believe and follow the Bible you also have to believe and follow the Qu'ran. They are from the same god.

For example it grounds the idea that life is sacred, that men are equal, that humans have objective worth and value, that justice both exists and is a goal, etc......

No it doesn't. The Bible tells us that some are evil and deserve to be drowned and some are not evil and deserve to be saved. If life was sacred and men were equal and humans have objective worth and value your god couldn't have drowned some and saved others.

You base your rights in the only place left without God, your opinion.

We have a survival instinct and don't want to get murdered so murder is wrong. We don't need a god to tell us murder is wrong. Why do you?

 

[Monk Of Reason]

You do not require a literary device for a moral precept. I bet you cannot find a single legal theory in the entire history of man founded on a literary device. What moral precepts are founded on are entities or perceived patterns or stated goals. Of those entities have been the majority, the other two are much later developments. For instance no prior to 1700 knew about the principles of evolution to ground anything in. I can write a law without any need whatever of a God but if that law is to reflect an objective and ultimate moral duty then a God must be it's source. Now you may claim that you think there was no God to which they refer, you may even believe they knew that to be the case. However you can't take a suspicion and use it to counteract their emphatic statement that the transcendent was the source of their morality.

Anyone who would look at a document written by 95% Christians that contains God and think they could have meant Allah is desperate.

I did not mention anything about how tolerant we have been.

I didn't insinuate that I actually believed they meant Allah. I think it is obvious that they intentionally didn't define god in your terms. If we were to take it as literally as you take it (which I still believe to be the incorrect way of interpreting it and I'll show you why in a minute) then it still wouldn't indicate the Christian god. You can say till your blue in the face about how historically we were a Christian majority nation and that the founders may have been this or that, but it amounts to nothing because it wasn't written that way int he constitution. The federal constitution makes no reference to god except in the amendment where they state that there is no respect for establishments of religion.

The piece that you like to hold so high isn't part of our constitution. It is the declaration of independence. The declaration of independence has nothing to do with our modern government except its existence as a historical document.

Now that we have established that nothing in our laws are based on god in legality you can only make your argument from intent of the founding fathers. This falls flat on its face because they had every possible opportunity to input god in their work but they never did. They never did INTENTIONALLY. Several states have though if it makes you feel better.

But beyond that, nothing about our laws were ever made with god in mind (well there might be some right wing bills with it in mind but the bulk are not). The bill of rights was the only thing that could be linked to the declaration of independence and its mentioning of god. However those rights were written and constructed by men. Originally being 20 rights but mowed down to 10. If you think that the bill of rights is based off of the 10 commandments then you need to re-read them. I don't think you have made this claim so far but its a common one made.

Of course if God granted us rights that would be the most natural result possible. They sure as heck did not mean that God granted us rights through the carbon atom or the benzene molecule. Besides mechanism is not what I am talking about, source is. If God is involved then secularism is out.

and all evidence seems to point in the direction of it not being god. So where does that leave us?

I have stated exactly what I believe and it is a very common saying among historians. Are political roots are based in Athens, our moral roots are based in Jerusalem, out legal and scholastic root on Rome.

BTW equality is a core Christian belief. That does not mean it is a core belief of every Christian. You keep confusing those who defied the religion with the religion. When the apostles (men who had every right to feel superior) haggled amongst themselves as to who would be greatest Jesus basically pimp slapped them back into coherence with a rebuke against the idea that anyone was better than anyone else. Christianity is virtually unique in that it claims God loves everyone the same.

Well that is your take on it anyway. You simply can't sweep the entire history of the church and its actions under the rug. The only time that Christians started to want equality was when the movement happened.

You said forced, this is not being forced. This is the social pressure that exists in every single society and is of every single type and can never be overcome. The lack of any pressure to get married just because you will produce a child without two parents is evidence of moral decline it's opposite is not being forced.

Are you horrifically and blissfully unaware of the state of women and women's rights prior to the 1950's?

You base your rights in the only place left without God, your opinion. You can dress it up with academic terms if you want but it will never being but. Whatever you call it if it denies the right to life it no longer has the power to grant more subtle and less obvious rights. It's as absurd as saying you have no right to live but you do have to health insurance.

