Morality without God is impossible

I grew up in a culture that was essentially culturally Christian. I now live in a culture that is culturally secular.Sure the world I grew up had it's issues. Women didn't get a fair shake nor did aboriginals. That's better now. But, at the same time, kids could roam free in safety, I knew of no one that committed suicide. People were more social and more compassionate. I graduated high school at 5 ft 2 inches and 100 lbs and never was bullied. (I grew late. ) I never encountered people living in the street.As it was the post war years alcoholism was a problem largely because of PTSD. The other issues would I believe evolved I believe in the same they have anyway..The church of nothing else brought people together in an environment that projected the a sense of honesty, kindness and generosity that I just don't see in our secular cultures today.Our cities all have a large homeless problem, drugs are rampant and killing people and suicides are common place. Children ahve to be pretty much accompanied everywhere. I find it saddening that it is newsworthy when someone stumbles on to money that belongs to someone else and return it. It should be just assumed that they would.My conclusion is that a culturally Christian society, with all of its warts, provides a more compassionate society and contented society than what we have today.I have a hunch you will disagree. As far as religious stories are concerned We start out from very different perspectives. Frankly atheism makes no sense to me whereas theism does. With that as a starting point I have found that the Christian story makes sense of my life and the world I live in.

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Sure the world I grew up had its issues. Women didn't get a fair shake nor did aboriginals. That's better now. But, at the same time, kids could roam free in safety, I knew of no one that committed suicide. People were more social and more compassionate. I graduated high school at 5 ft 2 inches and 100 lbs and never was bullied. (I grew late. ) I never encountered people living in the street.

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Yet there were suicides, there was bullying, there were doubtless warnings about the danger of talking to strangers. We were talking at work about the “bad” areas of town, and it turned out that there were places where throwing bricks at buses was common in the evenings. Yet that is almost unheard of, though the area’s reputation remains. So I’d guess you just had a safe and cozy middle class childhood - indeed exceptionally so - insulated from the bad things around you.

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As far as religious stories are concerned We start out from very different perspectives. Frankly atheism makes no sense to me whereas theism does

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Indeed, it doesn’t make sense to you to admit that your opinions could be wrong or that a rational person could disagree with them.So your religion feeds your arrogance and pride - and keeps you away from the honest humility that rationality requires.

How can I agree with a bunch of cherry-picked anecdotes?If I was trying to make the case for something, I'd present real, balanced supporting evidence. Do you want to try again? Maybe you're right, prove it to me. We don't; as I've said many times over the years but it never sticks because you guys can never bring yourselves to believe it., I believed the same things that you do now once. And if you'd been born in the Atlas Mountains you'd have believed something completely different. Go figure.

Frankly it wasn't about trying to prove anything. I was just presenting my peronal experience and observations. A friend was telling me the other day that her daughter went over to a friend's house and found her to have hanged herself.It just seems to me to be a difficult time for kids growing up. I just remember my own childhood and particularly that age of innocence that just doesn't seem to be available to kids now.
On the other hand I meet so many great young people that have navigated through all of that and have come out on the other side as great people, and that includes my grandkids. It is the ones that can't deal with things that concerns me. I wonder what you did believe. Candle2 and I both call ourselves Christians but we have very different perspectives on both the nature of God as well as in our theology.I never did call myself an atheist but frankly it wasn't relevant to me and if I had to call myself something I would probably just come up with agnostic. I didn't become Christian until I was well into my thirties and my Christian beliefs and evolved considerably since then and they continue to evolve.

Yes I know, it was another "I believe..." statement.You don't know how to work out whether something you feel is actually factually correct. Remember polio? I had a friend die of measles. How are you going to balance all the pluses and minuses and not just see the minuses? You see? You can't believe it possible, no matter what I say, you and Phat and Faith just can't believe that I believed as strongly as you do now. It's literally beyond your comprehension.

That's always a problem no matter which side of the question you're on. It does seem to me though that there is a lot of anger out there. Not really. There is many versions of Christianity beyond just denominational groups. YOu are hardly unique amongst atheists who were former Christians.

