Christianity is Morally Bankrupt

Not at all. Science will just have shown how He might have done it.Let's face it. We both have our beliefs and this doesn't prove either one of us wrong or give either one of us a reason to change them.

I don’t agree with any of that. (Now there’s a surprise. ) The idea of a conscience is essentially a secular term. When we do something that we know we shouldn’t do then, to put it simply, the fact that we know we shouldn’t do it is evidence that we have a conscience, and it’s common to everyone, religious or not.Well we don’t know where our sense of right and wrong comes from. It’s a matter of belief. It is also obvious that an unhealthy or chemically altered brain can alter, or cause us to ignore that sense of right and wrong. We also know that we can observe activity in the brain with any of our thought processes. In the end though, it is like any other idea that we have. We can observe the activity in the brain but we can’t observe the actual idea itself. Also we have the freedom or ability even in a completely healthy and unaltered brain to ignore our conscience and to just do what we want regardless of the fact that we know that we shouldn't.

God has given us free will and as a result "others" are allowed to be wrong. Maybe it will be like Darwin. Darwin showed just how inventive the mind of God is. Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

Hi SombraWelcome to EvC and thanks for the well articulated first post. I’m not sure how you are using the word unskillful here. It seems to me that lack of skill is not a moral issue but I think I understand what you are saying. You are right. Our actions have consequences in the here and now. I agree with you that if we are just the result of a chance combination of mindless particles then there is no right or wrong. However there does seem to be general agreement that some things are wrong. Take murder for example. Most societies agree that murder is wrong but if we are just another clump of particles that somehow became cells, and then somehow became us, then what is the difference between murdering our next door neighbour or stepping on an ant.I think we do have a concept of some things being right and some things being wrong. That doesn’t say that there is a god judging us for our actions but it does IMHO strongly suggest that there is a universal right and wrong that exists independently of our thought processes. There are many on this forum who would agree with you. I suggest however that if there is a god who cares about us then that is what we should expect, at least when it comes to our fears. I understand that if you understand the Bible as being inerrant then I understand where you would have that perception. If you read through my posts on this thread you will see that I don’t believe that we are intended to understand the Bible that way.It is my belief that the Christian God is a god whose essence is one of love. If we love someone we hate, (for lack of a better term), seeing that person hurt in any way by the unloving words or actions of someone else. So yes, I believe that God is distressed, (I think is the term I would use as opposed to anger), when He sees evil in the world that causes pain for the beings He created. Since the beginning of human history we have solid evidence that mankind has always had a belief that there was something beyond what could be perceived. In many cases it was because it brought them comfort but also in many cases it was something that they feared and would offer up sacrifices.The point is that from primitive times onward we always had a sense that there was something more than just the physical. It really has only been in very recent history that that has been questioned, and that something can’t be real unless it is proven.I also know that as I get older I realize that although my body has aged that there is something that is just me and that doesn’t seem to be aging. It is nothing that I can offer up as proof. I think that non-believers believe as you do that believers such as myself don’t have the courage to face up to death. Frankly, I’m just looking for the truth.I’m going to copy this over from what I wrote on another thread a while back concerning who created God.In "The Fabric of the Cosmos" by Brian Greene, (one of my favourite books), he writes the following after talking about how we only experience time in one direction, and that we would expect there to be a law that confirms this.

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"The perplexing thing is that no one has discovered any such law. What's more, the laws of physics that have been articulated from Newton through Maxwell and Einstein, and up to until today, show a complete symmetry between past and future. Nowhere in any of these laws do we find a stipulation that they apply one way in time but not the other. Nowhere is there any distinction between how the laws look or behave when applied in either direction in time. The laws treat what we call past and future on a completely equal footing."

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It seems that our current understanding of the laws of physics indicate that theoretically it should be possible to exist by either going forward or back in time. This alone would allow for an infinite existence. We also know that some scientific theories such as string theory suggest that there might be even more, and maybe even 26 spacetime dimensions. In our existence that has 3 spatial dimensions we can move infinitely around our globe. I am not claiming this as anything but highly speculative but it seems to me that If our intelligent creator experienced existence in a world with 3 dimensions of time, then he/she/it would be able to move around infinitely in time just as we can travel infinitely around our globe.It seems to me that this gives one possible explanation that allows for a creator that has always existed, and will always exist, negating the need for a creator of the creator.Thanks for the reply

I guess my thought would be that having the universe pop itself into existence would require a highly intelligent popper. Actually it is similar to the whole concept of evolution. Evolution is from my POV an incredibly beautifully designed process that took an incredible intelligence to conceive it.Just out of interest it seems to me that in order for science to come to that conclusion would require going the other side of T=0 whatever that would mean. Wouldn't that then put science into the realm of the metaphysical?