You base your rights on your opinion of what you think god said. I would rather have it based upon reason and philosophy which is the greatest hallmark of human intelligence than a lie.

We were not discussing any modulating factors. That is impractical in a debate like this. We were providing statistics. If your talking about the change in larceny rates then that would account for the spike that it produced but there after the graph should have remained flat, yet it just kept growing. Unless you can show a decrease in what is considered crime for every spike you only have a modulating issue which does not reverse the general trend. IOW all you can say it did get worse just not as bad as it looks.

The fact that the graph itself states that the spike was caused by a change in the way that the information was obtained and things that were not counted before were suddenly counted. If you say that there are only 10 red marbles in a bag and then suddenly the standard changes and it now includes red blue and green then now we suddenly have 50 marbles. Did the amount of marbles increase?

You got the formatting mixed up here. Are you claiming Mother Jones defeats the Crime and Justice Atlas?

When you misrepresent the data yes.

A change in priority from family and traditional morality to self interest, convenience, and consumerism.

I would argue that a priority to the community, independence and personal health (both mental and physical) is a forward step in morality. If a marriage is not going to work and it puts both involved through hell then it is actually healthier for a child to live in a broken home than an abusive home.

I do not know of another issue even during these secular times more associated with moral excellence in general that the family unit. Even liberal talk shows which pretty much take the opposite view on every moral issue as has traditionally been held still considers the family unit a moral issue. You may be the brave pioneer that finally leads secularism off the cliff if your neglecting the last bastion of traditional moral agreement. Let me add to this the myriad of lopsided statistic that show that broken family units are the primary cause of crime. They even lead to massive increases in mental erosion. So what you do not consider important is leaving atrial of human wreckage in it's wake. If that is not a moral issue there is not one.

The fact that crime has been dropping steadily since we have taken accurate account of it indicates to me that this erosion of traditional morality isn't increasing crime in the slightest. Abortion has done more to keep crime down that Christianity.

I have given up on having any rational avenue of resolving moral issues with you for a while now. I have to sit here while tests are running and so am just killing time. If I was asked to write a paper to prove that secularism has simply (as Nietzsche put it) found a sponge to wipe out the moral horizon, then airbrushed in a false one and called it progress I would copy and paste your exact words as my evidence. However I have to stare at this keyboard anyway and your not insulting or obnoxious so why not respond to you.

I try not to be but I can be at times. I also am at work killing time. (I can't think of the last time that I've been on this site while at home). What are my words exactly that is the issue here? Aside from the fact that I don't appose abortion we tend to agree on what is the moral thing to do. Well there is the issue that we don't agree marriage is a moral thing in terms of society as well. But mainly we squabble over the cause of different things.

How can I learn from something I can make no sense out of?

Our discussions get convoluted because they get so large. I have been snipping parts to try and make room. Also when I am at work its stop and go and sometimes I loose my train of thought through these massive posts. I've thought of just not responding at all to parts of posts and just giving the base idea of what my argument is. It might simplify things.

But we are not even heading in the right direction. We cure polio and then invent weapons to exterminate us all and have the moral insanity to have almost used them twice in the last 60 years. The twentieth century was bloodier than all previous centuries combined. We claim to know what happen 10 billion years ago and yet exterminate millions of our own species in the womb based on convenience based on a non-existent right claimed for one who committed the act and denied to the other who has no say in the matter.
We march in the street for the sacred right of 4% of us to gratify their lust at the expense of creating 60% on new aids cases. If secularism wants to untether morality from any ultimate truth fine but at least aim it in the right direction.

I've already discussed the homosxuality issue before. There is no new ground to cover between us. I simply do not agree with your assumption that it is the 4% fault. So that is why I try to stand up for them. I fight bigotry when I can. I even fight bigotry against religious individuals believe it or not. I am all for critical thought on religion but not assumptions about people that are religious no matter what their religion is. (though Scientology has pushed me to some limits)

 

[Bunyip]

In my opinion Atheists have selfishness.

Our society provides morals for us, via Law.

Yes, but your opinion is not worth much mate.

 

[Right lane]

Quick definitions for the unlearned:

Amoral: lacking a moral sense; unconcerned with the rightness or wrongness of something.

Immoral: not conforming to accepted standards of morality.

Moral: concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character.

