Morality without god

But neurobiologists tell us that emotions do have an underlying substance. And the meaning of your post, if it had one, was surely that emotions would be less real if they have a real physical substrate. Yeah, how did Protestants decide that it was right to burn Catholics, and Catholics decide that it was right to burn Protestants? They both turned to the supposed ideas of a being which they both agreed had no underlying material substrate.Maybe we should stop doing that.

So, just to make it clear, you deny the existence of feelings and thoughts, and on this basis you deny the existence of right and wrong? I think they were both wrong. I use an irreligious standard. It keeps me from setting fire to people.

Like my house is just a manifestation of bricks?Your point, if you have one, is getting continually more confused and obscure.

But people's consciences tell them different things. They say "support gay marriage" or "gay marriage is of the devil". Can both these things be "His voice"? If so, he's talking out of both sides of his face. If not, then when I do "what I know internally is right" then I'm probably just following my conscience after all.It would be great, of course, to believe that God guides every moral decision I make, but the logical corollary of that would be that I'm really really special, since there's probably no-one on Earth who would make the exact same moral decisions as I do about everything.

Could you expand on this? I think that right and wrong are real things. You disagree. How does your system of theology deny the existence of good and evil?

It's not too much for people nowadays, though, is it? I get by fine without any slaves.And would it really have been too much for, let us say, Abraham? God comes and tells him to sacrifice his Isaac, "your only son, whom you love". "OK," says Abraham, "you're the boss". God tells him to cut the end off his cock without anesthetic. "Sure, no problem, God", says Abraham. So are you going to tell us that God didn't whisper one word to him against slavery because if he'd done that then Abraham would have stood up for slavery and told God Almighty where to shove it?* If so, then what price Abraham as a good man? --- if he would have clung on to slavery even if God himself told him to stop?* If not, then why didn't God tell him to abandon slavery?

Yes --- the laws I live under were made by men and not by Jehovah.You will recall, by the way, that the men who made the laws against slavery in this country did manage to turn a slave-owning society into a non-slave-owning society, something that was apparently impossible for the Almighty. A point which raises questions rather than answers them. By your own admission, God didn't make only those laws that he expected everyone to keep. Rather he was laying down the rules of right and wrong, so that anyone who cared to would know what they were and could keep them --- if they chose. So why not a law against slavery? So it would have done some good, then? It is in fact possible to hire the help, whether it's with handling herds of animals or picking cotton.

It's definitely true of me, since the legal code I live under forbids slavery. But they didn't have to be. It is really not necessary to own slaves to be a nomadic pastoralist. Do you suppose that every shepherd nowadays owns slaves? No, somehow they manage to get by without them.So why didn't God speak out? When was it ever necessary?"When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the [Southern] gentleman?" What? The Bible specifically describes Abraham's slaves as those who were "bought with money from a foreigner" (see Genesis 17). Besides, if God was OK with debt slavery (and there are other ways to deal with debt) he could have drawn a distinction, could he not, between that and other forms of slavery?---So why didn't God speak out? Really, you paint a funny picture of God. Your God is like a politician who has convictions, but no courage --- he'd like to propose a measure, he thinks it's right in itself, only he wouldn't get the votes for it and it might damage his approval ratings, so he figures it's best for him to sit down, shut up, and not rock the boat. But he's meant to be God Almighty, not the junior Senator from Nebraska.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