Absolutely. I think of it in simpler terms though. I see our motivation as being either at one end totally selfish and at the other totally unselfish. There is of course the line that runs between them with right in the middle being an act that has no negative impact at all on anyone else and is neither moral nor immoral To a large extent I agree. We all believe in a god or gods in our image. However where we differ is that I believe that God speaks through us in the "still small voice" or our conscience and that we can no matter how imperfectly gain knowledge of God. We can distinguish between good and evil and know that at a deep level that we should choose "good". As a Christian I believe that God is perfectly good and that as humans He has given us the capacity to reflect His goodness into the world. Nobody does it perfectly. At best we reflect it dimly. However it goes back to the last paragraph which involves our motivation. We become what our hearts desire. I wish I could remember who it was but I remember reading the speculations of a physicist who suggested that we are actually residents of a totally different dimension or universe but that we experience our lives through the 4 dimensional world that we perceive. I often refer to the headline for the lead story in an issue of Scientific American a couple of years ago. It was "Hidden Worlds of Dark Matter .. An Entire Universe May Be Silently Interwoven With Our Own". Obviously we agree that we only experience time in one direction. If however we are only experiencing a part of a greater reality where there are additional time dimensions then there has to be a first cause that resulted in the creation of the reality that we experience. Science tells us that as part of the universe we experience there was a T=0. I believe that that first cause was intelligent and moral.It is my personal view that we are an emergent property of a greater reality. Let me add though that I am not educated in this field at all and so my views should be taken with a very large grain of salt. Edited by GDR, : typo

For myself I see our actions as being neither moral or immoral but more of an issue of the heart which goes back to motivation. The question is do we have our hearts that love selfishly or hearts that love sacrificially. Our actions are simply a natural result of the nature of our heart. I agree that those that love sacrificially are happier people than those who love selfishly, but that isn’t the point of loving sacrificially. The point is about genuinely caring for all fellow world travellers even at the expense of the self. We have no way of knowing whether it is a god or not. It is a matter of belief. I agree with that and contend that is completely in line with Christian thinking. You are calling love an emotion. The term is too broad in English but in the way that I understand God’s love for us it isn’t an emotion at all. It is simply a state of the heart of God. This is also the ideal for us as well. We don’t do something because we believe it’s the right thing to do, we do the right thing because it has become instinctive. It is a matter of who we are. As I said, it is our heart that makes us what we are. So it isn’t a matter of God feeling loving. It is a matter that God is loving. We are on the same page here and very well put. As I said, God’s love is not an emotion and at our best, neither is it with us. It is like a man diving into a raging river to save the life of a stranger. It isn’t that he feels loving, it is the fact that he is loving and the love of a stranger is just part of him so that going into the river is an instinctive act. But we all have a fundamental point of view. You have just expressed yours and you form your world view around that. I completely agree that the point of morality is to take the focus off of the self. Issues of doctrine aside that is the fundamental Christian message. As far as self-delusion being the root of all evil, I can’t see it. We all delude ourselves in one way or another. It is part of the human condition. I would say that all that we call evil flows from our love of self, and particularly at the expense of others.I have no way of knowing whether God thinks in terms of Him being Himself. We are limited by our human understanding. I know many on this forum disagree but I contend that there is an intelligence that begat intelligent life on this planet and I also believe that this intelligence is moral and through that we have the ability to choose morality so that it becomes who we are. I understand that talking about before T=0 is meaningless, but if we talk about our existence as being an emergent property of a greater reality that contains more than just one dimension of time then the question of a first cause has meaning. It is my contention that an intelligent first cause is much more plausible than the notion that we are the result of a chance collection of particles forming into atoms, and a chance collection of atoms forming incredibly complex living cells, and that those cells evolved without design into intelligent life with an understanding of morality. No problem with that except I think there are many things that are true that I don’t have experience of.Thanks for the discussion Shadow.