When someone claims that he/she is irreligious, does it give them justifications to negate teachings of religious communities. For example, thou not steal. Does it give someone who claims to be irreligious the right to steal?

Also, which of the above words excellently describes the life of an Athiest?

No, because atheists follow the laws of man, as it should be. You don't get to violate the laws of man even if your religion compels you to.

 

[serp777]

You do not require a literary device for a moral precept. I bet you cannot find a single legal theory in the entire history of man founded on a literary device. What moral precepts are founded on are entities or perceived patterns or stated goals. Of those entities have been the majority, the other two are much later developments. For instance no prior to 1700 knew about the principles of evolution to ground anything in. I can write a law without any need whatever of a God but if that law is to reflect an objective and ultimate moral duty then a God must be it's source. Now you may claim that you think there was no God to which they refer, you may even believe they knew that to be the case. However you can't take a suspicion and use it to counteract their emphatic statement that the transcendent was the source of their morality.

Anyone who would look at a document written by 95% Christians that contains God and think they could have meant Allah is desperate.

I did not mention anything about how tolerant we have been.


Of course if God granted us rights that would be the most natural result possible. They sure as heck did not mean that God granted us rights through the carbon atom or the benzene molecule. Besides mechanism is not what I am talking about, source is. If God is involved then secularism is out.

I have stated exactly what I believe and it is a very common saying among historians. Are political roots are based in Athens, our moral roots are based in Jerusalem, out legal and scholastic root on Rome.

BTW equality is a core Christian belief. That does not mean it is a core belief of every Christian. You keep confusing those who defied the religion with the religion. When the apostles (men who had every right to feel superior) haggled amongst themselves as to who would be greatest Jesus basically pimp slapped them back into coherence with a rebuke against the idea that anyone was better than anyone else. Christianity is virtually unique in that it claims God loves everyone the same.

Oh come on, it says them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, ...

No morality does not produce taxes, necessity does. Morality does prohibit excessive taxes. God does not authorize questionable military action, human frailty does, but God does provide for laws that attempt to limit the effect of our frailty. Morals are very generalized principles which temper law, that does not even hint they have any one to one correspondence or that all laws are moral.

For example it grounds the idea that life is sacred, that men are equal, that humans have objective worth and value, that justice both exists and is a goal, etc......

Now those general principles were used to establish laws. Being that laws are produced by faulty humans they never reflect the divine principles correctly and can even betray them entirely especially when a nation turns it's back on faith, then the wheel really come off. So having a divine foundation does not mean man will build a perfect house on top of it.

You said forced, this is not being forced. This is the social pressure that exists in every single society and is of every single type and can never be overcome. The lack of any pressure to get married just because you will produce a child without two parents is evidence of moral decline it's opposite is not being forced.

You base your rights in the only place left without God, your opinion. You can dress it up with academic terms if you want but it will never being but. Whatever you call it if it denies the right to life it no longer has the power to grant more subtle and less obvious rights. It's as absurd as saying you have no right to live but you do have to health insurance.

We were not discussing any modulating factors. That is impractical in a debate like this. We were providing statistics. If your talking about the change in larceny rates then that would account for the spike that it produced but there after the graph should have remained flat, yet it just kept growing. Unless you can show a decrease in what is considered crime for every spike you only have a modulating issue which does not reverse the general trend. IOW all you can say it did get worse just not as bad as it looks.

You got the formatting mixed up here. Are you claiming Mother Jones defeats the Crime and Justice Atlas?


I think it was because rape was very underreported. It does not matter why it only matters that no statistic trend can be established.

A change in priority from family and traditional morality to self interest, convenience, and consumerism.

I do not know of another issue even during these secular times more associated with moral excellence in general that the family unit. Even liberal talk shows which pretty much take the opposite view on every moral issue as has traditionally been held still considers the family unit a moral issue. You may be the brave pioneer that finally leads secularism off the cliff if your neglecting the last bastion of traditional moral agreement. Let me add to this the myriad of lopsided statistic that show that broken family units are the primary cause of crime. They even lead to massive increases in mental erosion. So what you do not consider important is leaving atrial of human wreckage in it's wake. If that is not a moral issue there is not one.