The Christian? You do realize that you guys don't agree even on the topics you yourself have instanced, let alone dozens of others I could mention? And the same Christian can in fact go from conservative to liberal on various issues (or, I suppose, vice versa, though this is rarer) and so disagree with his former self.Christians don't have a single unchanging standard of morality. What they have in common yesterday, today, and tomorrow, is the perpetual belief that whatever their own personal standard of morality is right now, it is the same as the single unchanging standard of morality in the mind of God. Slave-owners, heretic-burners, genocides, every despicable person you can think of --- they all thought to themselves: "These aren't my opinions, these are the immutable opinions of the one true God." Unless and until they changed their minds, after which they still thought: "These aren't my opinions, these are the immutable opinions of the one true God."The one "solid" belief that unites Christians past present and future (and Muslims, and Jews, and Hindus and whoever) is this: "Whatever I'm doing is God's work; whatever I want is God's will, and whatever I say is God's word." And when they change their minds, even to the extent of converting to a whole 'nother religion, they then say: "Oh, well, I was wrong in the past, I was misguided; however, whatever I'm doing now is God's work; whatever I want now is God's will, and whatever I say now is God's word."And this, the theists proclaim, is objective morality, a "solid standard"! Even if there is a God with unchanging opinions, his self-proclaimed followers do not possess it. They make their minds up about what is moral, based on their whims, their prejudices, their personal experience, peer-group pressure and the standards of their society --- and then assume that God agrees with whatever they come up with, and declare their opinion to be the opinion of God.The difference, then, between the atheist and the theist in this respect is that the atheist has the humility not to declare his opinions to be God's.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

But they were awfully short of Christian reasons, weren't they?As one pro-slavery writer put it: The man has a point. Why was there not that "one little precept" somewhere in the Bible that Christian abolitionists could point to? Here's another apologist for slavery: You can see from these quotations that God's complete failure to speak out against slavery was a common talking-point amongst those who defended it. Could he not at least have said somewhere that it was preferable not to own slaves? If not "one little precept", then at least one little hint?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

And not a code that they, or anyone else, got from the Bible. Then perhaps he could have chosen a point at which no change was required. For example, unless I'm reading the Bible completely backwards, the Jews were slaves in Egypt, rather than slave-owners. "The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God" (Exodus 2:23). When they left Egypt, God might have said: "Slavery is bad, as you all know from personal experience. I am pleased to see that none of you owns any slaves. Keep it that way." Is this the same God who will damn people to hell-fire for the original sin that they can't avoid being born with? Not even Abraham for God? It is one thing for God to abstain from enforcing his opinions, it's a whole 'nother thing for him to conceal them. It is because humans are frail that a little divine guidance wouldn't go amiss. Folks in the antebellum South, for example, could have used it, not despite being human and frail, but precisely because they were.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Well, let me quote Walther at you again. "Love your neighbor as yourself" was clearly not sufficient, since it did not in fact suffice. It didn't suffice for the apostles, Faith. As for Paul, if he suggested any such thing, it must have been omitted by the copyist. Faith, I found a massive gaping flaw in your apologetics, not in anything that God said to me. It's your argument. You said he couldn't have got people to break the slave habit, and I pointed out that there was a time at which none of the Israelites had the habit and all of them must have royally hated slavery. Could I again point out that you're meant to be a Calvinist? Stop making up theology as you go along. OK, so God could have told him to do it. And then there'd have been no "habit" for his descendants, which, stop me if I'm wrong, includes the entire nation of Israel. Again could I point out that that's a cop-out.

That is a lie so huge it is liable to collapse under its own mass and become a black hole.The Koran is so much presented as God's word that God is referred to throughout it in the first person, i.e. whenever the Koran says "I" or "me" it's referring to God (not Muhammad or the Angel Gabriel). E.g. Koran 2.47: "O children of Israel! call to mind My favor which I bestowed on you and that I made you excel the nations." I never said it did, but since you mention it, Koran 8:29 says "If you have fear of God, He will give you a criterion [by which to judge between right and wrong]". The equivalence I was pointing out was not of morality, but blind dogmatism. Anyone can bang on about how God magicked their scriptures into existence. It's not particularly impressive when you do so, because so can anyone else.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Barney is a CVTE PVRPLE DINOSAVR.C + V + V + L + D + I + V ... 666.What's more, as creationist scholars have discovered, "dinosaur" is just an Evil-utionist word for "dragon". Now what does it say in Revelation 13: "And the whole Earth was amazed and followed after the Beast; they worshiped the Dragon because he gave his authority to the Beast; and they worshiped the Beast, saying, 'Who is like the Beast, and who is able to wage war with him?'"Case closed.