Not if you're on the science and critical thinking side of an argument.People interested in finding out what is actually correct, do everything they can to remove their inbuilt biases and study all angles of the argument before forming conclusions.

No more than its beyond your comprehension how much we believe.
All that you can surmise (based on your current evidence-based worldview) is that our beliefs keep us from your current position.And I very much doubt that you felt exactly as we do now. One cannot have a relationship with Jesus and then simply toss Him aside as "new and better" evidence alters their worldview. It will never happen like that.

See? The problem with your new and improved worldview is that you *know* that this worldview leads to what actually is and not what you once believed.

Neither did you. You simply took a leap towards evidence despite there being none conclusive. Factually correct, in scientific terms, only means pending new evidence.You never knew Santa Claus because he was a myth. None of us did. And the Jesus you "threw away" was nothing more than a cultural icon. You never knew Him personally. You may well have known the Priest personally, but that's a different animal.And yes, I know that your argument is on the science/evidence side of the ledger so I can never win it. Which is fine. One man's worldview is another man's delusion now rejected.

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See? The problem with your new and improved worldview is that you *know* that this worldview leads to what actually is and not what you once believed

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Perhaps you’d like to explain why making a rigorous and honest attempt to find the truth is no better than GDR’s method of skimming sources until he thinks he finds something that will prop up what he already believes. Even if he very badly misunderstands what his source is saying (because why shoulld he care about getting it right). It seems rather obvious to me that it is much, much better - and that’s why science works,GDR claims his method is all about getting to the truth, but he’s lying to himself (and I say that because he’d have to be really stupid to think he could fool anyone else like that).

But it's not beyond my comprehension! I know how much you believe because I believed exactly the same, maybe stronger because I was young and had no doubts at all. You see, you can't comprehend anyone believing the way you do now, then not believing. I'm telling you that that's a simple fact. Call it a revelation if it helps.

GDR has no need to find the truth. And the only person who thinks that GDR is trying to "fool them" is one who has predetermined that they are foolproof. You may say that a believer is one who always attempts to verify their belief while a skeptic(a proud skeptic, I might add) always tries to falsify rather than verify. For the skeptic, the falsification brings inner validity to their method while to GDR (perhaps, I have yet to ask him) finds that verification rather than falsification brings him inner validity and peace. NT Wright has chosen to be an apologist. Others have chosen the professions of skeptic and debunker. To each his own.

Are we talking past tense or present tense? My point is that one cannot simply unknow someone.The more that I get to "know" you, the harder it would be to simply forget about your character as if you turned into a former forum member and a current myth. Hopefully, the AI of the future won't f*ck with my brain any worse than I can do to myself. I will use ringo as another example. (I sure miss him!) ringo was a wonderfully honest and bright forum member! AS I reread some of his arguments that challenged mine, I feel as if I can almost guess how he would respond to any argument I might make. It is my fervent hope and prayer that AI couldn't produce a better ringo than the one we all got to know and love. And it would be impossible to forget ringo or to dismiss him as a myth, even though it appears as if he is gone fom our forum....perhaps forever.Does that make any sense? Knowing Jesus involves more than the words written about Him.

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GDR has no need to find the truth

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Evading the point. GDR claims that it is all about the truth when it obviously is not. Whether he “needs to” or not is irrelevant to that.

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And the only person who thinks that GDR is trying to "fool them" is one who has predetermined that they are foolproof

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I don’t believe that. I believe that he is succeeding in fooling himself, and looking very foolish as a result. As well as getting angry when he posts nonsense and it gets called out.

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You may say that a believer is one who always attempts to verify their belief while a skeptic(a proud skeptic, I might add) always tries to falsify rather than verify. For the skeptic, the falsification brings inner validity to their method while to GDR (perhaps, I have yet to ask him) finds that verification rather than falsification brings him inner validity and peace

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Obviously his angry reactions to criticism show that he gets neither inner validity or peace. He wants to be thought of as a rational thinker with good arguments - and constantly shoots himself in the foot.