Morality without god

Interesting that you don't point out any actual errors in my post.

Everything you said was wrong. NOBODY regards other gods or human beings as we regard the God of the Bible. For one thing no other religion has a personal relationship with God. As for putting human beings in the same category I emphasized that God is supernatural which draws a different kind of allegiance than any person could. I already said everything that matters and this is just repetition. I won't even mention your evil accusations of God.

You really think you can speak for the over 6 billion people on the planet besides you and the few hundred to few thousand people you might know personally? Have you really investigated the beliefs of every non-Christian religion on the planet? Do you actually have a way to measure this "regard" so that it can be compared?This sounds precisely like a baseless nonsensical "my team is better than your team" assertion.

Rahvin, I'm basing my comments on years of reading and listening to Christian preachers who have researched these things and know what they are talking about, lots and lots of sermons and teachings and books and whatnot. Why would you think I'm relying only on my own personal knowledge? That would be ridiculous.The main difference is no doubt the personal relationship with God. If you know of a religion other than Christianity that fosters a personal relationship with God let me know. My understanding is that not only is this not fostered but the Christian claim is treated as blasphemy in some cases.

I have a personal relationship with my parents, and my parents created me. Does this make everything my parents say and do absolutely moral and above reproach?

Catholicism.

Faith, this admission flatly identifies your claim as am appeal to authority. You trust "Christian preachers who have researched these things." How would they research something like "regard?" How did they actually investigate every religion on Earth? How do they feel they can actually speak for more than 6 billion people?Your trust is given over to men who are making a flatly impossible claim - there is no way they could actually know what they claim to know."Personal relationships" were common in multiple religions. The gods and spirits of multiple religions can supposedly be directly appealed to, through individual prayer, ritual, sacrifice, etc. In many cases (for example, Voodoo), the spirits supposedly directly possess people during rituals - you can't get much more "personal" a relationship than occupying the same body.You live in a Christian-dominated culture (even if you refuse to acknowledge many of your fellow Christians). The Christian god is what the vast, vast majority of people worship in America. It makes absolute sense that you and your preachers would have the feeling that the Christian god is somehow unique among religions - from the inside, believing all other beliefs to be false or devil-spawned, that's exactly the feeling you would expect.But from the outside view...Christianity is "unique" only in its proliferation.You may not even be capable of percieving such a difference in perspective - when it comes to religion, I've never seen an example of you even being willing to try viewing things from the perspective of another. But as a former Christian, I know exactly the sorts of beliefs you're espousing - I believed them too, when I was "inside." Now that I'm no longer a Christian, I see religion as a whole in a different light - I'm no longer rooting for "my team" the way your preachers are doing to you, and the way you're doing here. Now, I simply see a multitude of different beliefs held by a huge variety of people - and in assessing their various qualities as a more objective outsider, I see that there are really very few differences between them.

Ummmm....according to the Greek Mythologies, they had a really personal connection with their gods...especially some ladies and Zeus (Think Heracles' mother). Of course, this is now a dead religion, but when it was practiced, the tales told of involvement of gods with humanity, individuals went to oracles to tell them what to do in their lives....seems like a pretty personal relationship to me...