I thought I'd maybe revise that. I did say that but I thought about it more and looked into it. I came to the conclusion that I don't agree with those Christians who hold that view. I initially understood it somewhat differently and so I did use that term. It seems to me that view represents a way of getting around the idea that God could have sanctioned things in the OT that Jesus repudiates in the Gospels. In other words it is just a way of rationalizing that which can't be rationalized in order to hold to a specific view of Scripture.I think a better term to use is "progressive understanding". It isn't that God has changed but over time we have continually come to a fuller understanding of God, Jesus and the Spirit and that progressive understanding still continues.I have been reading a book called Christianity-The First Three Thousand Years. It is fascinating to see the variety of positions involved in working through what Jesus meant and what God was doing in resurrecting him, and how the final conclusions were formed, and sometimes by those who help power both in and outside the church.I think that currently with modern historical research which is greatly enhanced by the finding of new material, and with a better understanding of the ancient languages, we are gaining new insights by looking at understanding Jesus in His historical context. All along, including in the reformation, there have been attempts to take Jesus out of his Jewish context. By looking at Jesus as a first century Jew, in a first century Jewish world, and to a large degree removing the Hellenistic views of the first few centuries of the church that has impacted so much of Christian scholarship for centuries, we are continuing that progressive understanding of the God of Christianity.At any rate, the point is that I now use the term "progressive understanding" as opposed to "progressive revelation".

Absolutely. The understanding of God as depicted in the Bible changes radically from Genesis to Numbers and Leviticus and again by Isaiah and the latter prophets. Look at what Micah says in my signature and compare that to the God that is ordering the slaughter of the Canaanites. Then of course compare that with Jesus' message to love our enemy and as well as forgive him.AbE Yes, the depiction of God changes in either case but The term "progressive revelation" implies that God's message to us has evolved, whereas by "progressive understanding' implies that our understanding of God's constant message for us has evolved.Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

IMHO it is both. I think that Dawkins was on to something in his book the "Selfish Gene" when he talked about memes. I see God's Holy Spirit, which we can also call the "still small voice of God" or even our conscience, as being a God meme.The God meme in all of us would be the revelation part but there are still all those other memes that we get from our culture, and from our our own selfish nature, that obviously also impact our understanding.

I'm not sure about that. The discussion seemed to be primarily about the nature of God, and how that effects our nature, and that is what I was responding to. I just don't see the concept of right and wrong, good and evil, and knowing the difference, as being a special revelation.The concept of special revelation in the OT, or elsewhere, is another question altogether. Doesn't everyone have a conscience, whether they pay any attention to it or not?

As Paul pointed out, that isn't what I had in mind. Religions are created by people as they try to understand the nature of the intelligence that is overseeing and maybe even responsible for our existence. (Unfortunately far too often that search has been sullied by those with selfish personal agendas.)Christianity holds that Jesus in some way embodied that nature and then taught, lived it and died for it. God the Father then validated this belief by resurrecting Jesus. Ever since that time Jesus followers have worked at understanding the teachings of Jesus and what God's action of resurrecting Jesus means to our lives. There have been huge disagreements and many times positions taken were self serving and not God serving. Those disagreements continue but IMHO there is a progressive understanding, as observed in the Bible, that continues today.

This is from Webster's:

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the sense or consciousness of the moral goodness or blameworthiness of one's own conduct, intentions, or character together with a feeling of obligation to do right or be good

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Other than for those with mental illness I disagree. I would agree that people are able to nearly push it aside so that it appears that they have no conscience whatever. I think that when that happens though it is a gradual process, and that one selfish act leads to the next one, and in turn to the next one again,until that simply becomes a way of life. However, I think that still small voice, by now buried deep inside, is still there and hopefully at some point they respond.

You are assuming that they come straight from God, in which case of course they should reflect the character of the law giver, and be a special revelation. However if they come from an individual's understanding of the nature of God then they may or may not be accurate.As a Christian I accept that Jesus as embodiment of God's nature is bang on when He says that all commands are based on loving God and neighbour. I accept that loving God means loving the nature of God as seen in Jesus regardless of religious faith. When we look at laws in general, including the OT laws, they should be judged according to that standard. Well, a meme is a metaphor. We have a myriad of influences in our lives and I am simply asserting that God is one of them.

I'd like to say one thing at this point. These are my thoughts from reading a variety of material and is my own way of understanding my Christian faith. I know that a lot of the discussion has revolved around "what is mainstream Christianity". I don't believe that there is such a thing. I doubt that there any two Christians (who have spent time with the Bible and also with a variety of authors), who would agree on everything. Yes, there are churches where they all sing from the same hymn book so to speak, and nothing is ever questioned. I'm not saying that is even a bad thing, however, inevitably then that theology will have a lot of local bias. It is one thing that I like about my own church. We acknowledge our different understandings and talk them out, and if necessary agreeing to disagree. I agree that they are both possibilities. However, it is my belief that the laws that we see in the OT flow from the understanding of the revelation from God that we should reject evil and live by the Golden Rule. I don't deny that I do believe that humans sometimes receive a special revelation to fulfill a specific task, but that is a different issue.