I have given up on having any rational avenue of resolving moral issues with you for a while now. I have to sit here while tests are running and so am just killing time. If I was asked to write a paper to prove that secularism has simply (as Nietzsche put it) found a sponge to wipe out the moral horizon, then airbrushed in a false one and called it progress I would copy and paste your exact words as my evidence. However I have to stare at this keyboard anyway and your not insulting or obnoxious so why not respond to you.

I did not say you said it. I implied that was the only context that I could think you comments came in.

I don't even remember what the statistic under question was. The point was that even if you find some reason to modulate the exact figures (even by large amounts) the data is so skewed that it will remain lopsided regardless. IOW in almost all categories things are worse. If you want to say that they not quite as worse as I suggest I don't want to bother. Their worse, the end.

How can I learn from something I can make no sense out of?

But we are not even heading in the right direction. We cure polio and then invent weapons to exterminate us all and have the moral insanity to have almost used them twice in the last 60 years. The twentieth century was bloodier than all previous centuries combined. We claim to know what happen 10 billion years ago and yet exterminate millions of our own species in the womb based on convenience based on a non-existent right claimed for one who committed the act and denied to the other who has no say in the matter.
We march in the street for the sacred right of 4% of us to gratify their lust at the expense of creating 60% on new aids cases. If secularism wants to untether morality from any ultimate truth fine but at least aim it in the right direction.



We believe in the rejection of creeds, And the flowering of individual thought. If chance be the Father of all flesh, disaster is his rainbow in the sky and when you hear State of Emergency! It is but the sound of man
worshipping his maker.

Steve Turner, (English journalist), “Creed,” his satirical poem on the modern mind. Taken from Ravi Zacharias’ book Can Man live Without God? Pages 42-44

but don't call that progress.

I can write a law without any need whatever of a God but if that law is to reflect an objective and ultimate moral duty then a God must be it's source. Now you may claim that you think there was no God to which they refer, you may even believe they knew that to be the case. However you can't take a suspicion and use it to counteract their emphatic statement that the transcendent was the source of their morality.

The gaping flaw with your logic is that you're using your subjective and arbitrary interpretations to determine the subjective interpretations made by scribes who assumed they had special knowledge about the mind of God. You cannot use your subjectivity to determine God's objective moral truths. You use your subjectivity to pick and choose morals that work for you in the society in which you were born. For instance you probably reject leviticus, exodus, and the old testament morality in general. So you don't know whether anything reflects objective and ultimate moral duties; this would require you to have special knowledge of God

 

[1robin]

The gaping flaw with your logic is that you're using your subjective and arbitrary interpretations to determine the subjective interpretations made by scribes who assumed they had special knowledge about the mind of God.You cannot use your subjectivity to determine God's objective moral truths. You use your subjectivity to pick and choose morals that work for you in the society in which you were born. For instance you probably reject leviticus, exodus, and the old testament morality in general. So you don't know whether anything reflects objective and ultimate moral duties; this would require you to have special knowledge of God

Back up here a minute. I did not list any specific laws that are objectively true. IOW I did not say it was objectively true that we should obey the ten commandments. You are misapplying my claims. My claims are about the nature of morality given God or minus a God. I did not go on to state any specifics about any particular laws. Your taking a commentary made about the ontological nature of morality (whatever it may be) given God and making an epistemological case about the quality of a specific moral duty which I did not mention. I do on occasion make arguments about specific moral commands but I do not recall doing so in what you responded to. What you responded to was a necessary result about the nature of morals in general given God, it was not an attempt to state what those specific objective morals actually are. So your new to me and I always enjoy talking to a new poster but you will have to recalibrate and re-post a response in the same context my claims were made in.

 

[serp777]

Back up here a minute. I did not list any specific laws that are objectively true. IOW I did not say it was objectively true that we should obey the ten commandments. You are misapplying my claims. My claims are about the nature of morality given God or minus a God. I did not go on to state any specifics about any particular laws. Your taking a commentary made about the ontological nature of morality (whatever it may be) given God and making an epistemological case about the quality of a specific moral duty which I did not mention. I do on occasion make arguments about specific moral commands but I do not recall doing so in what you responded to. What you responded to was a necessary result about the nature of morals in general given God, it was not an attempt to state what those specific objective morals actually are. So your new to me and I always enjoy talking to a new poster but you will have to recalibrate and re-post a response in the same context my claims were made in.