For pete's sake Rahvin there aren't that many religions on earth. Every single individual, the billions, doesn't have his own religion or his own God. Let's stick to the main religions not the many tribal religions and when I talk about a relationship with GOD I'm not talking about relationships with multiple lesser gods such as Tempe brings up in the next post concerning the gods of the Greeks and Romans. Hinduism has millions of lesser gods but they nevertheless acknowledge a God over all and nobody has a personal relationship with that God.This is only an appeal to authority because it would be impossible for me to assemble all the teachings I've heard over the last few decades in order to give you the references, quotes and so on. This is not about a feeling, I'm really talking about people who studied and knew these things. Christianity has a great history of scholarship, none of this is subjective.I would also remind you, or perhaps you never heard it, that I was an atheist from my teens to my middle forties, and when I first started learning about religion I began with Hinduism. I was surrounded by people at the time who were into all the Eastern religions, which were very big in the 70s, various Hindu gurus having established their own ashrams for instance, and I had a friend who became a Zen Buddhist priestess during those years. That is naturally where I would have begun. I assumed I was going to join one of those groups when I started believing in such things. But the way I knew anything was by reading books and I read dozens and dozens of books until I finally read my way to Christianity, first Catholicism -- really seriously thought for a long time that's where I'd end up -- but then Protestantism.So I am not talking from a position of mere cultural Christianity. Although I went to church as a child I managed not even to get a clear idea of the gospel during those years and I quickly gave it all up when I met some aggressive atheistic rationalists in my teens. I became one of them and lived the next thirty years of my life as an atheist.So don't make up my history for me, it's not at all what you imagine it to be. And since I became a Christian I continued to read, the very best if I may say so, and I've always gravitated to the old writers more than the current writers, histories of the Church, the writings of the Puritans and so on.I know what a Christian is and I know what a Christian is not in a way you are totally in the dark about.I doubt you had the slightest similar knowledge of the history of Christianity I have when you were a so-called "Christian" yourself, and whatever you now think I suspect is a lot less informed than I was even during my atheist years, yet you carry on as if you are SURE you are superior in your perspective. What I'm "capable of perceiving" has you beat by miles but I doubt you have the capacity to recognize it.\

There are tens of thousands of Christian denominations alone, Faith. Some of them have relatively small differences; others...well, we know about how you feel about Mormons and Catholics and Jehova's Witnesses - certainly to you they count as "different religions." You've said as much many, many times. Why exclude polytheists? Why exclude tribal religions? You made a very specific claim - that Christianity (as you recognize it) was exclusively the only faith to have such "regard" for god or a "personal relationship."Now, you're excluding the majority of religions on the planet! When you say "nobody else," do you really mean to say "Well, not the Muslims or the Jews or the Hindus, I don't know or care about the others?"You've obviously moved the goalposts away from "nobody else." ...no, assembling all of your quotes and references to your authorities would still be an Appeal to Authority. You'd have to show their sources, which would still be subject to critical review. The word "regard" is subjective, Faith. It can;t be anything else - asking a person how they "regard" god is like asking them how much they "regard" the color blue.Personal relationships are similar. Your words in this thread and others show that you are still incapable of taking the outside view, Faith, regardless of your past experiences. I strongly disagree, since you identify a huge percentage of the people who accept Jesus as their lord and savior, as the Messiah, and believe that he died for the sins of the world, as non-Christians.Oh, I see. How dare I presume to know what you can perceive...
...and then you presume to know my own limitations.I think your words speak for themselves, Faith. When you make blatantly false assertions and are called on it, you resort to moving the goalposts, appeals to authority, and personal attacks.

Even the Popes don't have a relationship with God, they have a relationship with "Mary" though. And as I understand it Catholics are told that even Christ is unapproachable except through "Mary" so where's their relationship with God? But of course Catholicism does retain at least the outlines of Christianity although they've corrupted it all, so that they would have the idea of a personal relationship with God at least and if some Catholics do manage to be saved through that Christian influence in spite of the obstacles the Roman church puts in their way, then they are Christians.

How many do you think there are? Can you count them on you fingers? More or less than 100? Do you know anything about Hinduism? This is an oversimplification that borders on the absurd. Are you criticizing someone for doing something you are doing? All this "scholarship" you speak of is subjective. Naw, I won't say anything. It's too easy. I would venture to guess most of the atheist here no much more about the history of Christianity than you do.

If they are truly CHRISTIAN denominations, then they ALL preach a personal relationship with God. But there are NOT "thousands of denominations" anyway, that's just multiplying subgroups to no purpose.Sorry I should have realized that most religions are demonic and populated with many lesser "gods" -- but I DID say "GOD" I didn't say "gods." Who cares if you can have a "personal" relationship with a demon who will do you favors or whatnot, that's not a relationship with GOD.I give up Rahvin, you're going to make a big deal out of a word I used for who knows what reason and turn this into a huge semantic stew and continue to denigrate my experience and knowledge and extol your own so who cares. You're right, you know everything, you can ignore me and make up whatever you want about me, who cares. Goodbye.

This statement exactly proves my point - you cannot look at a religion from the perspective of its adherents. Where they see the gods they worship, you see demons. That's not an objective view.

forget it, I'm sick of this kind of stupid discussion. You know nothing but you think you know everything so you're welcome to it.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.