Are Fundamentalists Inherently Immoral

I clicked the link and read the thread where you got this question.I am a Christian.
I can say that beyond the shadow of a doubt that rape is morally wrong.The Bible is very clear about sexual immorality.Matthew 15:19"For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander."

Numbers 25:16-18"The LORD said to Moses, 'Treat the Midianites as enemies and kill them, because they treated you as enemies when they deceived you in the affair of Peor and their sister Cozbi, the daughter of a Midianite leader, the woman who was killed when the plague came as a result of Peor.' "At the time of Moses the Hebrew nation took its orders directly from God. God was the Ruler; Moses was the messanger. The Bible says that "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). Jesus came to die for the sins of man (John 3:16). In the Old Testament, however, Jesus had not come to earth yet and man still had to pay the price. Numbers chapter 31 is an example of God's just wrath--not of his immorality. The Midianites sinned and were therefore punished. According the Law of God. Justice cannot be counted as immorality. They are opposite.

Numbers 22:4-7"The Moabites said to the elders of Midian, 'This horde [Israel] is going to lick up everything around us, as an ox licks up the grass of the field.'
So Balak son of Zippor, who was king of Moab at that time, sent messengers to summon Balaam son of Beor, who was at Pethor, near the River, in his native land. Balak said:
'A people has come out of Egypt; they cover the face of the land and have settled next to me. Now come and put a curse on these people, because they are too powerful for me. Perhaps then I will be able to defeat them and drive them out of the country. For I know that those you bless are blessed, and those you curse are cursed.'The elders of Moab and Midian left, taking with them the fee for divination...."The Midianites had conspired with Balak. They were attempting to curse the Israelites. God took vengeance on the Midianites for this reason.You, sir, call God immoral for deciding the fate of the Midianites. Yet you yourself claim that the Midianites should not have been harmed. You call God immoral for judging the actions of the Midianites and yet you do the same thing! God judged the acts of the Midianites to be guilty of wrongdoing and you judged the Midianites to be innocent. What makes it ok for you to judge the Midianites but not God? Explain this contradiction.Edited by Holyfire23, : No reason given.

And by whose standards do you base your moral opinion? I encourage everyone to answer this question.Edited by Holyfire23, : No reason given.

I assume you consider yourself to be a moral person. I am not making any accusation that would allude to the contrary. I have a question though. How can there be absolute morality if every person establishes their own definition of morality based on their own unique opinons and upbringing? This question is based on the presupposition that morality is in fact absolute; otherwise you would have no valid arguement against the Bible.

Lets look at some of the assertions that have just been presented. One of the notions was that human beings are capable of knowing right from wrong. This does not make sense to me assuming that morality is relative as you guys say it is. If there are no moral absolutes, then the concept of right and wrong ceases to exist. One cannot call morality relative and then make absolute claims about what is right and wrong without contradicting himself. Let us look at some of the things humanity has deemed "right" and "moral". Look at Hitler and his genocides of the Jewish people, or Josef Stalin and his genocide of pretty much anyone he didn't like. All these men thought they were doing what was "moral". Were these men capable of distinguishing right from wrong?Another question asked was this: Is something good because God says it is good, or does God say something is good because it is good? To this I would have to urge a greater understanding of who God is. God is morality. Morality is a part of God. Evil on the other hand is not of God. Evil comes from that of a man's mortal desires. God cannot change his mind about morality. Because to God morality is as absolute as one's heart ( aphysical blood-pumping heart. You cannot simply decide to not have a heart. In the same way, God cannot simply decide to change the definition of morality. Morality is unchanging just like God is.We must have an absolute moral foundation in order to determine what is right and what is wrong. Stalin and Hitler are just two examples of man's inability to define morality. Humanity is depraved at its very core. We cannot determine what is moral and what is not by ourselves. The very notion that morality is relative is proof of this. Man cannot set absolut moral boundaries, so he simply chooses not to.

So if morality is decided subjectively and according to one's social surroundings, than that means right and wrong do not exist. What is considered wrong for western culture might be okay for other cultures? Consider this situation. I once heard a speaker tell a story that he heard from a missionary friend in Thailand. She had recently been part of a rescue operation that helped little girls escape the thriving human trafficking trade. While there they found an 11 month old little girl. Her legs had been beaten so terribly that they were severely broken and swollen."It was horrible" said the missionary "what they did to this small child. In this particular crime ring it was customary for the clients to be given a mixture of hard liquor, snake's blood, and a hallucinogenic drug. After injesting this they would then have sex with these little girls. The 11 month old girl was the youngest. The oldest of which was only 11 years old."Tell me this. Is it wrong for these men to be doing this. Is this not evil? In our culture this is repulsive, but in their culture it is a way of entertainment. If you subscribe to the belief that morality is subjective to cultural interpretation than these men who do these awful things cannot be held accountable for what they do. Following the logic behind subjective morality, they have done nothing wrong. Do you guys honestly support this view?