You misunderstand what im saying. I never claimed you listed any specific laws, nor does my argument hinge upon you making specific moral statements .

This is what you said:

I can write a law without any need whatever of a God but if that law is to reflect an objective and ultimate moral duty then a God must be it's source

So my point is that you cannot write a law that reflects an objective, ultimate moral duty of God, because all you have are your own arbitrary, subjective interpretations; in other words a law can only reflect a subjective interpretation, which you only think reflects God's objective moral truths. And since its extremely likely that nobody has special knowledge from God, morality is ultimately independent from whether God exists or not. God being a source or not does not affect morality. You can in fact theoretically justify any moral claim using supposedly divine revelation. I mentioned a religious statement from the bible which you would probably reject. I specifically said probably because you did not make any specific moral claims in the post i was replying to.

In conclusion a law cannot reflect an objective moral truth or duty because only human subjectivity is possible.

 

[1robin]

You misunderstand what im saying. I never claimed you listed any specific laws, nor does my argument hinge upon you making specific moral statements .

This is what you said:


So my point is that you cannot write a law that reflects an objective, ultimate moral duty of God, because all you have are your own arbitrary, subjective interpretations; in other words a law can only reflect a subjective interpretation, which you only think reflects God's objective moral truths. And since its extremely likely that nobody has special knowledge from God, morality is ultimately independent from whether God exists or not. God being a source or not does not affect morality. You can in fact theoretically justify any moral claim using supposedly divine revelation. I mentioned a religious statement from the bible which you would probably reject. I specifically said probably because you did not make any specific moral claims in the post i was replying to.

In conclusion a law cannot reflect an objective moral truth or duty because only human subjectivity is possible.

I certainly can write a law that is ontologically true and reflects objective fact. Your merely complaining that I could not do so with certainty. IOW it may be impossible to know that what I stated is a reflection of objective truth but that has no bearing on whether it is. At this time it would be hard for me to accurately describe the size of another solar system. However the only way I have to accurately describe another solar system's size is if another solar system exists. So my claim was not that I know I can write a law that reflects an objective moral truth, it is that if I can then there is an objective moral truth in existence. So whether I guessed, had a revelation, or found my law on the back of a cheerios box it can only reflect objective fact if objective moral duties exist, and the only way objective moral duties exist is if God does. So your argument has nothing to do with whether God is necessary for any moral law to reflect objective fact, it is a complaint that I cannot know that any particular law I have written is fact. I may or may not be a poor source for objective moral duties, but for anyone to have the slightest chance of accurately describing an actual objective moral fact then God must exist, if he does not then there are no objective moral duties and we have never written a law that reflects a transcendent moral truth because it does not exist. IOW the possibility we can know objective moral facts (even if by sheer luck) requires God.

 

[1robin]

Your god and Allah is the same god, the god of Abraham. If you believe and follow the Bible you also have to believe and follow the Qu'ran. They are from the same god.

This is not an argument and therefor requires no refutation. It is a declaration and only requires a declaration in return. They are not the same God.

No it doesn't. The Bible tells us that some are evil and deserve to be drowned and some are not evil and deserve to be saved. If life was sacred and men were equal and humans have objective worth and value your god couldn't have drowned some and saved others.

Nothing in here follows from what I said or from anything else.

1. Worth has nothing to do with be perfect or flawed. I can highly value a car that does not run and is rusting in the barn.
2. The bible tells us we are all evil compared to God's standard of perfection. Yet he valued us so much he gave his son to redeem the entire race. In fact theologians often claim that Christ's death was a corporate and individual sacrifice. IOW he not only died for us all, but he died for each of us specifically on an individual basis.
3. As Lincoln so eloquently put it being equal before God is not to be equal in all ways. We may all have the same value to God yet we are not all the same height, intelligence, or have the same moral integrity. To say I value two things the same is not to say I treat them the same. I may value two kids the same but I will treat the female differently than the male, I will treat the older different that the younger, I may be mad at one and at peace with the other.

We have a survival instinct and don't want to get murdered so murder is wrong. We don't need a god to tell us murder is wrong. Why do you?

