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Author Topic:   Christianity is Morally Bankrupt
NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 91 of 652 (694571)
03-25-2013 8:58 PM
Reply to: Message 90 by Jazzns
03-25-2013 6:59 PM


It is simply the counterpoint to a belief by faith that many people's understanding of the ultimate fate of the sun are in fact guided at least somewhat by the evidence even if it is filtered by an imperfect spread of science literacy
Most people believe that the sun will become a red giant because they heard it from some source that they trust and not because they have any appreciation at all for the evidence. I don't see any distinction between that and how people decide that God's judgment is inevitable other than that you don't believe the latter.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I would say here something that was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree; ‘That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how the heaven goes.’ Galileo Galilei 1615.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

This message is a reply to:
 Message 90 by Jazzns, posted 03-25-2013 6:59 PM Jazzns has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 92 by GrimSqueaker, posted 03-25-2013 10:01 PM NoNukes has replied
 Message 94 by Jazzns, posted 03-25-2013 11:47 PM NoNukes has replied

  
GrimSqueaker
Member (Idle past 3688 days)
Posts: 137
From: Ireland
Joined: 03-15-2013


Message 92 of 652 (694574)
03-25-2013 10:01 PM
Reply to: Message 91 by NoNukes
03-25-2013 8:58 PM


Not being condecending but do u know about the peer review process? For the most part one can accept science which has been successfully peer reviewed to be pretty accurate. If we didn't accept that we wouldnt have near any of our modern medicine, and an awful lot of other technologies

This message is a reply to:
 Message 91 by NoNukes, posted 03-25-2013 8:58 PM NoNukes has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 93 by NoNukes, posted 03-25-2013 10:34 PM GrimSqueaker has not replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


(1)
Message 93 of 652 (694577)
03-25-2013 10:34 PM
Reply to: Message 92 by GrimSqueaker
03-25-2013 10:01 PM


For the most part one can accept science which has been successfully peer reviewed to be pretty accurate
No, we cannot make any such assumption. You could not possibly understand the limitations of the peer review and still say this. There are plenty of bogus papers published in journals. There are even journals reserved for bogosity. Galilean Electrodynamics comes to mind.
And that's all besides the point. I agree that the likely stellar evolution of sol is well supported by the evidence. But most people accept and reject science with no regard whatsoever for the evidence. I doubt that one layperson in ten, pro or con, can give an evidence based defense of their position on AGW or evolution. People believe what they believe largely without regard for the evidence.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I would say here something that was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree; ‘That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how the heaven goes.’ Galileo Galilei 1615.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

This message is a reply to:
 Message 92 by GrimSqueaker, posted 03-25-2013 10:01 PM GrimSqueaker has not replied

  
Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3911 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


Message 94 of 652 (694583)
03-25-2013 11:47 PM
Reply to: Message 91 by NoNukes
03-25-2013 8:58 PM


Missing the point
I don't see any distinction between that and how people decide that God's judgment is inevitable other than that you don't believe the latter.
God's judgement is imbued with the agency of God. That is the point that you are completely missing. My last sentence talked about using evidence and it absolutely doesn't matter. I certainly would call evidence based beliefs moral but that is not required to state the Bible based beliefs are in fact immoral. This situation is not a dichotomy.
I'll speak about the points in the OP that I agree with. I already mentioned one, vicarious redemption is immoral. We do not allow whipping boys in our society. Its wrong and there is no, "the sun is going to blow up" analogy for you to hide behind. It is precisely wrong because it is an idea that comes from the immoral agency of God's so-call judgement of mankind. Without that agency, the notion that we even NEED redemption falls down completely.
The idea of heaven and hell is another good one. Which one you go to is solely determined by the agency of God! You can draw a similarity between hell and the Earth engulfed by the sun but the sun is not making a choice between burning the Earth or between burning some people on the earth for eternity.
It is an immoral concept because immorality can only come from things with an agency to decide to be immoral. When a person throws a stone, it is not possible for the stone itself to be immoral.

If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers. --Carl Sagan

This message is a reply to:
 Message 91 by NoNukes, posted 03-25-2013 8:58 PM NoNukes has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 95 by purpledawn, posted 03-29-2013 6:28 AM Jazzns has replied
 Message 96 by NoNukes, posted 03-29-2013 8:54 AM Jazzns has replied
 Message 107 by GDR, posted 03-29-2013 6:44 PM Jazzns has replied

  
purpledawn
Member (Idle past 3457 days)
Posts: 4453
From: Indiana
Joined: 04-25-2004


Message 95 of 652 (694807)
03-29-2013 6:28 AM
Reply to: Message 94 by Jazzns
03-25-2013 11:47 PM