@ anglgard: Rape is wrong.Here is where I see a problem with subjective morality. If morality is defined by one's society, then morality can only be judged within that particular society. For the record, I agree with all of you that rape is wrong. But if one holds to the belief that morality is subjective to one's society, they cannot judge what is moral within a different society. If rape is to be wrong under all circumstances absolute moral presuppostions must be made. Otherwise, rape would only be wrong according to our standards. This poses a question, what makes our standards better than another societies standards?Again I will say this. I think rape is wrong under any circumstances. Anyone who makes this statement and calls morality subjective is simply living above the standards of his own philosophy.

"This poses a question, what makes the christian god more just or right than any other deity?"That isn't answering my question. What makes our society's definition of morality more true or mor accurate than that of the Nazi society?Edited by Holyfire23, : Forgot to quote.

Since we are on the subject of morality, let us look at the options here. Assume you are a Jewish man in the times of Moses. You have just defeated an army of men and have arrived at their village to find a village full of women and children. You have three options. 1) Kill them all. 2) Leave the women to take care of their children without the help of any men who would otherwise hunt and plant crops and provide for their families. 3) Take the women and any children. Make the woman your wife and provide for her and her children. Which one of these choices is the most moral to you?

Tell me then, what circumstances constitute the murder of women and children? Edited by Holyfire23, : No reason given.

Please give me an example of when God has ever killed someone without provocation? Also, when has God ever condoned rape?

God never unleashed His wrath without provocation. Again, if you had read the verse in context you would know that Amalek and his tribe had acted maliciously towards the Israelites.This is like the fifth time I have had to defend against these accusations. Has anybody here read the Bible? Does anyone known the context in which these verses were written? Or do you just go to an internet Bible site and do a word search on "smite"? You all forget that there is a second half to the Bible know as the New Testament. When Jesus came he fulfilled all the rerquirements of the Jewish Law. All the rules which said, "All the sinful nations must be destroyed."...they are all fulfilled. God no longer demands that man pay for his sins on this earth. Jesus came and did it all for us. If Jesus had not come, God would still demand that man pay for his sins and alot of what went on in the OT would still be happening. But God does not want any of His children to parish. God does not want His people to die. I can tell you with great confidence that God did not want all the people in the OT to die. But He is a just God. That is the only reason those people were punished. For that reason He sent Jesus to be punished for all of us. Is this not loving? Would you give up your son or daughter to be tortured so that the very people who tortured him or her could have a chance at being saved? Forget about God's existence if you want and speak hypothetcaly. Edited by Holyfire23, : Poor spelling is a bad symptom of my bad typing lol.

I told you the answer to this already. Balak the king of Moab paid the Midianites to hire a man to curse Isreal. This maliciousness is what provoked God to kill the Midianites. As for all your other examples, they are simply following Jewish law. Disobedience to the LORD is a sin. The wages of sin is death. Therefore, disobedience to the LORD is death. Before Jesus came to earth, man was held accountable for his sins. When Jesus came he fulfilled that requirement.No one has answered my question yet. Would you send your son or daughter to be tortured and killed so that the very people who tortured and kill him/her could have a chance at salvation? Edited by Holyfire23, : No reason given.

Lets break this statement down. What if we removed rules so that people would not have to be punished for breaking them as you said in the begining of your first sentence? The whole world would result to anarchy. You can bet that many people would die because of that. So we can check that off as immoral.What about the second part of the sentence in which you propose that God force people not to break the rules. That would take away our free will. God wants His children to choose Him of their own free will and love Him. Love is voluntary.The third option was to find another way besides sacrificing your son to save all humanity. Unfortunately, that would fall in to place with your first suggestion. Death is the price that must be paid. The only thing that can repay sin is death. So this suggestion is not possible for the same reason as the first.Throughout the OT the wrath of God is displayed many times. In every case, the people who are punished are punished because they did not follow God's commands. This is true for the Isrealites and the Gentiles alike. The reason we are in disagreement with one another is because my definition of sin is different from all of yours. So the real argument lies in the definition of sin. Before any more assertions about the Bible are made, let us first establish a common starting point.