That is not simply untrue it can't possibly be true. What we want has absolutely no power to create a moral fact. We can create a preference, an opinion, a desire, even a law, but we cannot possibly ever make anything objectively right or wrong.

Even most scholars that think morality comes from evolution admit this, such as the philosopher of science.

Michael Ruse and E. O. Wilson, in Religion and the Natural Sciences: The Range of Engagement, 1991.

"The time has come to take seriously the fact that we humans are modified monkeys, not the favored Creation of a Benevolent God on the Sixth Day. In particular, we must recognize our biological past in trying to understand our interactions with others. We must think again especially about our so-called 'ethical principles'. The question is not whether biology- specifically, our evolution-is connected with ethics, but how. As evolutionists, we see that no justification of the traditional kind is possible. Morality, or more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends. Hence the basis of ethics does not lie in God's will ...In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate. It is without external grounding... Ethics is illusory inasmuch as it persuades us that it has an objective reference. This is the crux of the biological position. Once it is grasped, everything falls into place."

He agrees with your premise 100% but denies it's conclusion emphatically because your premise in no way what so ever can justify your conclusion. In your view murder cannot possibly be objectively wrong, at best it is an arbitrary artifact cast of by a blind and amoral process. If actually wrong it must violate a transcendent law, to have a transcendent law you need a transcendent law giver, yet this is what you deny and not what you affirm and so your premise is the best argument for my conclusion.

 

[Pudding]

I can write a law without any need whatever of a God but if that law is to reflect an objective and ultimate moral duty then a God must be it's source

Where is your proof that any god must be the source of a law if that law is to reflect an objective and ultimate moral duty?

 

[outhouse]

IOW the possibility we can know objective moral facts (even if by sheer luck) requires God.

Unsubstantiated rhetoric.

Or you would prove it, or make a good case for it which you have not even began to come close.

 

[jonathan180iq]

Or you would prove it, or make a good case for it which you have not even began to come close.

And, for the record, neither has anyone else who has ever made this claim...

 

[ArtieE]

This is not an argument and therefor requires no refutation. It is a declaration and only requires a declaration in return. They are not the same God.

"The Qur’ān insists, Muslims believe, and historians affirm that Muhammad and his followers worship the same God as the Jews (29:46). The Qur’an's Allah is the same Creator God who covenanted with Abraham". Allah - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2. The bible tells us we are all evil compared to God's standard of perfection. Yet he valued us so much he gave his son to redeem the entire race.

No, he drowned everybody except eight even though according to you life is sacred men are equal and humans have objective worth and value. Right.

He agrees with your premise 100% but denies it's conclusion emphatically because your premise in no way what so ever can justify your conclusion. In your view murder cannot possibly be objectively wrong, at best it is an arbitrary artifact cast of by a blind and amoral process. If actually wrong it must violate a transcendent law, to have a transcendent law you need a transcendent law giver, yet this is what you deny and not what you affirm and so your premise is the best argument for my conclusion.

1. I have a survival instinct and don't want to be murdered.
2. Murdering me is wrong because I don't want to be murdered.
3. You don't see anything wrong with murdering me if there was no transcendent law stopping you?

 

[outhouse]

And, for the record, neither has anyone else who has ever made this claim...

And to further it, I would ask which god is he even talking about?

There all different.

 

[jonathan180iq]

And to further it, I would ask which god is he even talking about?

There all different.

Precisely - Since the beginning of thought and reason, since the invention of the very first deity, some of the greatest minds of humanity have attempted to attribute an infallible argument that law and morality must be evident of a creator or deity of some sort, and every single one of them has failed to do so... They've certainly made some solid efforts. But they've all failed.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

Precisely - Since the beginning of thought and reason, since the invention of the very first deity, some of the greatest minds of humanity have attempted to attribute an infallible argument that law and morality must be evident of a creator or deity of some sort, and every single one of them has failed to do so... They've certainly made some solid efforts. But they've all failed.

The biggest issue I've had and that its hard to get past with robin is that he believes that if we were to have a god based morality, even if that god were a false god, it would be better than secular morality. And with an axiom such is hard to get past for in depth discussion.

 

[jonathan180iq]

he believes that if we were to have a god based morality, even if that god were a false god, it would be better than secular morality.

How does he differentiate the idea of a morality based on a false god from secular morality?