Re: Missing the point
I assume we aren't really addressing moral bankruptcy anymore.
quote:
I already mentioned one, vicarious redemption is immoral. We do not allow whipping boys in our society. Its wrong and there is no, "the sun is going to blow up" analogy for you to hide behind. It is precisely wrong because it is an idea that comes from the immoral agency of God's so-call judgement of mankind. Without that agency, the notion that we even NEED redemption falls down completely.
If we're going by what some believe, which I think we are since we aren't going by a natural reading of the Bible, then Jesus was not a whipping boy. He was God who came in human form and died to appease himself. Since he's God he didn't really die as we do.
Christians believe that the purpose of mankind is to serve God. This makes God master and he has the right to judge mankind in the afterlife. No different than our legal system judging us in life.
quote:
The idea of heaven and hell is another good one. Which one you go to is solely determined by the agency of God! You can draw a similarity between hell and the Earth engulfed by the sun but the sun is not making a choice between burning the Earth or between burning some people on the earth for eternity.
No different than being acquitted or found guilty. This happens in the afterlife and no one knows what has or will happen.
Neither of these take place in the living world.
One could probably make a case that telling children that Santa Claus is real or leading them to believe he is real is immoral. In this case parents know that the Santa of today is fictional, but lie to deceive their children anyway. Santa watching to see if the child is naughty or nice. There is No Santa Claus.
That is an act of telling a falsehood because the parent knows it's fiction. Does this make all the parents and businesses immoral? Same with the Boogieman or any other lie we tell to manipulate others.
People manipulate people. It's part of our world.
In some small towns, the Church is the only community center available. For some elderly, Church is the best source of a social life. One can go without having to buy into the tenets.
If one doesn't want to be manipulated, one needs to do their homework.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 94 by Jazzns, posted 03-25-2013 11:47 PM Jazzns has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 98 by Jazzns, posted 03-29-2013 10:42 AM purpledawn has replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 96 of 652 (694811)
03-29-2013 8:54 AM
Reply to: Message 94 by Jazzns
03-25-2013 11:47 PM


Re: Missing the point
We do not allow whipping boys in our society. Its wrong and there is no, "the sun is going to blow up" analogy for you to hide behind.
I don't use 'sun blowing up' for every argument. But whipping boy is a poor description for God himself coming to earth and creating a way for us to escape consequences of our own making.
The idea of heaven and hell is another good one. Which one you go to is solely determined by the agency of God!
Yes, the existence of hell would be problematic. Again, I didn't address the problem using 'sun blows up'.
It is an immoral concept because immorality can only come from things with an agency to decide to be immoral.
Exactly. I don't decide what the rules on judgment day are, I just believe the rules as I understand them are the rules. I don't act in fear of the rules, because judgment is not the point of Christianity anymore than is a speaker's plaque the point of giving a good speech. Christianity ultimately is about living a life patterned after Christ's life on earth. I'm not aware of anything Christ did in his 30 or so years on Earth that I find immoral.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I would say here something that was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree; ‘That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how the heaven goes.’ Galileo Galilei 1615.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

This message is a reply to:
 Message 94 by Jazzns, posted 03-25-2013 11:47 PM Jazzns has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 100 by Jazzns, posted 03-29-2013 11:06 AM NoNukes has not replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 97 of 652 (694812)
03-29-2013 9:02 AM
Reply to: Message 89 by Jazzns
03-25-2013 6:52 PM


The fact that some Christians get by with a nuanced version of faith that doesn't contain vicarious redemption is irrelevent to the notion that many, perhaps even most, do.
Elsewhere I address vicarious redemption, but I think it does matter that some beliefs are not inherent to Christianity because Christianity is what is blanketly being called immoral.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I would say here something that was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree; ‘That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how the heaven goes.’ Galileo Galilei 1615.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

This message is a reply to:
 Message 89 by Jazzns, posted 03-25-2013 6:52 PM Jazzns has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 101 by Jazzns, posted 03-29-2013 11:14 AM NoNukes has replied

  
Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3911 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


Message 98 of 652 (694824)
03-29-2013 10:42 AM
Reply to: Message 95 by purpledawn
03-29-2013 6:28 AM


Still missing the point
I assume we aren't really addressing moral bankruptcy anymore.
Why would you assume that? What part of the discussion was not talking about the morality of the ideas involved in Christianity?
Nothing in your reply addressed the issue of agency. You quibbled about whether Jesus really counts as vicarious redemption and whether the whole heaven/hell selection was any different from a normal justice system. Those are examples I am using to support a larger point.
My point was originally, and remains, that our ability to judge the morality of these beliefs versus random acts of nature rests in the agency and intent embedded in the belief.
The reason we can even address the issue of morality on the question of vicarious redemption is because the redemption in this case is in the eyes of a particular agent. The reason we can do the same for the heaven/hell concept is because an agent is the arbiter of eternal torture versus eternal bliss.
That is what makes these ideas different from the sun blowing up, or a volcano erupting. Morality is a property of (im)moral actors of which the sun, a volcano, are very obviously not.
Edited by Jazzns, : I mixed up who I was replying to. I changed some stuff that seemed to suggest I was talking to Nukes.

If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers. --Carl Sagan

This message is a reply to:
 Message 95 by purpledawn, posted 03-29-2013 6:28 AM purpledawn has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 99 by NoNukes, posted 03-29-2013 10:58 AM Jazzns has replied
 Message 106 by purpledawn, posted 03-29-2013 2:01 PM Jazzns has replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 99 of 652 (694827)
03-29-2013 10:58 AM
Reply to: Message 98 by Jazzns
03-29-2013 10:42 AM


Re: Still missing the point
That is what makes these ideas different from the sun blowing up, or a volcano erupting. Morality is a property of (im)moral actors of which the sun, a volcano, are very obviously not.
Again, the question addressed by my argument was a Christian's attitude towards the fact of having to face judgment and not whether God was an immoral actor. After all, would not a Creationist believe that God is responsible for creating a sun with a finite store of hydrogen?

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I would say here something that was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree; ‘That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how the heaven goes.’ Galileo Galilei 1615.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

This message is a reply to:
 Message 98 by Jazzns, posted 03-29-2013 10:42 AM Jazzns has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 102 by Jazzns, posted 03-29-2013 11:27 AM NoNukes has replied

  
Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3911 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


Message 100 of 652 (694828)
03-29-2013 11:06 AM
Reply to: Message 96 by NoNukes
03-29-2013 8:54 AM


Ideas can be immmoral
I don't use 'sun blowing up' for every argument. But whipping boy is a poor description for God himself coming to earth and creating a way for us to escape consequences of our own making.
Whipping boy may have been a bit hyperbolic, but the main point is the issue of redemption, the need for a redemption, is only necessary due to the judgment of the actor who is God defining those "consequences of our own making." That whole notion that there are even consequences needing redemption is the basis for why the idea vicarious redemption can be judged as immoral.
It is an immoral concept because immorality can only come from things with an agency to decide to be immoral.
Exactly. I don't decide what the rules on judgment day are, I just believe the rules as I understand them are the rules. I don't act in fear of the rules, because judgment is not the point of Christianity anymore than is a speaker's plaque the point of giving a good speech. Christianity ultimately is about living a life patterned after Christ's life on earth. I'm not aware of anything Christ did in his 30 or so years on Earth that I find immoral.
A lot of other replies in this thread have gone down this path of trying to say that one idea or another from the OP is or is not "Christianity". You say that you don't find anything Christ did to be immoral but I would push back on that to ask if you know of ANY modern concept of Christianity, any belief system that is only based on what Christ supposedly did? It is in fact not a stretch to say that many of the ideas in the OP are in fact part of the dogma of many popular and influential forms of Christianity apart from the actual actions of Christ.
Finally, it is not only about what Christ DID but what he was selling as truth. Christ himself (if we just assume the bible is accurate for the moment) believed in hell as a place of fiery torment and he said that he was the arbiter of who would go there. If immorality is the property of an agent, Christ is in fact the agent in the case of this idea of torture by fire (I don't recall if Christ ever said it would be eternal but still....). To say that nothing that Christ DID offends your sense of morality is one thing, to say that the ideas listed in the OP that can in fact be attributed to Christ are therefore of no consequence is frankly disingenuous.

If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers. --Carl Sagan

This message is a reply to:
 Message 96 by NoNukes, posted 03-29-2013 8:54 AM NoNukes has not replied

  
Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3911 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


Message 101 of 652 (694829)
03-29-2013 11:14 AM
Reply to: Message 97 by NoNukes
03-29-2013 9:02 AM


Elsewhere I address vicarious redemption, but I think it does matter that some beliefs are not inherent to Christianity because Christianity is what is blanketly being called immoral.
I think it is both wrong to:
1. Say that the the ideas in the OP apply to all of Christianity as a monolithic belief system.
2. Say that therefore it is impossible to speak about Christianity in a general sense where many if not most of actual instances of Christianity in our modern world DO IN FACT hold those beliefs.
Perhaps the statement should be changed from "Christianity is Morally Bankrupt" to "Many Foundational and Common Christian Beliefs are Morally Bankrupt".
I think we had a problem both of Grim not being too precise and others being too pedantic.

If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers. --Carl Sagan

This message is a reply to:
 Message 97 by NoNukes, posted 03-29-2013 9:02 AM NoNukes has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 109 by NoNukes, posted 03-29-2013 8:03 PM Jazzns has replied

  
Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3911 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


Message 102 of 652 (694832)
03-29-2013 11:27 AM
Reply to: Message 99 by NoNukes
03-29-2013 10:58 AM


Re: Still missing the point
Again, the question addressed by my argument was a Christian's attitude towards the fact of having to face judgment and not whether God was an immoral actor.
And again, that belief is immoral because of the agency of God. That IS what makes it different from belief that the sun is going to blow. You seem to be focusing on the point that both people believe that the respective end games are inevitable. My point is that you can speak about the morality of the first idea but not the second because an agent, an actor with the choice to be moral or not exists in the first one.
The belief that a guy on a throne has the ability to ETERNALLY torture you for the choices you made in an 80 year lifespan is an immoral belief.
After all, would not a Creationist believe that God is responsible for creating a sun with a finite store of hydrogen?
Presumably yes. In that case it is actually possible to apply the moral question once you insert the agency of the creator God. If it is actually in God's purvue to destory the earth, it doesn't matter the means by which that is accomplished, we can still judge it to be immoral.
To further clarify, the question of if the belief that the sun will eventually blow up is a moral belief is a non-answerable. Its not possible to apply morality to the sun because the sun does not have agency. Once you insert God, you CAN ask the question because the morality of the situation now applies to God, not the sun.

If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers. --Carl Sagan

This message is a reply to:
 Message 99 by NoNukes, posted 03-29-2013 10:58 AM NoNukes has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 103 by Phat, posted 03-29-2013 11:48 AM Jazzns has not replied
 Message 110 by NoNukes, posted 03-29-2013 8:06 PM Jazzns has replied

  
Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 103 of 652 (694836)
03-29-2013 11:48 AM
Reply to: Message 102 by Jazzns
03-29-2013 11:27 AM


Re: Still missing the point
The belief that a guy on a throne has the ability to ETERNALLY torture you for the choices you made in an 80 year lifespan is an immoral belief.
The way I look at it, we essentially torture ourselves. It is our choice...the actor merely set the parameters. Our question is why the actor chose to allow for such parameters. Perhaps the question should be "why we cant have our cake and eat it too?"
Or perhaps the question should be "why such drastic parameters"?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 102 by Jazzns, posted 03-29-2013 11:27 AM Jazzns has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 104 by Rahvin, posted 03-29-2013 12:07 PM Phat has not replied
 Message 105 by Dr Adequate, posted 03-29-2013 1:26 PM Phat has not replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


(1)
Message 104 of 652 (694838)
03-29-2013 12:07 PM
Reply to: Message 103 by Phat
03-29-2013 11:48 AM


Re: Still missing the point
It is our choice...the actor merely set the parameters.
If I put a cake baked with shards of broken glass and a juicy steak on a table and leave the choice of which to eat up to you, am I responsible if you decide to eat the broken-glass-cake and die in horrific pain? I merely set the parameters, after all.
We certainly make the real world the way it is, at least so far as society contains its own ills (clearly we bear no responsibility for an asteroid colliding with the Earth or other such disasters).
But this isn't man's torture of man that we're talking about when we discuss hell. Hell is an artificial construct created for the express purpose of eternal torture through burning in unquenching fire forever fully conscious and aware. Apologetically comparing the Christian concept of hell to self-torture through deep guilt or masochism or self-destructive behavior or even torturing others from a mortal perspective simply doesn't come close. It's like comparing a candle flame to the Sun - they bear a resemblance only to an ignorant child.
It's not a matter of "why we cant have our cake and eat it too?" Not at all. A measured and reasonable punishment for moral failings in life would not be terribly immoral itself. If "hell" was actually more akin to an eye for an eye, experiencing all of the pain and all of the joy that resulted from your living actions, we wouldn't be having this discussion. If "hell" was actually a place where those who behaved wickedly were helped to realize the error of their ways and atone and be forgiven and reintegrated into society in "heaven," we'd be applauding that aspect of Christian morality.
But the "hell" concept doesn't look anything remotely like those. Even Hitler wouldn't deserve eternal punishment. At some point, after he had been burning alive for 1000 years for each and every person who died in WWII, even the most evil horror-movie sadist would have to say "Okay, he's probably had as much as he deserves, let him go."
Of course, the hilarity of it all is that the other aspects of Christianity allow even Hitler to simply "believe" in something and his sins are washed away by the human sacrifice/scapegoat of Jesus. That is having your cake and eating it too. Except the cake turns into human flesh, I suppose.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. - Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. — Albert Camus
"...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." - Barash, David 1995.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 103 by Phat, posted 03-29-2013 11:48 AM Phat has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 105 of 652 (694842)
03-29-2013 1:26 PM
Reply to: Message 103 by Phat
03-29-2013 11:48 AM


Re: Still missing the point
The way I look at it, we essentially torture ourselves.
I don't, I pay a big Swedish woman to do that for me.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 103 by Phat, posted 03-29-2013 11:48 AM Phat has not replied

  
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